Return of Fandom in the Digital Age With the Rise of Social Media

In the digital age, the rise of social media has enabled the fan culture transitioning from “static” consumption to “dynamic” interaction. This is not only a result of the advancement of ICTs, but also a shift in digital communication driven by participatory culture. This chapter explores why social media in digital age have such a profound impact upon fandom. In particular, what is new with these fan communities that social media has done so much to enable. There is a blurring in the lines between fandom producers and consumers in the participatory fandom. Given the new forms of cultural production, fan culture has been enabled by social media and is more powerful than it was ever before. Finally, how the changing relationships between fans and producers have redefined the fandom economy.

The Place of Chinese Doramas in the Russian Socio-Cultural Landscape

The increasing interest of people around the world towards the popular cultures of China, Korea and Japan leads researchers to question how these countries influence the socio-cultural spaces of other countries through the export of their mass culture products. This study focuses on the analysis of Chinese doramas in the Russian sociocultural space. The increasing number of online fan communities, the activity of translators and dubbers of Chinese TV series, and the widespread use of the Internet in Russia make Chinese dramas easily accessible to a wide audience. Using quantitative methods, the author of the study came to the conclusion that people in Russia are very interested in Asian cultures, and audiences of Asian TV series are growing at a tremendous rate every year. While Korean dramas remain the most popular in Russia, Chinese serials have great competitive potential against their Korean and Japanese counterparts. This article may be useful to all researchers of mass and popular culture and television series.

Playing platformized language games: Social media logic and the mutation of participatory cultures in Chinese online fandom

This study discusses the shifting dynamics of fan participatory cultures on social media platforms by introducing the concept of “platformized language games.” We conceive of a fan community as a “speech community” and propose that the language and discourses of fan participatory cultures are technological practices that only make sense in use and interactions as “games” on social media platform. Based on an ethnography of communication on fan communities on Weibo, we analyze the technological-communicative acts of fan speech communities, including the platformized setting, participants, topics, norms, and key purposes. We argue that the social media logic (programmability, connectivity, popularity, and datafication) articulates with fans’ language games, thus shifting the “form of life” of celebrity fans on social media. Empirically, fan participatory cultures continue to mutate in China, as fan communities create idiosyncratic platformized language games based on the selective appropriation of the social media logics of connectivity and data-driven metrics.

Fan Culture with Chinese Characteristics: Participatory Engagement in the Web 2.0 Era

<p>This thesis is centred on participatory fan culture in Chinese social media. It investigates how fans gather through social networks, how they produce creative work, and how they use different platforms to circulate their favourite media and fannish texts. By constructing, reshaping and spreading meanings through participatory practices, fans create their own cultures and gradually develop their own discourses. My theoretical approach can be classified as cultural discourse analysis (Carbaugh,2007; Scollo,2011), and I adopted the snowball sampling method to find interviewees and fan communities in which I have conducted observation to collect data for my analysis. On the basis of John Fiske’s concept of “textual productivity” (1992) and Henry Jenkins’s notions of “media convergence” (2006a) and “spreadability” (2013), the thesis is based on a platform analysis as well as two case studies about the Chinese reality TV show Where Are We Going, Dad?and BBC’s crime drama Sherlock. The platform analysis examines four platforms that Chinese social media fans use most frequently: Weibo, WeChat, Tieba and Bilibili. Through the analysis of the sociocultural contexts, user interfaces and primary features of these four platforms, it became clear that the platforms emphasise differentiated content (e.g. microblogging-style posts, instant text/voice messages, continuous updating posts, video clips and flying comments), and that each platform has its own search and recommendation services to guide users to their target content. By comparing five elements of social media including public posts, direct messaging, group chatting, search tools and information recommendation (Yoder and Stutzman, 2011), the analysis offers insight into the different affordances provided by these four platforms and how Chinese fans employ the platforms to develop fan culture. The two case studies investigate the formation, manifestation and influence of fan cultures on three levels: fan-platform interaction, fannish texts and fan identity. Analysing data collected from interviews and online observation in the Weibo-based fan chat group 刘诺一全球后援会1群(Liu Nuoyi Quanqiu Houyuanhui 1 Qun; “Liu Nuoyi’s Global Fan Community, Group 1”) and the Tieba-based forum爸爸去哪儿康诺吧(Babaqunaer Kang Nuo Ba; “Kangkang and Nuoyi of Where Are We Going, Dad?Forum”), the case study of Where Are We Going, Dad?demonstrates that the Web 2.0 services that fans use maintain an open structure, which attracts fans to contribute new layers of meaning and value. Discussing the fan-platform interaction, fannish texts and fan identities, the case study of Chinese Sherlockfandom demonstrates that Chinese online fans rely on textual productivity to establish their fan identities, and Chinese social media to facilitate the production and spread of fan translation, which not only bridges the language and cultural gap between the Sherlocktexts (the BBC episodes and the original novel) and Chinese fandom, but also connects different types of Sherlockfans online. I also compare the two cases from the perspective of narrative structure by drawing upon Jason Mittell’s “centrifugal and centripetal complex” model (2015) and argue that the different narrative structures lead a different sense of self-recognition for fans, gender dynamics, power differences in fan communities, and that they shape fans’ cultural citizenship.</p>

Fan Culture with Chinese Characteristics: Participatory Engagement in the Web 2.0 Era

<p>This thesis is centred on participatory fan culture in Chinese social media. It investigates how fans gather through social networks, how they produce creative work, and how they use different platforms to circulate their favourite media and fannish texts. By constructing, reshaping and spreading meanings through participatory practices, fans create their own cultures and gradually develop their own discourses. My theoretical approach can be classified as cultural discourse analysis (Carbaugh,2007; Scollo,2011), and I adopted the snowball sampling method to find interviewees and fan communities in which I have conducted observation to collect data for my analysis. On the basis of John Fiske’s concept of “textual productivity” (1992) and Henry Jenkins’s notions of “media convergence” (2006a) and “spreadability” (2013), the thesis is based on a platform analysis as well as two case studies about the Chinese reality TV show Where Are We Going, Dad?and BBC’s crime drama Sherlock. The platform analysis examines four platforms that Chinese social media fans use most frequently: Weibo, WeChat, Tieba and Bilibili. Through the analysis of the sociocultural contexts, user interfaces and primary features of these four platforms, it became clear that the platforms emphasise differentiated content (e.g. microblogging-style posts, instant text/voice messages, continuous updating posts, video clips and flying comments), and that each platform has its own search and recommendation services to guide users to their target content. By comparing five elements of social media including public posts, direct messaging, group chatting, search tools and information recommendation (Yoder and Stutzman, 2011), the analysis offers insight into the different affordances provided by these four platforms and how Chinese fans employ the platforms to develop fan culture. The two case studies investigate the formation, manifestation and influence of fan cultures on three levels: fan-platform interaction, fannish texts and fan identity. Analysing data collected from interviews and online observation in the Weibo-based fan chat group 刘诺一全球后援会1群(Liu Nuoyi Quanqiu Houyuanhui 1 Qun; “Liu Nuoyi’s Global Fan Community, Group 1”) and the Tieba-based forum爸爸去哪儿康诺吧(Babaqunaer Kang Nuo Ba; “Kangkang and Nuoyi of Where Are We Going, Dad?Forum”), the case study of Where Are We Going, Dad?demonstrates that the Web 2.0 services that fans use maintain an open structure, which attracts fans to contribute new layers of meaning and value. Discussing the fan-platform interaction, fannish texts and fan identities, the case study of Chinese Sherlockfandom demonstrates that Chinese online fans rely on textual productivity to establish their fan identities, and Chinese social media to facilitate the production and spread of fan translation, which not only bridges the language and cultural gap between the Sherlocktexts (the BBC episodes and the original novel) and Chinese fandom, but also connects different types of Sherlockfans online. I also compare the two cases from the perspective of narrative structure by drawing upon Jason Mittell’s “centrifugal and centripetal complex” model (2015) and argue that the different narrative structures lead a different sense of self-recognition for fans, gender dynamics, power differences in fan communities, and that they shape fans’ cultural citizenship.</p>

Distributing Whiteness: Please Like Me and Global Television Circulation

This essay examines the formal and informal distribution of Australian dramedy Please Like Me via the now-defunct American digital cable channel Pivot and via fan communities on Tumblr. I argue that structural whiteness operates as an invisible engine at the heart of Please Like Me’s distribution. My analysis unpacks how an unexamined narrative of white privilege forms the backbone of Please Like Me’s diegesis, fandom’s investment in circulating the show, and Pivot’s alignment of the show with its supposedly socially conscious brand. Examining trade press, promotional material, and fan discourse, I demonstrate how structural whiteness functions as point of intersection between industry and fan-driven distribution.

Acafan methodologies and giving back to the fan community

In fan studies, researchers are encouraged to share their research with the fan communities they study, with some even suggesting that such a practice can be a way to ethically give back to the community. During a multiyear study of adult fans of Lego, several different ways to share research with the fan community were trialed and evaluated for their relative strengths. Community responses to these projects determined that both academic and creative practices for sharing research can successfully engage the community. Creative practice can capture the spirit of giving by making a contribution to the community by using its own modes of community participation.

Women's fan writing and transformative works in eleventh-century Japan

This exploration of the literary cultures of eleventh-century Japan analyzes the ways in which the writing and reading practices of the period resemble those of modern transformative fan communities. Studying the defining fictional text of this era, The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 1021), within the framework of fan studies demonstrates how existing so-called canonical material was transformed into a vehicle for female-centric reimaginings of dominant narratives. The circumstances of the work's authorship and its initial reception are examined via the author's own diary and The Sarashina Diary (ca. 1059), a memoir written by an early reader of the Genji, providing insight into both individual fan identity and the extensive female-led fan communities of the period.

Tumblr’s Xkit Guy, social media modding, and code as resistance

The platformalization of the internet means that fan communities must make homes in spaces that they do not own. Tumblr has lately been the chosen home for many online fandoms because of its affordances for anonymity and lack of censorship. However, the profit motives of Tumblr's owners, especially after Yahoo purchased the site in 2013, are frequently at odds with the affordances that nourish fan communities. Fans on Tumblr are aware of their precarious position, where a few keystrokes by a developer could endanger an affordance that their communities depend on. An examination of the relationship between Tumblr users and Tumblr staff provides a case study of how fan communities push back against platform owners. The Tumblr Xkit Extension, a fan-made browser extension maintained by the volunteer labor of the Xkit Guy, is used to illustrate that the Tumblr community acts as a fandom of a social media site. This lets us understand the Xkit Browser extension as a resistant fan work written in the medium of code. Like video game modding, social media modding is a transformative work that permits fans to oppose the platform's code as law—but one that could also constitute a form of exploited labor.

Fans of Q: The Stakes of QAnon’s Functioning as Political Fandom

Affective activation, and the community engagement it fosters, is the driving mechanism of all fandoms, irrespective of the specific “objects of affection” around which they coalesce. These centralized objects of affection may hail from popular culture, such as in the form of sports teams, television shows, cartoon characters, or musicians. As fan scholars have increasingly recognized, fandoms can also emerge around profit-driven brands, specific politicians, and social movements. Much has been said regarding the dangers of the online conspiracy theory QAnon. However, these warnings have tended to overemphasize the rapidly evolving, amorphous beliefs of its adherents, rather than recognize the affective activation propelling the movement. Through its analysis of affect-driven communities, the field of fan studies can be productively applied to investigate the online discursive activities of QAnon community members. Framing QAnon as a fandom elucidates the functions through which the conspiracy theory radicalizes “normies” by exploiting the types of fan activities already well-established in mainstream fan communities. Underscoring the transferability of fan studies concepts to political movements and communities, this exploration outlines the societal stakes of QAnon’s manipulation and normalization of the toxic emotions cohering its adherents into a fanatic community.