Up, up, and away! The power and potential of fan activism (original) (raw)
Related papers
2012
Fan activism, forms of civic engagement and political participation growing out of experiences of fandom, is a powerful mode of mobilization, particularly for young people. Building on 40 interviews with members of two organizations representing different configurations of fan activism, this article discusses three emerging elements that are key to the experience of membership in such groups. We suggest that the strength of fan activist groups builds on successfully combining these elements: two that are common to fandom, shared media experiences and a sense of community, and one that is traditionally ascribed to volunteerism and activism, the wish to help.
Social networking websites have become important tools for most Internet-users, but there aren’t many who would consider themselves members of online communities, communities whose connections and interactions take place almost exclusively through online communication. One of the most prevalent online communities is media fandoms, communities of enthusiastic fans that share an interest in a show, movie, or other media. Social activist movements have also found a place online. This dissertation addresses the fusion of online Fandom and social activism, investigating what these two seemingly distinct groups have in common and how online media-rich communities become turned towards effective activism. To set the stage, I address online sociality and virtual community, the nature of Fandom as an online subculture, and social activism as it has developed in the context of Internet technologies. The aim of this dissertation is to explore fan activism as a convergence of active Fandom communities and social activist movements over online networks. I found that fan activism is an effective fusion of these seemingly distinct groups because both Fandom and social activism rely on online horizontal networking facilitated by sharing information to form decentralized imagined communities of active and enthusiastic members. Fan activism is therefore a powerful force for social change.
Movement Societies and Digital Protest: Fan Activism and Other Nonpolitical Protest Online
Sociological Theory, 2009
Sociologists of culture studying “fan activism” have noted an apparent increase in its volume, which they attribute to the growing use of the Internet to register fan claims. However, scholars have yet to measure the extent of contemporary fan activism, account for why fan discontent has been expressed through protest, or precisely specify the role of the Internet in this expansion. We argue that these questions can be addressed by drawing on a growing body of work by social movement scholars on “movement societies,” and more particularly on a nascent thread of this approach we develop that theorizes the appropriation of protest practices for causes outside the purview of traditional social movements. Theorizing that the Internet, as a new media, is positioned to accelerate the diffusion of protest practices, we develop and test hypotheses about the use of movement practices for fan activism and other nonpolitical claims online using data on claims made in quasi-random samples of on...
Introduction: Fans and Fan Studies in Transcultural Context
Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 2015
In the year since the second Fan Studies Network Conference in September 2014, from which the essays in this special section of Participations have been curated, scholarly attention to transcultural fandoms and fan studies has proliferated in the pages of dedicated fan studies journal issues (Kustriz,
Transcultural Fan Studies as Methodology
A Fan Studies Primer, 2021
In their introduction to the 2007 anthology Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, editors Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington offer a timeline of fan studies scholarship that divides it into three distinct if overlapping, waves: the "fandom is beautiful" first wave centered on the (progressive) political and social possibilities of Englishlanguage transformative fan works and associated communities; the corrective second wave and its focus on the hegemonic cultural, social, and economic contexts in which media fandoms emerge and flourish; and the present-day third wave, with its emphasis on the affect-driven relationship between fan and object and the embeddedness of fannish desires and practices in our social and cultural lives. In outlining this trajectory, the editors are careful to note that "we remain conscious of the need to avoid the teleological trap of constructing a single master narrative of fan research." 1 Yet at the level of pedagogy-as a cursory examination of fan studies syllabi suggests 2-we continue to struggle to conceptualize media fandom and fan studies outside precisely the kind of linear master narrative they describe. The effect is a self-sustaining ecosystem that is, to belabor the metaphor, often inhospitable to work originating outside this intellectual tradition, resulting in its segregation into themed lessons and anthology sections: transnational fandoms, race and fandom, and so on. Given not only the ever-intensifying temporal and spatial convergence of media-its production, distribution, and consumption-but especially the cultural baggage fans (and fan scholars) bring to that convergent space, I contend that fan studies's de facto master narrative has become insufficient (if not obsolete) to the study of fandoms and fan cultures in the present
Productive Fandom, 2018
Download the full open-access version of my book Productive Fandom in the link (at the Oapen portal, funded by NWO). To dismantle negative stereotypes of fans, this book offers a media ethnography of the digital culture, conventions, and urban spaces associated with fandoms, arguing that fandom is an area of productive, creative, and subversive value. By examining the fandoms of Sherlock, Glee, Firefly, and other popular television-based franchises, the author appeals to fans and scholars alike in her empirically grounded methodology and insightful analysis of production hierarchies, gender, sexuality, play, and affect.