The cultural semiotics of football fans: a Lotmanian analysis of the Shanghai Derby

Football derbies are among the most visible and socially significant events in global sport, yet little research has examined how intra-city rivalries shape fandom and civic identity in non-Western contexts, particularly in China. The symbolic and semiotic dimensions of such rivalries have also received limited systematic theoretical attention. This study addresses these gaps by mobilising Yuri Lotman’s Cultural Semiotics to examine the rivalry between supporters of two leading Chinese football clubs, Shanghai Shenhua and Shanghai Port. Through 30 semi-structured interviews, this research combines inductive reflexive thematic analysis with an abductive revisiting approach which is guided by Lotman’s theoretical framework of symbol–text–culture–semiosphere. Key findings demonstrate that: (1) visual and verbal symbols are mobilised as tools of provocation and boundary-making; (2) rivalry is driven by texts such as match outcomes, iconic incidents, resource inequality and cultural prejudice; (3) the culture of conflict has shifted from episodic physical violence to routinised online aggression, while increasingly spilling from matchday into everyday urban life; and (4) the semiosphere of Shanghai fandom is characterised by nested identifications in which familial transmission deepens divisions while civic pride facilitates integration beyond derby contexts. The study shows that football rivalries function as generative semiotic systems through which urban belonging is constructed, contested and negotiated. It also highlights the value of a systematic cultural semiotic approach for analysing sport-related rivalries and positions China, and potentially Asia more widely, as rich sites for further research on football fan rivalry and civic identity.