Muslim Girlhood, Skam Fandom, and DIY Citizenship

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-62
Author(s):  
Briony Hannell
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Minority Youth ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Girlhood Studies ◽  
Popular Representations ◽  
Poststructural Analysis ◽  
Muslim Girls

While fandom is a dominant girlhood trope, few accounts examine faith in the context of girls’ fandom. Addressing this gap, using a feminist poststructural analysis, I draw on interviews and participant observation to locate fan communities as a space in which Muslim girls can enact citizenship. Combining youth cultural studies, girlhood studies, and fan studies, I explore how Muslim fangirls of the Norwegian teen web-drama Skam (2015–2017) draw on their desire for recognition and their creativity as cultural producers to engage in participatory storytelling that challenges popular representations of Muslim girls. This process enables the production of communities rooted in shared interests, experiences, and identities. I suggest that fandom should be recognized for its capacity to generate new meanings of citizenship for minority youth.

Play moods across the life course in SKAM fandom

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Line Nybro Petersen ◽  
Vilde Schanke Sundet
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Target Audience ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Fan Practices ◽  
The Life Course

This article considers fans’ playful digital practices and focuses on the play moods that are co-constructed in online fan communities. We analyse how these play moods are negotiated across the life course for participating fans. Play moods are closely tied to the playful modes of fan practices, and by gaining a greater understanding of the moods that fans engage in at different stages of their life course we gain new insights into fan play as it relates to issues of age-related norms in fan communities. Specifically, this article analyses the Norwegian teenage streaming drama SKAM (Shame) (NRK, 2015‐17), which was produced for a target audience of 16-year-old Norwegian girls but ended up capturing the hearts of people of all ages across Scandinavia and internationally. This study is based on interviews with 43 Scandinavian fans aged between 13 and 70. The participants were all active on social media (Facebook, Instagram, the show’s blog, etc.) while the show was on the air and the interviews offers insights into issues of age-appropriateness as it relates to fan practices. As such, fans ‘police’ both themselves and each other based on perceptions of age, while also engaging in practices that are by nature playful and may be considered subjectively and culturally ‘youthful’ or ‘childish’. The article combines theory of play and fan studies with a focus on the life course and cultural gerontology in order to highlight these tendencies in the SKAM fandom.

scholarly journals The ex-fan's place in fan studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Kies
Keyword(s):  
Fan Studies ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Fan Communities

In an examination of how fans end their relationships with the objects of their fandom and related fan communities, I use my own experiences with the television series Supernatural (WB/CW, 2005–) to demonstrate how breaking up with a fandom is emotionally and technologically complicated. Becoming an ex-fan is different from antifandom and is worthy of greater investigation in fan studies.

scholarly journals Fans of Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Ryan Rico
Keyword(s):  
Media Violence ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Social Relevance ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
Columbine High School ◽  
Breeding Grounds ◽  
School Shooters ◽  
Online Fans ◽  
Mainstream Culture

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in what was then the deadliest school shooting in American history. Despite causing a national panic and serving as a flash point for larger narratives on bullying, gun control, and media violence, both boys have gained active online fans. These fandoms dedicated to the Columbine shooters are widely referred to as dark examples of Internet communities, while the fans are also frequently denigrated as unstable and violent outcasts. Such dark online fandoms are yet to permeate mainstream culture or to challenge the preexisting perception of these communities as breeding grounds for the next wave of school shooters. While studies have covered the types of fans and their myriad interests, the field remains focused on more conventional examples of fan communities. In an effort to challenge and expand the object of focus when we study fandom, this qualitative study examines Columbine fans and their activity in order to understand the dominant motives they appear to have for engaging with and around such controversial figures and then concludes by exploring how this community might help us reflect more broadly on our concept of fandom. Redeeming these fans as part of diverse and complex communities of social relevance can demonstrate how even a dark fandom such as that of these Columbine shooters provides valuable cultural insights and benefits the field of fan studies.

scholarly journals Meanings attributed to healthy eating by consumers of a street market

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasilaine Andrade PASSOS ◽  
Maria do Carmo Soares de FREITAS ◽  
Ligia Amparo da Silva SANTOS ◽  
Micheli Dantas SOARES
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Healthy Eating ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Fruits And Vegetables ◽  
Eating Habits ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
The Body ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Safe Food

ABSTRACT Objective: To investigate the meanings attributed to healthy eating by consumers of a street market in the region called Recôncavo da Bahia, Bahia, Brazil. Methods: Phenomenology-based ethnography to understand the meanings attributed by those consumers. Information was collected through participant observation documented in a field diary and in-depth interviews. Interviews were conducted with seven people who were visitors and/or worked at the street market. In the analytical process, the following significant concepts related to healthy eating were systematized: "fruits and vegetables represent healthy eating"; "safe food: it has to be clean", and "foods that do the body good". Results: The meanings attributed to healthy eating are revisited daily and are related to individuals' life experiences; new meanings derive from intersubjective constructions. Based on the interviews, it was observed that re-signification was a constant process, marked by events that influence the respondents to change their eating habits such as diseases, aging, information received by health care professionals, and media reports. Healthy eating was also represented by the hygienic-sanitary quality of foods and the lack of strict control over everyday food choices. Conclusion: We highlight the importance of this discussion in the scientific field and governmental bodies, as well as among health care professionals aiming at a better understanding of the different concepts of healthy eating.

scholarly journals Politicising fandom

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 408-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Dean
Keyword(s):  
Fan Studies ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Consumption Community

This article aims, first, to argue that fandom matters to politics and, second, to offer a theorisation of what I call politicised fandom. The article proceeds through three stages. Part 1 offers a brief mapping of the existing scholarship within the interdisciplinary sub-field of fan studies and alights on a definition of fandom offered by Cornel Sandvoss, before mapping some different understandings of the fandom–politics relation. Here, I argue for an emphasis on the agency and capacity of fan communities to intervene politically. Part 2 then provides an initial theorisation of politicised fandom, highlighting four key elements: productivity and consumption, community, affect and contestation. Part 3 offers some snapshots of how this politicised fandom is manifest empirically via the analysis of three similar yet different instances of politicised fandom in UK left politics: Russell Brand, Milifandom and Corbyn-mania.

scholarly journals Textual Poaching, Gamekeeping and the Counter-stereotype

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolf Halse
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Online Discussion ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Discussion Forums ◽  
Online Discussion Forums ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
The Us ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Online Fans

Abstract In the analogue era, fan studies explored localized resistance within fan communities’ cultural practices, examining how this might lead to new understandings of gender, sexuality, and race. However, there has been less work that examines the consequences fans’ cultural practices using digital media have for the cultural politics of ‘poaching’. The current article presents a study of online fans’ perceptions of positively depicted Muslim characters from the Middle East in the television serial, 24. Like the rest of the show’s regular cast, these characters should be in focus for fans in their competing interpretations and evaluations of each episode in online discussion forums. The study comprises a comparison of how two online fan communities, one in the US and one in Norway, perceive counter-stereotypical Muslim characters. An analysis of fans’ readings is carried out, and one central finding is that fans appropriated 24’s counter-stereotype in ways that can be described as reactionary.`

scholarly journals Where program and fantasy meet: Female fans conversing with character bots in Japan

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keiko Nishimura
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Great Pleasure ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
Ethnographic Approach

Character bots are automated programs that post—that is, tweet—characters' lines from popular manga, anime, games, and so on. They post regularly, and in the past few years they have become difficult to ignore, especially in fan communities. Many fans take great pleasure in interacting with favorite characters as bots; rhey also enjoy the communities that spring up around favorite series, characters, and, yes, even bots. Here I adopt an ethnographic approach to analyze the human dimensions of the phenomenon of character bots, based on participant observation among female fans in Japan.

scholarly journals It's not all about the music: Online fan communities and collecting Hard Rock Café pins

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lincoln Geraghty
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Hard Rock ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Fan Culture ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
The World

Previous studies of music fan culture have largely centered on the diverse range of subcultures devoted to particular genres, groups, and stars. Where studies have moved beyond the actual music and examined the fashion, concerts, and collecting ephemera such as vinyl records and posters, they have tended to remain closely allied to notions of subcultural distinction, emphasizing hierarchies of taste. This paper shifts the focus in music fan studies beyond the appreciation of the music and discusses the popular fan practice of collecting souvenir pins produced and sold by the Hard Rock Café (HRC) within a framework of fan tourism. Traveling to and collecting unique pins from locations across the globe creates a fan dialogue that centers on tourism and the collecting practices associated with souvenir consumption. Collectors engage in practices such as blogging, travel writing, and administration that become important indicators of their particular expression of fandom: pin collecting. Membership requires both time and money; recording visits around the world and collecting unique pins from every café builds fans' cultural capital. This indicates an internationalization of popular fandom, with the Internet acting as a connective virtual space between local and national, personal and public physical space. The study of HRC pin collecting and its fan community suggests that HRC enthusiasts are not so because they enjoy rock music or follow any particular artist but due to the physical ephemera that they collect and the places and spaces they visit.

Finding the child fan: A case for studying children in fandom studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyra Hunting
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Media Consumption ◽  
Children's Media ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
Fan Practices ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
As If

As fan studies increasingly explores understudied fan communities this article calls for the inclusion of children as a crucial overlooked group of fans. Drawing upon research that considers fandom throughout the life course, it argues that fandom is an important part of childhood and one that may look different than it does for adult fans. I argue, the extent to which children’s media consumption practices resemble fan practices has obscured the fact that children can be fans. In this article I consider the impediments to considering the fandom of children, the ways in which children may be acting as ‐ if not labelling themselves as ‐ fans, what doing so can offer both fandom studies and children’s media studies and I lay out some suggestions for beginning the process of examining the practices and sites of children’s fandom.

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