This article contributes to the literature on sport, new media and identity by investigating the case of a club (Rosenborg) located outside the dominating football leagues, but still very much affected by migration and other global flow. The study introduces participatory media as sources for information on fan discourses on identity, identification, migration, "us", "them" and community. Fans of Rosenborg reacted and adapted to global flows of players by questioning borders of identity and community, inviting in new members and reconstructing imagined communities, facilitating de-ethnicization of the local community. Many of the postings at Web forums and blogs for fans are humorous and witty, while the discussion investigated at Web editions of newspapers grew ugly when people started to call each other names. There is a sense of mutual respect on Web pages run by fans themselves which is often loudly missing when similar themes are discussed by fans online elsewhere. Contents Introduction Sport, media, community and identity Methodology Results: Five discourses Discussing identity on kjernen.no Conclusions When former head coach, Nils Arne Eggen, approached Ntuthuko Macbeth-Mao Sibaya after a convincing performance when he was on trial with Rosenborg, he could have said something like: "We will hire you". Or he could have asked: "Will you play for us?" But instead he chose to invite the young player to become a member of the local community represented by the club, inviting him to "become a 'trønder'" (a person from this region of Norway). For this generation of coaches at Rosenborg, the club is not only a football club but also an important mechanism for constructing a local community. There is a mutual bond of responsibility between club and community (K.T. Eggen, 2007; N.A. Eggen and Nyrønning, 2003). Rosenborg experienced a period of profound change in the years around and after 1999 (Svardal and Mølsknes, 2007). Founded by players in a traditionally working class neighbourhood of Trondheim, during the 1960s and 1970s, Rosenborg, the most successful team in Trondheim, also became the dominating team in the region of Trøndelag. Under the leadership of coach Nils Arne Eggen, the club went on to win 15 national championships after 1990. This meant that the club represented Norway in the Champions League at a time when incomes in football were growing dramatically because of increased earnings from television and commercials, and Rosenborg became the richest and the dominating club in Norway. The club could now field a team consisting of a mix of African, Latin American and Swedish, Danish and Norwegian players. The changing face of the Rosenborg team had repercussions for communication among fans on blogs and forums. The development represented a challenge to traditional ways to imagine and communicate identity and belonging to a community and among fans. This investigation deals with the process of constructingor re-constructingthe imagined community of supporters of Rosenborg Ballklubb (RBK) and more specif...
