Transformative Works and Cultures - TWC (Organization for Transformative Works)
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852 research outputs found
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Faster, higher, stronger: Sports fan activism and mediatized political play in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games
No full textIn an analysis of sports fans activism and theoretical approaches to understand experiences of mediatized political play, we address groups of activists who protest using fan resources and repertoires. We focus on some episodes of protests performed by casual sports fans against the then-acting Brazilian president Michel Temer during the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. We also further discuss the category of fan when applied to sports and political fandoms, considering the disputes and competition background for which they are not only fans but also rooters
Examining the fan labor of episodic TV podcast hosts
No full textIn podcasting—an understudied site of fan engagement—hosts of episodic TV podcasts, who are self-professed fans of a particular television series, engage in their fandom through a particular form of fan labor: producing and hosting a weekly podcast. Hosting an episodic TV podcast is a form of digital fan labor situated within the online fan gift economy. The resulting subcultural celebrity status that the hosts attain is ultimately what drives them to continue podcasting, regardless of any financial incentives that may arise from hosting a successful podcast. Through interviews with the hosts of the Friends (NBC, 1994–2004) podcast Best of Friends (2015–), Erin Mallory Long and Jamie Woodham, it becomes clear that by closely examining the different modes of fandoms that emerge from episodic TV podcasts, we can expand legible fan studies methodologies and apply them in the study of new and emerging fan practices and behaviors
How One Direction prepared young women for the revolution
No full textThe One Direction fandom demonstrates the ways in which the online networks common to fandom can play a critical role in the informal training and education of young women. This engagement in fan networks prepares fans to use networked cultures as a positive force, allowing them to agitate for feminist changes to the current political landscape
An approach to online fan persona
No full textOne application of the emerging field of persona studies is to the analysis of online fan persona. Indeed, there already exists a deep tradition of attention to fan persona within fan studies. A persona-inflected fan studies involves attention to the shift from representational media to a presentational media paradigm and invites questions about the contemporary experience of the public presentation of the online self as a fan. In combining the object and persona lens, an approach emerges that takes into account the agency of the individual in its negotiation with various collectives as well as human and nonhuman actors in the networks of online identity performances. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies are useful in exploring the fan persona as it registers indexically and intercommunicatively in the constitution of public activity in digitally networked environments
Exploring a threshold concept framework to fan studies research methodologies
No full textWe turn to threshold concept theory to imagine ways scholars can approach fan studies methodologies and make their research and underlying values more explicit, as well as outline what some common and shared values and foundational concepts are in the discipline. We consider notions that all fans understand and value, regardless of home discipline, and the ways such shared understandings can lead to shared and consistent research methods and methodologies. We also provide some examples and illustrations from our own experiences before concluding with a threshold concept–inspired framework for conceiving of fan studies methodologies
Placing fandom, studying fans: Modified acafandom in practice
No full textFor nearly three decades, the field of fan studies has helped to shift the conversation on fandom from a study of pathological individuals to exploring how groups make use of and transform the contemporary media landscape. Fandom itself is also changing. What was once a niche subculture is now a way for us to make sense of the mediated world around us. As the concept and structures of fandom expand, we as fandom researchers must broaden our methodology to analyze fans who aren't like us while also keeping the empathetic understanding of fandom that has made the field what it is. One attempt at this project is the modified acafandom approach developed as part of the Locating Imagination project. In researching film tourism, something I had little interest in personally participating in, I needed to go beyond the traditional autoethnographic acafan approach and develop my skills as a social sciences researcher. However, it was important to me to foreground the perspective of fan studies as a field throughout the project. The result shows how the modified acafandom approach can be useful in both qualitative media research and fan studies. The research modalities of the social sciences can usefully broaden the field of fandom research
To wave a flag: Identification, #BlackLivesMatter, and populism in Harry Styles fandom
No full textScholarship on the influence of celebrity politics often highlights the role of identification in the process of fans' own politicization and centers how a star's politics shift those of their fans. In a series of interviews with fans of musician Harry Styles, this research explores how identification with the singer instead served as the basis for fans' own attempts at shifting Styles's political expression to represent their own values. Drawing on the populist theory of Ernesto Laclau, I argue that Harry Styles fans relate to him as a populist unifier and collective representative of the fandom's values, and mobilize his image for their own political purpose. Rather than passively consuming his music and image, fans rhetorically construct Styles as a collective, popular object through identification with his star image, and they project their own values into the void of his signification. Through an exploration of fans' perception of his values, vague rhetoric, and engagement with #BlackLivesMatter, Harry Styles fans provide a useful new framework through which to explore the populist potential of fandom
Beyond the multidisciplinary in fan studies: Learning how to talk among disciplines
No full textIn light of the Fan Studies Network's statement regarding fan studies being overrun with whiteness, we are in a unique position to engage in scholarship that challenges the overwhelmingly white and Global North–centric structures that define how we study fan cultures. Multidisciplinarity, which may be understood as disciplines laid side by side, should be contrasted with interdisciplinarity, which requires true dialogue. Despite recent field-shifting work by fan studies scholars such as Bertha Chin, Lori Morimoto, Rukmini Pande, and Rebecca Wanzo, more work needs to be done to both acknowledge and build on current research in transcultural fandom. In a dialogue that reflects the progress of our own striving toward interdisciplinary and transcultural work in fan studies, we seek to demonstrate a possible way forward for the field of fan studies to become more truly interdisciplinary and transcultural in its focus
Affective investments, queer archives, and lesbian breakups on YouTube
No full textYouTube, as both a video-sharing platform and a social media platform, has become a dynamic space for the proliferation of queer female fandom, including lesbian YouTube couples, around which fans congregate. Two specific YouTube couples, Shannon and Cammie, and Kaelyn and Lucy, both broke up in summer 2016. Their breakups, and the subsequent breakup videos, were met with emotionally intense responses from their fans. To investigate how both fans and the couples themselves invest in these relationships, I conducted a discourse analysis of the language the YouTubers use to speak to their fans as well as the ways in which fans express their connection to these videos in the comments section. The distinct features of this fandom are the result of the affordances of YouTube as a platform, the intensity of queer fandom investments, and the particular liveliness of the fan object. Fan investment in these couples is connected to fans' own sense of (queer) futurity. At the same time, these videos now circulate as monuments of queer melancholia, viewed as they are through the lens of grief or nostalgia
Mobilizing minions: Fan activism efficacy of Misha Collins fans in "Supernatural" fandom
No full textIn 2009, Supernatural (CW, 2005–) actor Misha Collins tweeted to his followers in an effort to raise government funds for nonprofit initiatives, resulting in the fan-made website Minion Stimulus whose creator Collins later approached about growing the site into a private charity, Random Acts. The circumstances of Random Acts' inception paved the way for Collins's current philanthropic strategy, which operationalizes fan activism for social good. Collins's approach to fan mobilization takes place on social media, which he has used to effectively operationalize the potential of fan activism