Whether it’s helping bring down Jose Mourinho at Manchester United, marching against their club’s owner in Chelsea or taking to the streets to support their team in Tottenham, fans’ protest stories remind us that football fan activism is more than just a fad. It remains a powerful tool in the fight for social change, as it has been throughout history.
In this article, we take Liverpool as a case study to explore the ways that football fan activism reveals and shapes social identities. Drawing on key literature and developments on fan media and activism, as well as Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, we look at the way in which Liverpool fandom and its associated social movements reflect and agitate wider political issues affecting the world beyond the stadium.
This is particularly visible in the club’s relationship with its owners, where the protests against Hicks and Gillett and their successors reflected and heightened Scouse flagdom as a social identity, whilst also reflecting and agitating against the wider financial and political crises facing the local economy and the city. The development of a ‘Keep Flags Scouse’ campaign (KFS) also helped to reinforce and shape collective identity, whilst providing an innovative platform for fan media production.
Similarly, the ongoing protests by fans of Netflix’s sci-fi series ‘The OA’ against the streaming giant’s decision to cancel the show after two seasons and a mind-melting cliffhanger demonstrate that there is still plenty of scope for fan activism. Indeed, Emperial Young, one of the show’s fans, is currently on her fourth day of a hunger strike to protest against the cancellation of the series.
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