Fan Activity
KPOP
The blog post for this week will be focusing on specific projects done by fan bases to help in the growth of their artists. I received the information by communication with different fan bases. I will be focusing on one specific K-pop artist and their fanbases. EXO is a hybrid South Korean and Chinese group that debuted as EXO-K (Korean) and Exo-M (Mandarin) from SM Entertainment on April 8th of 2012. Their Fandom is known as EXO-L, The L stands for Love, and represents another subunit of the group, the L that comes between K and M. I was able to talk to certain “influential” fans and received information of what fans have done for the group. “In the age of the do-it-yourself media consumer, it seems that anyone, anywhere, with access to the internet and a specific text has the potential to be a contributor to a complex community of productive consumers” ( R.M. Milner, 491–92). Fans that have access to the internet have used it to their advantage to make their artists more known by creating fan products and distributing them online. Fanfiction, YouTube Fan Videos, fan projects are some of the examples I found within the EXO fandom. There was a fire in South Korea last week and the EXO-L fandom donated 17 million Won in the name of EXO (Naver). A few days ago it was The 7th anniversary of EXO and fans bought EXO a deed on Mars. EXO fans have also donated to many social causes under the name of EXO. In 2018 The Chinese fanbase of EXO put a short Video of EXO on the Burj Khalifa, they also put pictures and videos of EXO on buses and subways. This was all done to promote EXO to the public.
The actions taken by the EXO-L fandom is one of the biggest forms of fan labor, it can also be seen as digital labor because they let others know of what they have done through mass media communications. Digital labor is done by fans “When they tweet about a show using a hashtag, or when they tell a friend about that show, they’re completing free labor for the television network whose show they’re watching” (Chin et al., 2). KPOP fans keep their artists known on social media when they use hashtags and tag the account of the artist. Everyday when fans talk about their favorite artists on social media they are doing digital labor that helps their artist.
“[단독] 엑소 팬덤, 엑소 데뷔일에 강원 화재 피해 성금 기부.” Naver, 8 Apr. 2019, entertain.naver.com/read?oid=382&aid=0000722575.
Milner, R.m. “Working for the Text.” International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 12, no. 5, 2009, pp. 491–508., doi:10.1177/1367877909337861.
Chin, Bertha, et al. “Veronica Mars Kickstarter and Crowd Funding.” Transformative Works and Cultures, vol. 15, 2013, doi:10.3983/twc.2014.0519.
