355,000 Instagram posts reveal how football fans actually build identity online, and it matters right now
With the FIFA World Cup lighting up US stadiums, new academic research gives sport organisations a data-driven blueprint for turning casual content into deep fan belonging.
As billions of social media posts flood feeds during the World Cup, a fundamental question sits underneath the noise: what is actually happening when a fan posts a photo from the stadium? Are they sharing a memory, performing loyalty, or constructing something deeper about who they are?
New research published this year offers the most rigorous answer yet — and the findings should reshape how sport organisations think about their digital strategy.
The dataset
355,043 fan-generated Instagram posts analysed
6 months of KBO season data, Jan–Jun 2023
2 deep learning models used for validation (ResNet-50 & VGG16)
Researchers scraped over 355,000 posts from Korean Baseball Organization games using team and venue hashtags. Images were then processed through Google Cloud Vision API and cross-validated with two industry-standard deep learning architectures before human experts reviewed the classifications. Semantic clustering and interpretive coding followed to surface identity patterns at scale.
"What fans post isn't decoration — it's identity work. And platforms are the new stadium."
The Visual Identity Transformation (VIT) Framework
The study produced a three-part framework explaining how digital fan identity actually forms:
Environmentally Anchored Identity: Spatial and collective expressions: crowd shots, venue photos, group celebrations. Fans anchor their sense of self to the physical and social environment of the game.
Materially Embedded Identity: Tangible symbols and performative practices: kits, scarves, face paint, merchandise. The objects fans choose to photograph and display actively construct who they are as a supporter.
Spatially Integrated Identity: Connecting spatial and temporal dimensions into continuous narratives, from pre-match build-up to post-match reflection. Identity isn't a single post; it's a story told across time.
The framework extends established theories of narrative identity, performative identity, and place attachment, and applies them specifically to visual, platform-mediated contexts where algorithms shape what gets seen, shared, and remembered.
Why it matters for the FIFA World Cup 2026
The tournament taking place across US cities right now is generating a volume of fan content unlike anything before it. For sport organisations, national federations, and sponsors trying to build brand communities in this moment, the research offers a clear directive: don't just track engagement metrics. Design for identity expression.
That means giving fans visual anchors, architecturally distinct venues, memorable kit details, shared rituals, that translate into the kind of content that performs identity work, not just content consumption.
The study also flags something important for global events: these identity mechanisms are culturally specific. What builds belonging for a KBO fan in Seoul may need to be adapted for a supporter in São Paulo or Chicago. Comparative research across cultures and sports is the urgent next step.
READ THE RESEARCH
Taylor & Francis / June Won, J. Lucy Lee