The Cultural Identity and Fan Engagement in Chinese Esports

The rise of esports has transformed traditional sports landscapes, ushering in a new era of digital competition and fan engagement. This study explores the intricate dynamics of fan cultural identity through the lens of a Chinese esports phenomenon, exemplified by a Chinese representative esports team called Team AG. This research constructed a medium-sized corpus from representative comments on Weibo, a prominent social media platform in China. Utilising natural language processing, statistical methods, and sociolinguistic theories, the data were analysed across three domains: cognitive, emotional, and symbolic. By doing so, this paper identifies patterns of fan behaviour and examines how these contribute to depersonalisation, reinforce an individual’s self-categorisation within this specific fan group, and ultimately foster a unique culture identity for fans. This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of eSports fandom by highlighting the equal importance and interaction of cognitive, emotional, and symbolic domains in fan identity formation, offering a new framework for examining fan cultures

Aesthetics · Art · Sociology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Digital Games and Media · Media, Gender, and Advertising