engleski

Youth, football and (a)political communication: Discourses at the North End

Research into the general youth population in Croatia since the 1990s reveals extremely low trust in political institutions (the lowest being in political parties) and weak political participation. It is therefore understandable that youth in Croatia favours non-institutional political action and more radical political positions than other age groups. In this paper we consider the communication strategies of football supporters, more specifically Torcida, the ultras supporters of FC Hajduk Split. Founded in 1950, Torcida is the oldest ultras group in Europe. It has a formal organisation and leadership (NGO), informal subgroups and variously structured relationships at the stands and in the street. Our attention is aimed at the mass communication at the stands, often the focus of the mainstream media, and its Facebook page as a key medium for the dissemination of messages and mobilisation for various activities. A part of those activities is a fight against crime and corruption in Croatian football (verdicts and sentences passed to some members of the Croatian Football Federation for match-fixing, extortion and money laundering). The aim of this paper is to explain the socio-cultural factors characterising football activism in Croatia and its expression in mass communication. It identifies the emotional and aesthetic patterns of Torcida’s political communication in the context of growing social inequality and institutionalized injustice in Croatia, where the fight against the local football establishment is also a fight against the centres of political power. The paper draws on data collected during ethnographic research conducted from July 2012 to November 2015, including 252 field journal entries and 23 in-depth interviews with members of Torcida’s hard-core. Various forms of actions were recorded during the research, including messages, choreographies, chanting at the stands, boycotts and demonstrations, all coordinated by the formal and informal Torcida’s leadership. The interview findings suggest that the group considers itself to be apolitical, but also politicians and political parties to be ‘thieves’. The group abstains from the left-right political division and believes that it can only destabilise Torcida. However, taking into account the classical political terminology, the analysed data suggest that the supporters’ subculture in Croatia is closest to the contemporary populist tendencies and marked by strong patriotism.

youth; football; politics; communication; Croatia

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