The Futurians, Gamergate, and Fandom

From the science fiction fan clubs of the 1930s to the modern gamers, devoted fans have found one another and formed groups bonded over their shared interest. As groups formed, social identities began to emerge, distinguishing ingroups and outgroups. Social identity theory helps to explain the formation of groups as well as inevitable competition over resources and power. As technology became more sophisticated, fans were able to communicate with greater ease facilitating ingroup social identification. The inherent properties of video games reinforce both the cooperation among ingroup members as well as the rivalry with outgroups. Understanding the mechanisms within video games as well as the affordances of CMC and social media help to explain the group dynamics that support the Gamergate social identity.

The Futurians, Gamergate, and Fandom

From the science fiction fan clubs of the 1930s to the modern gamers, devoted fans have found one another and formed groups bonded over their shared interest. As groups formed, social identities began to emerge, distinguishing ingroups and outgroups. Social identity theory helps to explain the formation of groups as well as inevitable competition over resources and power. As technology became more sophisticated, fans were able to communicate with greater ease facilitating ingroup social identification. The inherent properties of video games reinforce both the cooperation among ingroup members as well as the rivalry with outgroups. Understanding the mechanisms within video games as well as the affordances of CMC and social media help to explain the group dynamics that support the Gamergate social identity.

Fandom as an Art Form

This chapter examines the practice of fandom as an art form in and of itself, exploring the example of fan clubs and zines by artists in the international mail art scene (known as the Eternal Network) in the 1970s. Fandom as an artistic practice differs from fan art produced in admiration of celebrities. Instead, what this chapter argues is that the artists of the Eternal Network engaged in fan activities. The first part of the chapter explores the network and compares several of their practices to fan behavior, including the desire for social connectivity, cultivation of insiders, and semiotic productivity. The second part delves into fan clubs and their publications as representational devices, and considers the role of affective behavior, including humor and the power of naming, to create group identity. The last section examines fandom as a form to critique social, political, and economic systems, analyzing a publicly circulated mock presidential campaign. The chapter concludes by suggesting that artists deploy fandom as a strategy to imagine the worlds they want to inhabit.

Image Deities and Devotees

Maruthar Gopalan Ramachandran (popularly known as MGR) was the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu between 1977 and 1987. But before his famous tenure as a politician began, MGR had already cemented himself in the Tamil imagination through decades of playing the hero-saviour in blockbuster Tamil films, a suite of movies still re-watched with veneration today. Half a century prior to the pervasive social media environment we inhabit today, that turns on an equivalence between image and self, figures like MGR consciously used their star status to convert a fan following into a voter base. In this conversation, Balaji Maheshwar and Karthik Subramanian, two photographers from Tamil Nadu who are both making work exploring MGR’s legacy, open up questions around image worship, image deities and devotees, and the role of cinema in shaping our most intimate memories. Keywords: Maruthar Gopalan Ramachandran, Jayaram Jayalalitha, Tamil cinema, image worship, MGR fan clubs

Fan Culture and Masculinity: Identity Construction of Persib Supporters

Linking the local practices that are used to build an apparently shared identity and generate personal and group attachment towards ʽPersibʼ, a local football club in West Java Indonesia, we examine ʽbobotohʼ that use football and football fan clubs as means of creating an in-group–out-group identity. We examine concepts of fandom, identity construction and masculinity to demonstrate how the bias becomes a unifying element that can provoke conflicts. We argue that ʽbobotohʼ and ʽPersibʼ become one of the most central sites of masculine performance in West Java and socialize Sundanese boys into values, attitudes, and skills valorised as masculine to help facilitate their acceptance into social groups.

Teenage Agency and Popular Music Reception in World War II-Era Frank Sinatra Fan Clubs

During World War II, American media consistently portrayed the typical young female Frank Sinatra fan as a disinterested citizen who failed to devote adequate attention to the war effort and harbored an inappropriate obsession with the pop idol. What contemporaneous critics and current scholars have generally not acknowledged, however, was how Sinatra fandom allowed thousands of American teenage girls to navigate their stressful, confusing, and often contradictory wartime realities with purpose and enthusiasm. This article examines wartime Frank Sinatra fan clubs through the lens of fan club newsletters and correspondences, which were authored, printed, and distributed entirely by the primarily teenage female members of these clubs. In contrast to professionally published press coverage and criticism, these fan-made texts provide unprecedented insight into how this specific fan community used their adoration of Sinatra as a base to explore international relationships, develop professional skills, and engage in personal expression amidst heightened feelings of nationalism and conflicting expectations regarding American gender roles.

Participatory Boundaries

How do musicians deal with audiences who are organized into gift cultures online? This chapter explores the tensions they experience between wanting and needing to control audiences and recognizing music’s value as a participatory experience. It identifies three strategies of control (territorializing through fan clubs and contests, invoking intellectual property law, and datafying with big data) and two strategies of participation (accepting autonomy and letting them help through fan labor practices like fan funding and promotion). It identifies the challenges with both control and participation, arguing that in a market context, musicians cannot give themselves over fully to participation.

From Communist Fan Clubs to Professional Hooligans: A History of Polish Fandom as a Social Process

The main aim of this article is to present the history of Polish football fandom as a social process which has coincided with the processes of transformation of Polish society over the last few decades. The fan movement in Poland dates back to the early 1970s when the communist authorities attempted to channel the activity of supporters. The 1980s, however, brought the development of a spontaneous movement with strong accents of hooliganism. The post-1989 transformation led to an economic and social crisis, with the rule of anarchy in football stadiums. Along with the formation of the democratic order, the fan movement evolved into different sections focused on particular aspects of activity. The paper is also devoted to the ideological dimension of fan culture, related to the conflict with the government at the turn of the 2010s.