Exploiting Fandom

Exploiting Fandom
Author: Mel Stanfill
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2019-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 160938623X

As more and more fans rush online to share their thoughts on their favorite shows or video games, they might feel like the process of providing feedback is empowering. However, as fan studies scholar Mel Stanfill argues, these industry invitations for fan participation indicate not greater fan power but rather greater fan usefulness. Stanfill’s argument, controversial to some in the field, compares the “domestication of fandom” to the domestication of livestock, contending that, just as livestock are bred bigger and more docile as they are domesticated, so, too, are fans as the entertainment industry seeks to cultivate a fan base that is both more useful and more controllable. By bringing industry studies and fan studies into the conversation, Stanfill looks closely at just who exactly the industry considers “proper fans” in terms of race, gender, age, and sexuality, and interrogates how digital media have influenced consumption, ultimately finding that the invitation to participate is really an incitement to consume in circumscribed, industry-useful ways.

Fandom Is Ugly

Fandom Is Ugly
Author: Mel Stanfill
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2024-08-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1479824968

"In theory, fans are people who love something, so why, across cases from comic books to TV shows to YouTube to politicians to fan fiction, do fans engage in large-scale social media harassment to express their anger, and what does it tell us about media and public culture?"--

Eating Fandom

Eating Fandom
Author: CarrieLynn D. Reinhard
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2020-10-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 100020698X

This book considers the practices and techniques fans utilize to interact with different aspects and elements of food cultures. With attention to food cultures across nations, societies, cultures, and historical periods, the collected essays consider the rituals and values of fan communities as reflections of their food culture, whether in relation to particular foods or types of food, those who produce them, or representations of them. Presenting various theoretical and methodological approaches, the anthology brings together a series of empirical studies to examine the intersection of two fields of cultural practice and will appeal to sociologists, geographers and scholars of cultural studies with interests in fan studies and food cultures.

Fan Sites

Fan Sites
Author: Abby S. Waysdorf
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2021-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1609387937

Theme parks break attendance numbers with the promise of “stepping inside” a film’s world. Pop-up “experiences” are a regular part of promotional cycles. All this is accepted in the contemporary media environment—but why? What is the appeal of film tourism, and what can its rise tell us about contemporary fandom? Fan Sites explores why and how we experience film and television-related places, and what the growth of this practice means for contemporary fandom. Through four case studies—Game of Thrones tourism in Dubrovnik, Croatia and Northern Ireland, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme parks in Orlando, Florida, fandom of The Prisoner in Portmeirion, Wales, and Friends events in the United Kingdom and United States—this book presents a multifaceted look at the ways place and fandom interact today. Fan Sites explores the different relationships that fans build with these places of fandom, from the exploratory knowledge-building of Game of Thrones fans on vacation, the appreciative evaluations of Harry Potter fans at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, to the frequent “homecoming” visits of Prisoner fans, who see Portmeirion as a “safe vault” and the home of their fandom. Including engaging accounts of real fans at each location, Fan Sites addresses what the rise of fan tourism and places of fandom might mean for the future of fandom and its relationship with the media industry.

A Fan Studies Primer

A Fan Studies Primer
Author: Rebecca Williams
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2021-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1609388097

"The discipline of fan studies is famously undisciplined. But that doesn't mean it isn't structured. A Fan Studies Primer: Methods, Research, Ethics will be the first comprehensive primer for classroom use that shows students how to do fan studies, in practical terms. The expansion of fan studies as an academic field and the growing visibility of fandom and fan activities in popular culture have led to more instructors using students' fandom in the classroom, and teaching fan studies as a disciplinary focus. Teaching fandom and fan studies means drawing from a multidisciplinary spectrum of methodologies and foci. Yet, as fan studies itself is often a "moving target," it is imperative to have a volume that approaches the various contributions, methodologies, ethics, and lacunae of the field in a classroom setting. With contributions from many of the biggest names in fan studies, co-editors Paul Booth and Rebecca Williams pull together case studies that demonstrate the wide array of methodologies available to fan studies scholars, such as auto/ethnography, immersion, interviews, online data mining, historiography, and textual analysis. They also probe the ethical questions that are unique to fan studies work and that continue to crop up as the field develops, such as use of online fan content for research, interview methods, consent, and privacy. Both experienced scholars and new students alike will find a useful overview of the diverse research topics in fan studies, whether it's Harry Potter, superheroes, or celebrities, as well as a catalog of conscientious and effective techniques for those who want to join in"--

Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Media Fandom

Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Media Fandom
Author: Dunn, Robert Andrew
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2020-05-08
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 1799833259

Leisure time today is driven by fandom. Once viewed as a social pariah, the fan and associated fandom as a whole has transformed into a popularized social construct researchers are still attempting to understand. Popular culture in the modern era is defined and dominated by the fan, and the basis of fandom has established its own identity across several platforms of media. As some forms of fandom have remained constant, including sports and cinema, other structures of fandom are emerging as the mass following of video games and cosplay are becoming increasingly prominent. Fandom has been established as an important facet in today’s society, and necessary research is required for understanding how fandom is shaping society as a whole. Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Media Fandom is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research that reviews some of the most exigent facets of today’s fandom and highlights understudied cultures of fandom as well as emerging intricacies of established fandom. While promoting topics such as esports, influencer culture, and marketing trends, this publication explores both qualitative and quantitative approaches as well as the methods of social science and critical perspectives. This book is ideally designed for marketers, media strategists, brand managers, consumer behavior analysts, researchers, academics, and students.

Fans and Fandom

Fans and Fandom
Author: Holly Swinyard
Publisher: White Owl
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2024-05-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1399042874

Do you have a Google alert for your favourite band going on tour? Or maybe you have a pull list at your local comicbook shop? Or perhaps you’ve got a season ticket to your sports team of choice? That would make you a fan, whether you realise it or not, and there’s a lot more to fan culture than you might think. In the 21st century pop culture is everywhere; you can’t move for a new superhero film or major franchise appearing in our lives and we love it. We’re just jumping into the media landscape headfirst in order to get more of our favs, track down spoilers and deep dive about plot lines on social media. It’s hard to deny fan culture as part of the world now, there’s a fandom for everyone, but what does that actually mean, and where did it come from? From ancient times to modern media, humans have shared their love for the stories that mean something to them and brought in others to be fans of them too. We’ve written ourselves in, made art of, and celebrated with others who love the same things as us all in the name of being a fan, even before the word fan existed. There’s a whole lot of who, where, what, when, why, how and huh to look into when it comes to fan culture. From Shakespeare to Superman, Dickens to Daleks, and fanfiction to Frodo there is so much more to fandom than meets the eye. And a whole lot of references to pack in too.

The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom

The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom
Author: Melissa A. Click
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 714
Release: 2017-11-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317268253

The field of fan studies has seen exponential growth in recent years and this companion brings together an internationally and interdisciplinarily diverse group of established scholars to reflect on the state of the field and to point to new research directions. Engaging an impressive array of media texts and formats and incorporating a variety of methodologies, this collection is organized into six main sections: methods and ethics, technologies and practices, identities, race and transcultural fandom, industry, and futures. Each section concludes with a conversation among some of the field’s leading scholars and industry insiders to address a wealth of questions relevant to each section topic.

Social TV

Social TV
Author: Cory Barker
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2022-07-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 149684095X

On March 15, 2011, Donald Trump changed television forever. The Comedy Central Roast of Trump was the first major live broadcast to place a hashtag in the corner of the screen to encourage real-time reactions on Twitter, generating more than 25,000 tweets and making the broadcast the most-watched Roast in Comedy Central history. The #trumproast initiative personified the media and tech industries’ utopian vision for a multi-screen and communal live TV experience. In Social TV: Multi-Screen Content and Ephemeral Culture, author Cory Barker reveals how the US television industry promised—but failed to deliver—a social media revolution in the 2010s to combat the imminent threat of on-demand streaming video. Barker examines the rise and fall of Social TV across press coverage, corporate documents, and an array of digital ephemera. He demonstrates that, despite the talk of disruption, the movement merely aimed to exploit social media to reinforce the value of live TV in the modern attention economy. Case studies from broadcast networks to tech start-ups uncover a persistent focus on community that aimed to monetize consumer behavior in a transitionary industry period. To trace these unfulfilled promises and flopped ideas, Barker draws upon a unique mix of personal Social TV experiences and curated archives of material that were intentionally marginalized amid pivots to the next big thing. Yet in placing this now-forgotten material in recent historical context, Social TV shows how the era altered how the industry pursues audiences. Multi-screen campaigns have shifted away from a focus on live TV and toward all-day “content” streams. The legacy of Social TV, then, is the further embedding of media and promotional material onto every screen and into every moment of life.

The Information Behavior of Wikipedia Fan Editors

The Information Behavior of Wikipedia Fan Editors
Author: Paul A. Thomas
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2024-07-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1666941948

Situated at the intersection of library and information science (LIS), Wikipedia studies, and fandom studies, this book is a digital (auto)ethnography that documents the information behavior of Wikipedia “fan editors”—that is, individuals who edit articles about pop culture media. Given Wikipedia’s prominence in LIS and fan studies scholarship, both as one of the world’s most heavily used reference sources and as an important archive for fan communities, fan editors are a crucial component of this ecosystem as some of Wikipedia’s most active contributors. Through a combination of fieldwork observations, insight from key informants, and the author’s own experiences as a Wikipedia editor, this monograph provides a rich articulation of fan editor information behavior and offers a significant contribution to scholarship in a number of fields. Scholars of library and information science, media studies, fandom studies, and popular culture will find this book of particular interest.