Title

Sticky Identity: The Panters' Rawr in Nea Smyrni

Creator

Tsoumas, Vasileios

Abstract

This research paper focuses on the football fan stickers in the city of Nea Smyrni and more specifically, those produced by the “Panthers”, the organized football fans of Panionios. This exploratory approach highlights how these seemingly miscellaneous objects function as a lens to understanding the Panther shared identity, and how its various aspects, such as territoriality, militancy, history, alliances, and political views, are symbolically communicated. Methodologically, the study adopts an exploratory qualitative analysis based on flânerie for the collection and spatial analysis of the sticker grid within the city, in addition to visual analysis at the level of individual stickers to examine their symbolic content. To better comprehend organized fan identity, the analysis draws selectively on theoretical concepts from social psychology, sociology and anthropology, establishing an interdisciplinary perspective through which fan stickers are examined as media of identity communication. Rather than generalizing beyond Nea Smyrni or testing individual theories, this paper addresses a gap in literature by examining stickers both as singular symbolic objects and as elements of a broader urban visual collage, an approach that provides deeper insight into the multiple roles of the sticker within the shared identity and practices of the Panthers.

Keywords

identity

football fandom

stickers

Subject

interdisciplinary

Date Available

May 28, 2026

Type

PowerPoint Presentation

Course

HEL 2602 Honors Thesis II

Course Offering Term

Fall semester 2025

Instructor

Giannakopoulou, Georgia

Session

Honors Creative Projects

Location

Student Lounge

Event

Year 2026 | 10th Annual Student Research and Creative Arts Symposium