Fandom
Beyoncé worked with her own company to release a new album after years of silence. Her fans were surprised as they were not expecting her to release a full album with music videos. As a result, ‘the beygency’ produced a campaign portraying that they will come after anyone who doesn’t like “Queen B”. With the advancement of technologies, some movies and shows have an impact on the audience which can result the creation of fan cultures. Fan culture is a subculture produced by fans who share the same feelings towards a common interest. Fans typically are interested in minor details of the objects and spend a significant portion of their time and energy involved with their interest, often as a part of a social network.
Fans also can add meaning to media by creating their own media objects, including fan fiction. For example, “Star wars” fans started re-editing Lucas films and creating remixes to criticize the movie by doing another one, fifty shades of grey were originally written as a twilight fan fiction story, or Sherlock Holmes fandom who was the first ones to create a fan fiction (Powlhe, 2017).
Finally, fan cultures have any subversive potential because it can lead fans to interact oppositely with the producers or the one who owns the character or the product. With the access to social media platforms, the relationship between fans and professionals has changed. It gives fans an opportunity to create their safe spaces online, in other words, they connect and participate in fandom activities and access creators or actors (Powlhe,2017). What is interesting in fan cultures is that it is not only for teenagers, people from all ages can be added to any fan culture. On another side, social media has helped fan culture to grow and spread worldwide. In other words, fandom has “fanspeak” as its own language (Goosh). Fans create specific terms and words that only they can understand. For example, there is a popular Turkish serie that I am currently watching, for which fans recognize each other by a greeting sentence. I think that social media is a direct line of communication that allows fans to receive and share information quickly. Moreover, it helped affect the production and the success of each genre, as it is the case with Beyonce.
1. Goosh, B. The Communication of Fan Culture: The Impact of New Media on Science Fiction and Fantasy Fandom. Published in Georgia Institute of Technology. Retrieved from: https://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/handle/1853/21818/gooch_betsy_r_200805_ro.pdf
2. Powlhe (2017). The Importance of Fandoms to Social Media Users. Retrieved from: https://rampages.us/powellhe/2017/12/08/fandom-culture-essay/
Image resource: https://www.deviantart.com/owlodyssey/art/Fandom-Wallpaper-1-499552959 by Owl Odyssey.
