Fandom and the fourth wall
TL;DR: This article used the Teen Wolf fandom as an example to examine the ways social media has created a more complicated, nuanced relationship with fans, and the collapse of the fourth wall between fans and The Powers That Be can have both positive and negative impacts, depending on the willingness of participants to maintain mutual respect and engage in meaningful dialogue.
Abstract: I use the Teen Wolf fandom as an example to examine the ways social media has created a more complicated, nuanced relationship with fans. The collapse of the fourth wall between fans and The Powers That Be can have both positive and negative impacts, depending on the willingness of participants to maintain mutual respect and engage in meaningful dialogue.
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Dissertation•
01 Sep 2015
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the cultural construction, circulation and pleasures of fangirl fandom, seeking to challenge the tenacity of what they refer to as "fangirl as pathology".
Abstract: Since the early 1990s, fan studies has sought to counter perceptions of the ‘pathology
of fandom’ and the devaluation of fans as feminine and infantile. In recent years,
some scholars have claimed that fans are newly normalised in popular culture, and it
is no longer necessary to contest problematic or pathologising stereotypes of fans.
However, the near-exclusive stereotyped representation of ‘hysterical’ crowds of
adolescent female fans, and the routine dismissal of ‘fangirls’ in mainstream media
and fandom itself, would indicate that not all fans have escaped pathologisation. It is
also the case that not all fans have enjoyed equal levels of academic attention. By
virtue of their age and gender, girl fans arguably carry the greatest burden of negative
stereotyping. Yet they have been notably marginalised in fan studies scholarship and
their stereotyped construction has remained largely unchallenged.
This thesis seeks to address this imbalance as it offers a timely examination of the
cultural construction, circulation and pleasures of fangirl fandom, seeking to challenge
and expose the tenacity of what I refer to as, ‘fangirl as pathology’. Using iCarly
(2007-2012) fans across three online fan spaces (LiveJournal, Blogspot, and Tumblr)
as a case study, it presents an empirical, observational study that aims to further
understand the implications of the cultural construction and negative stereotypes of
girl fans, and the extent to which they come to shape the landscape of tween TV
fandom, or ‘tweendom’.
Combining fan studies and girls’ studies, and analysing girls’ fan culture from an
intersectional, gender/age perspective, this thesis examines the ways in which fangirl
identities are performed and the ‘fangirl’ label is negotiated, and how fans identify
with iCarly in relation to their own gendered/generational subjectivities. Strategies of
defence and legitimisation are considered within the contexts of hierarchical
distinctions in inter-/intra-fandom, how fans are textually represented within the show,
and online interactions with the series’ creator-producer. This thesis argues that
fandom performs important functions for these young women. As active producers,
consumers, and negotiators of media, girl fans’ reproduction of negative and
pathologising discourses of fangirls demand reconsideration outside
resistance/conformist binaries, and specifically in the context of their stigmatisation
and structural age/gender inequalities.
17 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the intersection of media production, text, and audience, and show that if media is often approached through one or more of the lenses of production and text, then queerness can be pres- ent at any of these points.
Abstract: ©2018 by the board of trustees of the university of illinois if media is often approached through one or more of the lenses of production, text, and audience, then queerness can be pres ent at any of these points. This examination of queer fan hashtag campaigns is at the intersection of all three: how production is a site of contestation by queer audiences advo cating for queer texts. The campaigns we have studied for this article—#LexaDeservedBetter, #LGBTFansDeserveBetter, #PousseyDeserved Better, #BlackLGBTDeserveToBe, and LGBTQ FANS DESERVE RESPECT—seek to intervene in production processes through both advocacy and fans’ command of the very platforms that industry uses to measure audience engage ment. In what follows, we first situate queer fan hashtag campaigns in the context of contem porary media production and as an evolution from older forms of fan campaigning. We follow this context with a description of our method, analyticsqualified qualitative analysis, which allows examining large data sets—in this case from Twitter—qualitatively. We then describe three key features of queer fan hashtag cam paigns: how they harness affordances and industrial values, what they contend is wrong in industrial practice, and what they articulate as a better way. We end with a consideration of the limitations of such campaigns—in particu lar, the investment in whiteness that troubles their calls for queer solidarity. Ultimately, we show that queer fan hashtag campaigns are strategic interventions meant to alter both rep resentational and structural television produc tion processes by leveraging the importance of audience feedback in a connected viewing environment.
14 citations
TL;DR: Real Person Fiction (RPF) is a subset of fanfiction that has gone largely unnoticed by academics as discussed by the authors, and a handful of articles have argued for the justification of stories about real (living) people as...
Abstract: ‘Real person fiction’ (RPF) is a subset of fanfiction that has gone largely unnoticed by academics. A handful of articles have argued for the justification of stories about real (living) people as ...
13 citations
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an autobiographical statement, "Autobiographical Statement" (AIS): https://www.autobiographical-statement.org.au/
Abstract: ...................................................................................... ...............193 Autobiographical Statement...............................................................................195
9 citations
Cites background from "Fandom and the fourth wall"
...…and narrative technique, all of which have concluded that this particular type of media convergence is the new wave in both communication research and practice 7 (Ballinger, 2014; Sangalang, Quintero, Johnson, & Ciancio, 2013; Swanson, 2015; Ryan, 2015; Jansson & Lindell, 2015; Alexander, 2007)....
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