Fandom & Participatory Culture
More so than ever, people are connecting and sharing ideas using several different forms of media. People are able to share ideas, stories opinions, images, music, and so much more, directly with each other. This new culture is very exciting to us, and has opened up many new opportunities and a new culture of communicating. One of the new pieces of culture it has brought us is that of “fandom”. Fandom is more than a group of people who follow a common interest, but one that participates both interpersonally and digitally with other fans. Fans now have the ability to communicate with each other through digital means. Not only to they share their love of something, but also reproduce media of it, such as remix videos, recreating images, remix songs, and sharing through social media. Our newly founded participatory culture has made fandom possible. People across the world are given the ability to join a community of similar interests.
In Social Media Reader, Henry Jenkins explains how our culture has changed due to the technology we are exposed to. In the nineteenth century, our lack of technology placed America in a folk culture. We shared our thoughts and beliefs with others through means of song and dance. Each community had a localized culture in which they were restricted to sharing information with their community. There were some folk stories shared between communities, but there was no such thing as intellectual property. No one took credit for a source of information, as the stories were shared through non-scribal means. In the twentieth century, people’s work became published, and therefore the idea of authorship came to be. This then grew from books to all forms of media, music, television, film, etc. The idea of folk culture quickly disappeared and we no longer shared ideas, but followed those that were shared to us through mass media. With the rise of the Internet in the twenty-first century, we again have the ability to share info with each other, only now we can do it in a much more sophisticated manner, instantaneously with unlimited access to possibilities.
As Jenkins explains, “The web has made visible the hidden compromises that enabled participatory culture and commercial culture to coexist throughout much of the twentieth century” (2012: 208). Not only do fandoms participate fan to fan, but they are also granted the ability to participate and communicate with the commercial ownership of their interest. For instance, Taylor Swift’s “swifties” are a commonly known fandom. They distribute her content, but also write blogs, create remixes of her music, memes with her in them, etc. Also, Taylor Swift herself often tweets back at her fans. This is the difference between the “fan” and the “fandom”. This high level of participation creates an interactive community of common interest. Fans follow mass media, whereas fandoms help to create media.
In some cases, commercial media struggles with this participatory culture. They fear that the media created by fans will have a negative impact on the media they have created. For example, in Vincent Miller’s Understanding Digital Culture, he explains a situation in which a consumer produced an image of the character Bert from PBS’s Sesame Street show was incorporated into some images of Hitler and Bin Ladan. In this circumstance, the portrayal of Bert, an innocent children’s show character, became poorly represented through recreated media (2011). Yet in other circumstances, it is because of the consumer sharing that an outlet becomes popular. Jenkins explains, “Over the past several decades, corporations have sought to market branded content so that consumers become the bearers of their messages” (2012: 209). Fandoms are no longer consumers they are produsers. They consume media but also reproduce media. From the commercial point of view this is both good and bad, but from the consumer point of view this is very exciting time to participate in media.
Boyd, Dana (2012) “Participating in the always on lifestyle”, The Social Media Reader
Miller, Vincent (2011) Chapter 3: Convergence Culture and the Contemporary Media Experience, in Understanding Digital Culture
