Fan Identities And Practices In Context

Popular music is not simply a series of musicians, moments, genres or recordings. Audiences matter; and the most ardent audience members are the fans. To be a fan is to feel a connection with music. The study of fandom has begun to emerge as a vital strand of academic research, one that offers a fresh perspective on the nature of music culture. Dedicated to Music investigates fan identities and practices in different contexts and in relation to different bands and artists. Through a series of empirical case studies the book reflects a diverse array of objects and perspectives associated with this vibrant new field of study. Contributors examine how fans negotiate their identities and actively pursue their particular interests, touching on a range of issues including cultural capital, generational memory, gender, fan fiction and the use of new media. This book was originally published as two special issues of Popular Music and Society.

Popular music is not simply a series of musicians, moments, genres or recordings. Audiences matter; and the most ardent audience members are the fans. To be a fan is to feel a connection with music. The study of fandom has begun to emerge as a vital strand of academic research, one that offers a fresh perspective on the nature of music culture. Dedicated to Music investigates fan identities and practices in different contexts and in relation to different bands and artists. Through a series of empirical case studies the book reflects a diverse array of objects and perspectives associated with this vibrant new field of study. Contributors examine how fans negotiate their identities and actively pursue their particular interests, touching on a range of issues including cultural capital, generational memory, gender, fan fiction and the use of new media. This book was originally published as two special issues of Popular Music and Society.

This book explores popular music fandom from a cultural studies perspective that incorporates popular music studies, audience research, and media fandom. The essays draw together recent work on fandom in popular music studies and begin a dialogue with the wider field of media fan research, raising questions about how popular music fandom can be understood as a cultural phenomenon and how much it has changed in light of recent developments. Exploring the topic in this way broaches questions on how to define, theorize, and empirically research popular music fan culture, and how music fandom relates to other roles, practices, and forms of social identity. Fandom itself has been brought center stage by the rise of the internet and an industrial structure aiming to incorporate, systematize, and legitimate dimensions of it as an emotionally-engaged form of consumerism. Once perceived as the pariah practice of an overly attached audience, media fandom has become a standardized industrial subject-position called upon to sell box sets, concert tickets, new television series, and special editions. Meanwhile, recent scholarship has escaped the legacy of interpretations that framed fans as passive, pathological, or defiantly empowered, taking its object seriously as a complex formation of identities, roles, and practices. While popular music studies has examined some forms of identity and audience practice, such as the way that people use music in daily life and listener participation in subcultures, scenes and, tribes, this volume is the first to examine music fans as a specific object of study.

Introduction: why still study fans? / Cornel Sandvoss, Jonathan Gray, and C. Lee Harrington -- Fan texts and objects -- The death of the reader? : literary theory and the study of texts in popular culture / Cornel Sandvoss -- Intimate intertextuality and performative fragments in media fanfiction / Kristina Busse -- Media academics as media audiences : aesthetic judgments in media and cultural studies / Matt Hills -- Copyright law, fan practices, and the rights of the author (2017) / Rebecca Tushnet -- Toy fandom, adulthood, and the ludic age : creative material culture as play / Katriina Heljakka -- Spaces of fandom -- Loving music : listeners, entertainments, and the origins of music fandom in nineteenth-century America / Daniel Cavicchi -- Resisting technology in music fandom : nostalgia, authenticity, and Kate Bush's "Before the dawn" / Lucy Bennett -- I scream therefore I fan? : music audiences and affective citizenship / Mark Duffett -- A sort of homecoming: fan viewing and symbolic pilgrimage / Will Brooker -- Reimagining the imagined community : online media fandoms in the age of global convergence / Lori Hitchcock Morimoto and Bertha Chin -- Temporalities of fandom -- Do all "good things" come to an end? : revisiting Martha Stewart fans after imclone / Melissa A. Click -- The lives of fandoms / Denise D. Bielby and C. Lee Harrington -- "What are you collecting now?" seth, comics, and meaning management / Henry Jenkins -- Sex, utopia, and the queer temporalities of fannish love / Alexis Lothian -- The fan citizen: fan politics and activism -- The news : you gotta love it / Jonathan Gray -- Memory, archive, and history in political fan fiction / Abigail De Kosnik -- Between rowdies and rasikas : rethinking fan activity in Indian film culture / Aswin Punathambekar -- Black twitter and the politics of viewing scandal / Dayna Chatman -- Deploying oppositional fandoms : activists' use of sports fandom in the Redskins controversy / Lori Kido Lopez and Jason Kido Lopez -- Fan labor and fan-producer interactions -- Ethics of fansubbing in Anime's hybrid public culture / Mizuko Ito -- Live from hall H : fan/producer symbiosis at San Diego comic-con / Anne Gilbert -- Fantagonism: factions, institutions, and constitutive hegemonies of fandom -- Derek johnson -- The powers that squee : Orlando Jones and intersectional fan studies / Suzanne Scott -- Measuring fandom : social tv analytics and the integration of fandom into television audience measurement / Philip M. Napoli and Allie Kosterich -- About the contributors -- Index

Fans constitute a very special kind of audience. They have been marginalized, ridiculed and stigmatized, yet at the same time they seem to represent the vanguard of new relationships with and within the media. ’Participatory culture’ has become the new normative standard. Concepts derived from early fan studies, such as transmedial storytelling and co-creation, are now the standard fare of journalism and marketing text books alike. Indeed, usage of the word fan has become ubiquitous. The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures problematizes this exaltation of fans and offers a comprehensive examination of the current state of the field. Bringing together the latest international research, it explores the conceptualization of ’the fan’ and the significance of relationships between fans and producers, with particular attention to the intersection between online spaces and offline places. The twenty-two chapters of this volume elucidate the key themes of the fan studies vernacular. As the contributing authors draw from recent empirical work around the globe, the book provides fresh insights and innovative angles on the latest developments within fan cultures, both online and offline. Because the volume is specifically set up as companion for researchers, the chapters include recommendations for the further study of fan cultures. As such, it represents an essential reference volume for researchers and scholars in the fields of cultural and media studies, communication, cultural geography and the sociology of culture.

A completely updated edition of a seminal work on fans and communities We are all fans. Whether we follow our favorite celebrities on Twitter, attend fan conventions such as Comic Con, or simply wait with bated breath for the next episode of our favorite television drama—each of us is a fan. Recognizing that fandom is not unusual, but rather a universal subculture, the contributions in this book demonstrate that understanding fans--whether of toys, TV shows, celebrities, comics, music, film, or politicians--is vital to an understanding of media audiences, use, engagement, and participatory culture in a digital age. Including eighteen new, original essays covering topics such as activism directed at racism in sports fandom, fan/producer interactions at Comic Con, the impact of new technologies on fandom, and the politics and legality of fanfic, this wide-ranging collection provides diverse approaches to fandom for anyone seeking to understand modern life in our increasingly mediated, globalized and binge-watching world.

Once deemed an unworthy research endeavor, the study of sports fandom has garnered the attention of seasoned scholars from a variety of academic disciplines. Identity and socialization among sports fans are particular burgeoning areas of study among a growing cadre of specialists in the social sciences. Sports Fans, Identity, and Socialization, edited by Adam C. Earnheardt, Paul Haridakis, and Barbara Hugenberg, captures an eclectic collection of new studies from accomplished scholars in the fields such as communication, business, geography, kinesiology, media, and sports management and administration, using a wide range of methodologies including quantitative, qualitative, and critical analyses. In the communication revolution of the twenty-first century, the study of mediated sports is critical. As fans use all media at their disposal to consume sports and carry their sports-viewing experience online, they are seizing the initiative and asserting themselves into the mediated sports-dissemination process. They are occupying traditional roles of consumers/receivers of sports, but also as sharers and sports content creators. Fans are becoming pseudo sports journalists. They are interpreting mediated sports content for other fans. They are making their voice heard by sports organizations and athletes. Mediated sports, in essence, provide a context for studying and understanding where and how the communication revolution of the twenty-first century is being waged. With their collection of studies by scholars from North America and Europe, Earnheardt, Haridakis, and Hugenberg illuminate the symbiotic relationship among and between sports organizations, the media, and their audiences. Sports Fans, Identity, and Socialization spurs both the researcher and the interested fan to consider what the study of sports tells us about ourselves and the society in which we live.

Fans used to be seen as an overly obsessed fraction of the audience. In the last few decades, shifts in media technology and production have instead made fandom a central mode of consumption. A range of ideas has emerged to explore different facets of this growing phenomenon. With a foreword by Matt Hills, Understanding Fandom introduces the whole field of fan research by looking at the history of debate, key paradigms and methodological issues. The book discusses insights from scholars working with fans of different texts, genres and media forms, including television and popular music. Mark Duffett shows that fan research is an emergent interdisciplinary field with its own key thinkers: a tradition that is distinct from both textual analysis and reception studies. Drawing on a range of debates from media studies, cultural studies and psychology, Duffett argues that fandom is a particular kind of engagement with the power relations of media culture.

Proceedings of the AHFE International Conference on Human Factors in Design, Engineering, and Computing (AHFE 2023 Hawaii Edition), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA 4-6, December 2023

"From Gifs to vids, from tourist attractions to digital costuming, from Trekkers to Inspector Spacetime, Media Play illuminates the multiple economic, cultural, and social links between fans and the media industries"--