I am curious in regards to the conceptualization of what a “fan” is. Does that definition change between books?
Rob: We took particular care to outline what we imply by “fan,” “fanship,” and “fandom” early within the sequence, and we did this not as a result of we thought the phrases have been unfamiliar, however as a result of we discovered that they have been getting used inconsistently, even by specialists. Generally “fandom” referred to a person’s enthusiasm, as an example, however at different instances it described a collective entity. We would have liked to have that conceptual readability to maneuver ahead with the opposite work we wished to do within the sequence. So, though the definition doesn’t change from e book to e book, it does develop, and we add nuance to its numerous components. We construct on them, return to the definition, even problem it from completely different angles—however, fortuitously, the muse holds.
Our distinction is quite easy, but important. Fanship is a private, passionate relationship between a person and a fan object. It’s an orientation, an emotional and cognitive funding in a bit of tradition: a crew, a singer, a present, a model, a sport. Fandom, against this, is what occurs when that fanship turns into social. When followers affiliate with others, once they take part in shared rituals, critique, creativity, or neighborhood, they enter into fandom. Fandom is thus at all times a collective formation of some sort. It consists of norms, histories, values, and practices which might be produced, shared, and typically contested by its members.
We predict this distinction is highly effective as a result of it travels. It really works throughout domains—music, sports activities, trend, theme parks, politics, superstar, manufacturers. It respects solitary followers who’ve by no means set foot in a discussion board or a fan con, whereas additionally giving us language to speak in regards to the intense collective energies that swirl round franchises like BTS, System One, Taylor Swift, and the UFC. It helps us map completely different varieties of involvement with out being compelled into rating them. It additionally permits us to develop and accommodate the numerous digital advances which have altered the terrain, trajectory, and capacities of followers and fandoms, most notably these involving social media.
We additionally emphasize that fandom shouldn’t be a static identification. It strikes, altering by our lives and throughout our completely different actions. Followers shift out and in of fandoms over time. Their ranges of involvement change. Our framework accommodates that fluidity, providing one thing greater than a typology, and fewer than a inflexible mannequin. It’s a means to consider how individuals arrange which means by the passionate cultural engagements they kind each alone and collectively.
So no, the definition doesn’t change. But it surely does get examined, elaborated, and put to work. That was the purpose. We didn’t need to assume we already knew what fandom was. We wished to construct a basis sturdy sufficient to assist fifteen books and versatile sufficient to develop with them.
Henry: Every body permits us to see issues we might not see in any other case. Star Trek surfaces in nearly all of the books as a result of it was the start line for each of us and since it has been so foundational for each media fandom and fandom research. Different fandoms, such as these round Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Ok-pop and Harry Potter, seem typically throughout the books. Every time they floor, although, we add some new depth as we take a look at them from one other vantage level. We could focus on how Black followers of Harry Potter discover the probabilities of a mixed-race Hermoine in Fandom as Audience and fan responses to J. Ok. Rowlings’ transphobic feedback in Fandom as Activism. Different examples are extra native – we take into account how Netflix has constructed Wednesday to handle a number of audiences in Fandom as Audience or how a public sphere about gender and sexuality points surfaces across the comedian books Intercourse Prison and Bitch Planet in Fandom as Public or how Good Omens impressed a web based exploration of spirituality points in Fandom as Devotion.
In phrases of the aim of these books, at one level you point out that you just hope the sequence will assist practitioners – entrepreneurs, model managers – to work together with fan communities on the precept of “do no hurt.” How does this work inside up to date fandom areas that are more and more polarized and the place “hurt” may be conceptualized very otherwise by completely different fan teams? Is there a consideration of moral points going through fandom researchers and practitioners? Is there an area for dialogue of toxicity in fandom?
Henry: We do not need a separate e book on fan ethics – maybe we should always. However I’d prefer to suppose that moral points – for researchers, for practitioners, and for followers – floor throughout each e book within the sequence. The objective of making a dialog between fandom research and client tradition analysis is to not educate business the way to higher “exploit” followers however to assist them to know the richness and complexity of fandom as a web site of cultural expertise inside the context of a client economic system. To serve these ends, we frequently embody passages that present factors of friction between followers and business – for instance, e book 2 features a dialogue of the idea of followers as surplus audiences, how Alfred Martin has taken up the idea of “surplus Blackness” as a way of critiquing the racial assumptions guiding up to date franchises, and the ways in which “queer baiting” has been critiqued inside fandom research. In Fandom as Co-Creation, we dig deep into the literature on fan labor and clarify why many current business practices that declare to “honor” followers really exploit them. We hyperlink this work to the debates across the Paramount pointers on Star Trek fan cinema and a bigger consideration of mental property legislation, transformative works, and honest use.
We positively will likely be taking on websites of battle between completely different teams of followers, together with reactionary backlash by white male followers in opposition to girls and followers of colour, and we positively take care of the rising literature on so-called “poisonous” fan cultures, particularly in Fandom as Public. I’m positive we are going to face criticism on the steadiness of completely different views right here. Even with the massive canvas this e book sequence offers us, we will be unable to debate everybody and the whole lot, and our personal blindness and privilege will likely be on show. However in creating this framework, we are going to create one thing that different students can push in opposition to and name consideration to what’s nonetheless lacking in a discipline of analysis that for too lengthy was formed by presumptions of whiteness and Anglo-Americanness.
Rob: Sure, “do no hurt” is a precept we provide to practitioners, however we don’t imply it naively. We’re absolutely conscious that hurt, like toxicity, is a contested class. What one fan sees as righteous protection of their values, one other sees as overreaction or harassment. What a marginalized fan calls an inexpensive and direct critique, a showrunner would possibly expertise as outlandish abuse. And from the purpose of view of an authoritarian authorities, even playful remix tradition or satire can learn as harmful thought crime. So once we speak about hurt in fandom areas, we’re speaking about one thing that at all times must be contextualized socially, culturally, and politically.
Fandom provides individuals a channel for sturdy emotions. Love, anger, grief, obsession, loyalty, and betrayal: fan communities are pulsing with these feelings. In an age when formal establishments typically fail to replicate individuals’s values or take heed to their considerations, fandom has develop into one of the few arenas the place individuals really feel like they’ll converse collectively about and perhaps even again to energy, or act to reshape tradition in their very own picture or into kinds that go well with them higher. That’s why governments monitor fan areas. That’s why platforms wrestle to handle fan conflicts. That’s why manufacturers courtroom followers and concern them on the identical time.
We’re not attempting to sanitize that power, although. We respect it, and we’re doing our utmost to attempt to perceive it. Throughout the sequence, we return to the concept that fandom is a passionate kind of cultural participation, not a passive state of appreciation. It’s not neat, and it’s not at all times well mannered. Generally it’s defiant. Generally it’s humorous. Generally it’s merciless. However it’s at all times significant to these inside it. And when that zeal turns into collective—when it organizes, critiques, remixes, or revolts—it forces business and establishments to pay attention. That’s not toxicity. That’s energy and tradition being constructed and rebuilt.
After all, there are behaviors that cross strains. There are moments when fandom mirrors or reproduces structural harms—racism, misogyny, queerphobia, nationalism. We don’t make excuses for these issues, of course, however we additionally don’t imagine you may perceive or interact with fandom by labeling total communities as “poisonous” from the skin. These components, like racism and misogyny, aren’t specific to fandoms or followers–they’re throughout us, and a few followers specific them, as one would anticipate. There’s a larger image, nonetheless, within the examine of how norms are negotiated inside fan cultures, how boundaries are drawn, how accountability capabilities—or fails to. These are fascinating and vital discussions to have, past merely labeling this or that phenomenon or habits as “poisonous” or “inclusive.” We predict this type of mental elaboration occurs alongside viewing fandoms not solely as expressive publics, however as ethical economies, with their very own kinds of justice, solidarity, and exclusion.
Ethics, in that sense, shouldn’t be a separate subject within the sequence. It runs by each quantity, as a result of we’re at all times asking what these relationships—between followers and types, followers and one another, followers and society—require and demand. We don’t declare to have the ultimate phrase. However we hope the sequence opens house for that ongoing dialog and fashions the type of respect and significant generosity that we imagine fandom itself, at its finest, embodies.
Extra to come back in Half Three.
Biographies
Henry Jenkins is the Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Schooling on the College of Southern California. He arrived at USC in Fall 2009 after spending greater than a decade as the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Research Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He’s the writer and/or editor of twenty books on numerous elements of media and fashionable tradition, together with Textual Poachers: Tv Followers and Participatory Tradition, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Common Tradition, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Pc Video games, Convergence Tradition: The place Previous and New Media Collide, Spreadable Media: Creating That means and Worth in a Networked Tradition, and By Any Media Crucial: The New Youth Activism. His most up-to-date books are Participatory Tradition: Interviews (primarily based on materials initially printed on this weblog), Common Tradition and the Civic Creativeness: Case Research of Artistic Social Change, and Comics and Stuff. He’s at the moment writing a e book on adjustments in kids’s tradition and media in the course of the post-World Battle II period. He has written for Know-how Overview, Pc Video games, Salon, and The Huffington Submit.
Robert V. Kozinets is a a number of award-winning educator and internationally acknowledged skilled in methodologies, social media, advertising, and fandom research. In 1995, he launched the world to netnography. He has taught at prestigious establishments together with Northwestern College’s Kellogg College of Enterprise and the Schulich College of Enterprise in Toronto, Canada. In 2024, he was made a Fellow of the Affiliation for Shopper Analysis and likewise awarded Mid-Sweden’s educator award, value 75,000 SEK. An Affiliate Editor for high tutorial journals just like the Journal of Advertising and the Journal of Interactive Advertising, he has additionally written, edited, and co-authored 8 books and over 150 items of printed analysis, some of it in poetic, photographic, musical, and videographic kinds. Many notable manufacturers, together with Heinz, Ford, TD Financial institution, Sony, Vitamin Water, and L’Oréal, have employed his agency, Netnografica, for analysis and session companies He holds the Jayne and Hans Hufschmid Chair of Strategic Public Relations and Enterprise Communication at College of Southern California’s Annenberg College, a place that’s shared with the USC Marshall College of Enterprise.
