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Syllabus: Television Culture and Cult TV: Critical Approaches to Fandom (Fall 2021)
James Fleury
Washington University in St. Louis, 2021
Why do television series inspire passionate involvement on the part of some viewers? What are the differences between being a viewer, an audience member, and a fan? How can we make scholarly sense of cultural practices such as cosplaying, speaking Klingon, or live-tweeting? Studies of fandom have attempted to answer such questions and continue to explore issues that are crucial to understanding contemporary television culture. The phenomenon of “Cult TV” offers fertile ground for examining the complex dynamics at play among fans, popular culture, the institutions of American media, and individual programs. In its exploration of cult television and fans, this course engages with key issues in contemporary media such as the proliferation of new media technologies and the repurposing of existing media forms, the permeable boundaries between high and low or mass and oppositional culture, and the fragmentation and concentration of media markets. The class combines close textual analysis with studies of fan practices to examine a variety of television programs, from canonical cult texts such as Star Trek and Twin Peaks to contemporary fan favorites such as The Walking Dead and WandaVision. In mapping out this cultural territory, we develop a set of critical perspectives on audience identities and activities and examine the continuing and conflicted imagination of fans by media producers, distributors, regulators and critics.
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Keeping the Elite Powerless: Fan-Producer Relations in the “Nu Who” (and New YOU) Era
Leora Hadas
Critical Studies in Media Communication, 2012
This article explores the relationship between fans and producers in an era of technological and cultural change. Focusing on fans' new liberties in the Web 2.0 environment, we study the ways in which fandom—previously conceptualized as a “powerless elite”—copes with increased status and influence. We focus on the case of Doctor Who, a cult series revived by a fan turned producer, and the love–hate relationship between him and the show's fans. Using grounded theory, we analyze discussions in the LiveJournal community doctorwho and chart the strategies used by members to negotiate their new place in the world. In an age marked by a rapid increase in fan power and blurring of the boundaries between producers and consumers, we find Doctor Who fans working intensively to disempower themselves and keep the fan/producer separation in place.
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Contemporary participative TV audiences: Identity, authorship and advertising practices between fandom
Javier Lozano Delmar
2016
This article looks at how TV audiences articulate their identity as fans, paying special attention to authorship and advertising roles in the age of convergence culture. It is divided into three main sections. The first part of the article draws on a panorama on fan studies. Then the second part focuses on the methodology. We sent a questionnaire out on social networks in order to collect data on the role of fans, gift economy and the links between fandoms and official productions. Finally, the results and conclusions are analyzed and drawn.
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Fan Studies: Research Popular Audiences
Nicolle Lamerichs, Jessica Seymour
This open-access volume brings together a variety of critical perspectives in the emerging field of fan studies. Fan Communities and Fandom. We have engaged with multiple disciplines and theorists in order to explore the various methods of fan production and research. Whether fans engage in the real-world, online, or define themselves by their lack of engagement, the ability of fans to participate and share their enthusiasms with one another is one of the most striking and intriguing features of the fandom phenomena. Fan communities have directed their remarkable fervour towards charitable causes, bringing television shows and book characters back from the dead, and honing their creative skills before persuing fandom-worthy material of their own. We explore fandom as a social space and constructed identity, fuelled by talented creators and enthusiastic consumers, and building on the global connectedness born from the digital age. Originally published at Inter-Disciplinary.net, this volume contains essays from different fan scholars on topics such as celebrity fandom, pop-culture tourism, cosplay, fan activism, and YouTube fandom.
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Fan Studies: Researching Popular Audiences - Editor's Introduction
Jessica Seymour, Nicolle Lamerichs
This volume brings together a variety of critical perspectives in the rapidly growing field of fan studies. We have engaged with multiple disciplines and theorists in order to explore the various methods of fan production and research. Whether fans engage in the real-world, online, or define themselves by their lack of engagement, the ability of fans to participate and share their enthusiasms with one another is one of the most striking and intriguing features of the fandom phenomena. Fan communities have directed their remarkable fervour towards charitable causes, bringing television shows and book characters back from the dead, and honing their creative skills before pursuing fandom-worthy material of their own. We explore fandom as a social space and constructed identity, fuelled by talented creators and enthusiastic consumers, and building on the global connectedness born from the digital age.
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The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom
Melissa A Click
2017
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Media Text and Audiences: Discursive Constructions of Fandom
Helena Popovic
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The Intermedial Practises of Fandom
Kaarina Nikunen
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Book review: Understanding the End - Post-object Fandom: Television, Identity and Self-Narrative
Simone Driessen
In the engaging monograph Post-object Fan- dom: Television, Identity and Self-narrative (2015), Rebecca Williams illuminates how fans of TV shows such as The West Wing (NBC 1999–2006), Lost, and Doctor Who (BBC One 1963–89, 2005–) cope with the endings of the series. Whereas many works on fandom or fan cultures highlight fans’ ‘becom- ing-a-fan’-narratives or fans’ involvement with media texts, Williams’ monograph ts in the extending fan scholarship on growing older in and with a fandom (cf. Bielby, Harrington & Bardo 2014; Bennett 2013; Hodkinson & Bennett 2013). Yet, as this scholarship often seeks to provide an insight how fandom chang- es over time, or how one stays involved in (bodily) fan practices at a later age, Post-object Fandom contributes to the eld of fan studies by reviewing how the phase without the fan object is given meaning.
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Fandom televisivo. Estudio de su impacto en la estrategia de comunicación en redes sociales de Netflix
ALMUDENA BARRIENTOS-BÁEZ
Revista de Comunicación de la SEECI, 2021
Las nuevas formas de consumo audiovisual dan protagonismo al fandomtelevisivo por el potencial que ofrece a las organizaciones del sector, como Netflix, respecto de uno de sus públicos principales, los adolescentes. Esta investigación analiza el impacto de este fenómeno en la interacción y engagement onlinede los seguidores de Netflix en Twitter e Instagram. Para ello se realiza un análisis de contenido cuantitativo que clasifica las publicaciones en función de dos indicadores: contenido y finalidad de las publicaciones. En lo que respecta al primero, el contenido, la distribución está bastante equilibrada y las publicaciones que versan sobre series de televisión generan buenos niveles de interacción y engagement onlinerevelando la incidencia del fandomtelevisivo, sobre todo en la red social Instagram. Con relación al segundo, la finalidad, se observa una escasa presencia de las participativas pese a que generan mayores niveles de interacción y engagement online. Se concluye acerca ...
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