Breaking the Fourth Wall: Dynamics of Fan Fiction Production (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Fan Dance: How Privacy Thrives in an Age of Hyper-‐Publicity
2010
The history of our digitally-‐connected present is already being written: writers, within and outside of the academy, have constructed a modern mythology about how social media and other digital technologies are eroding our once-‐valued privacy and creating a new cultural movement of mass publicity in its stead. We believe, however, that this narrative of digital mass exhibitionism is a fiction that rests on an incorrect assumption that privacy and publicity are zero-‐sum.
Designing for Relationship: Fan fiction Sites on the Internet
associate professor Aalborg University How can design reinforce a culture of acknowledgment and support? This article looks into the world of fan fiction as it is found on two different web sites. With the ethics of Løgstrup as its fulcrum, the article tries to show how fan fiction sites through their design nurses the writers and readers, creating a culture, which only can be described as special with regard to the ethical conduct of its participants. Further narrowing the field, this article uses the British television series "Sherlock" as its case. In summer 2010 BBC broadcasts the first episode of the new television series "Sherlock". The series is a modernisation of the original stories, bringing Sherlock Holmes into the modern age of mobile phones, websites, blogging, and texting. It revolves mainly around the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson, which is a new approach as well as the modernisation. It consists of two seasons with three episodes each so far, each episode having the duration of 90 minutes. The second season was broadcasted in January 2012 on BBC. A third season is currently being filmed (spring 2013). Despite having relatively few episodes when compared to the on--going American television series, which deals with similar content: criminal stories being solved by an eccentric sleuth, "Sherlock" has had a remarkable impact on social media. Thus it is the sixth highest--ranking fan fiction fandom on fanfiction.net, which in turn is the largest media platform in the field of fan fiction. "Sherlock" gains between 25 and 50 new stories daily. In comparison the US series "CSI" gains less than 10 stories each day. Fan fiction as a genre is special in more than one way:it is written by women for women. Another characteristic about the work, is that it is typically "in progress", meaning it is being developed while already being read and commented on by the readers; the stories evolve around establishing a relationship, including sex, between two or more characters of the original show/movie/book/comic/game. The readers and writers are highly supportive of each other, thus flaming, hating, or trolling is extremely rare and frowned upon. With the above in mind, the hypothesis examined here is that the culture of fan fiction entails an ethical behaviour, which helps nurturing the so--called spontaneous life manifestations as described by Løgstrup. The question being how the design of a fan fiction platform can motivate or restrict such behaviour, examined by examples from the two largest fan fiction sites on the Internet, e.g. fanfiction.net (ffnet) and archiveofourown.org (AO3). The article contributes to the field of social media, creative writing, and Løgstrup's ethics of the Other.
The distinction between the public and the private runs, in most known societies, from the most personal sense of shame through to the division of the entire social universe into distinct public and private spheres of activity and public and private economic sectors. The line between public and private is drawn, as we know, very differently in different cultures and is in constant flux in our own. At its most fundamental the distinction is grounded in the presentation of the body and the sense of shame that we learn to feel, in most but not all cultures, about our genitalia and our bodily functions: about those conflicted points of passage between the inside and the outside of the body. Clothing, which works as 'a language of publicity, folding the body in what is felt as the body's own privacy', 2 at once marks and conceals the private space of the body, overlaying on it the parallel categories of the secret and the open. The categories of the private and the public, writes Michael Warner, 'can seem quasi-natural, visceral, fraught with perils of abjection and degradation or, alternatively, of cleanliness and self-mastery. They are the very scene of selfhood and scarcely distinguishable from the experience of gender and sexuality'. 3 At the same time the categories mark a set of social boundaries governing our relations with others, distinguishing the space of the bedroom from that of the agora or the temple or the classroom, and then by extension that of everyday sociability from the interactions with strangers that constitute the political or the commercial domains. Yet every private space is in another sense or at another level a public space: I can do a private deal or engage in private prayer in a public place; I can send a video image of my naked body from my bedroom to YouTube (and of course the 'privacy of the bedroom', like
Self-Censorship and Self-Promotion: How Social Media Shapes Fiction
IIS Journal of Arts, 2024
Self-censorship and self-promotion can be seen as the two parallel axes of performance of identity in the novels dealing with the cyberworld. "Cyberbehaviour" studies the shaping of our interpersonal and intrapersonal communication on the internet. At the same time, the two axes of identity performance share a complementary relationship. This paper is an attempt to study the effects of such identity performance on the narrator. The study explores the complexities of self-censorship and self-promotion as experienced by narrators in different contexts through an analysis of selected novels: Follow Me Back by A.V. Geiger and Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher etc. The "chilling effect" deals with how the narrators in these texts are silenced and stifled in their ability to speak freely owing to a fear of facing an adverse audience. They struggle with introspection and mask their genuine feelings. Self-censorship on the part of the narrators serves as a strategy for survival, security, and social acceptance. This paper aims to examine the psychological, social, and political aspects of self-censorship by delving into these narratives. Fear of retribution, acceptability, and the necessity of navigating inside systems of invisible rules of the internet are some of the motivations explored for the narrators' self-censorship. How the narrators' self-censorship impacts their agency, relationships, and sense of identity is revealed through this approach. The potential societal effects of self-censorship, such as the loss of truth, the falsification of history, and the stifling of individual agency, are also examined. The paper also aims to study self-promotion as an act of attention-seeking behaviour in terms of tactical ignoring, narcissism and validation seeking.
Ethics in Fan Studies (from Booth (ed) (2018) A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies, Wiley)
A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies, 2018
In this chapter, I explore a range of issues relating to ethical practice in fan studies. I highlight some of the core areas for fan studies scholars to consider when embarking upon research and offer some potential approaches that have been adopted by different researchers. I draw on existing work on ethics in fan studies (e.g. Busse and Hellekson 2012; Freund and Fielding 2013; Whiteman 2012); the accounts of academics whose work has dealt with sensitive or 'controversial' material; the guidelines and policies established by research networks and academic and professional institutions; and my own experiences both as an academic researcher and as a member of my faculty's ethics committee (which approves research across a range of disciplines in the arts, engineering, maths and computing). I also discuss some of the ethical challenges researchers may encounter through a range of methodological approaches and contexts and at different stages of the research process. Whilst it is not possible within the confines of this chapter to discuss the intricacies of each potential research method within fan studies, we cannot entirely separate 'ethics' from 'methods'. Part of the process of conducting ethical research involves adopting the most appropriate research method for our particular project and respondents. For example, interviews with fans could be seen as giving fans more of a 'voice' than observing and analysing discussions in a forum. Conversely, forum discussions could be seen as more anonymous and less invasive than interviews. The most appropriate methods for our own research will depend on what we wish to discover, who we wish to talk to, what access we have to participants/environments and several other contextual factors. As far as possible, the principles and questions outlined in this chapter pertain to as wide a range of contexts as possible (with the caveat that my own expertise is from a cultural studies, sociology and communications background, therefore may not cover all the eventualities of, say, psychological or
Communication in online fan communities: The ethics of intimate strangers
… : European Journal for the Philosophy of …, 2011
Dan O’Brien gives an excellent analysis of testimonial knowledge transmission in his article ‘Communication Between Friends’ (2009) noting that the reliability of the speaker is a concern in both externalist and internalist theories of knowledge. O’Brien focuses on the belief states of Hearers (H) in cases where the reliability of the Speaker (S) is known via ‘intimate trust’, a special case pertaining to friendships with a track record of reliable or unreliable reports. This article considers the notion of ‘intimate trust’, specifically in the context of online fan communities, in which the amount of time as a member of an online fan community and the extent of one’s posting history often results in something like ‘intimate trust’ between fans who are, for all other purposes, strangers. In the last two years, Twitter has provided a number of celebrities with a place to update fans and ‘tweet’ back and forth an innumerable number of times in any given day. This accentuates the intimacy to such a level that it becomes a ‘caricature of intimacy’ – the minute-to-minute updates accentuate the illusion that the fan ‘knows’ the celebrity, but the distance and mediation are still carefully maintained. This is an issue with both ethical and epistemological implications for fan-fan and fan-celebrity relationships online, considering ethics of care and ethics of justice, whether fans ‘owe’ celebrities a certain amount of distance and respect, and whether stars owe the fan something in return, either in the sense of reciprocal Kantian duties or Aristotelian moderation.
The Dichotomy of Public/Private in the New Media Space
Changing Societies & Personalities , 2020
Today we exist in a situation in which the new media environment has resulted in paradigm shift in our conception of reality, altering public spaces and communities, as well as functional modes and mechanisms of the private sphere, through the creation of new digitally-intermediated methods of communication. In a mediatised culture, the boundaries between public and private have been fundamentally transformed. Multi-screening has created a new mode of visibility for social cultures and subcultures, which, if it does not exactly abolish the boundary between private and public, at least allows us to rethink this dichotomy. Having thus established a new mode of visibility, the advent of new media has led to the sphere of private life being absorbed by the public sphere, in the process not only of facilitating discussion, but also in becoming a means by which control is exerted by the state, the market and advertising. In turn, in coming under the domination of specific private or group interests, the public sphere itself has been transformed. While, in coinciding with the interests of other groups, these interests may achieve temporary commonality, they cannot be truly public in the original universal sense. The use of multiple Internet portals in living reality creates a distinct or alternative level of virtual publicity. No longer requiring the usual physical spaces to regulate his or her inclusion in both virtual and traditional public spheres, a user of contemporary gadgets creates a remote and individually-tailored model of public interaction. This process of virtual individualisation indicates the ambivalent nature of the networked public sphere. While, on the one 442 Alla V. Drozdova
Self identity disclosure in TV Fandom
Self-identity disclosure in TV Fandom. Analysing the comments posted by Spanish female fans and community managers Charo Lacalle [CV] [ ORCID] [ GS]. Full Professor. Department of Journalism (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona). Spain-rosario.lacalle@uab.es Deborah Castro [CV] [ ORCID] [ GS]. Post-doctoral Researcher. Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute. Portugal-deborah.castro@m-iti.org Abstract [EN] Introduction. Digital age brings to television fiction viewers a variety of spaces where they can disclose their self-identity and emotions generated by the texts consumed. Methodology. This article analyses 7,849 comments posted by female fans and community managers on 122 sites (forums and social networks) dedicated to the Spanish TV fiction. The 22,301 items generated from the comments analysed explore the emotions aroused by television fiction, such as joy, enthusiasm, sadness, anger, disappointment and nostalgia. Conclusions and discussion. The research confirms the potential of TV fiction to encourage self-reflection on the self-identity of fans. It also identifies forums as the platforms that encourage deeper debates about TV series, despite the popularity of social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Finally, community managers' comments, which focus on the promotion of TV programmes, disregard the strengthening of the feeling of collective identity.