Mon 1 Sep || Academic fascination with the fan community took off in the 1990s with Jenkins’ ‘Textual Poachers’ and Bacon-Smith’s ‘Enterprising Women’ both coming out in 1992
When: Monday 1 September 2014
Venue: QA080, Queen Anne Court, Lecture theatre
Duration: 1 hour 3o mins
Time: 15.15 - 16.45
Panel Chair: Terhi Nurmikko
Panel members: K Faith Lawrence, Emma Tonkin and Bárbara Galiza
Abstract
It is perhaps significant that the surge of interest paralleled the growing ubiquitousness of the internet and the possibilities that it offered the community for communication, publication and distribution. Looking beyond the popularly analysed phenomenon of fan fiction, this panel brings together three papers which demonstrate different approaches to the study of western media fan practices:
Lawrence’s paper ‘Reframing Popular Culture: Music Vids and the Critical Fan’ will focus on ‘constructed reality’ and ‘meta’ fan music vids and the dichotomy between the expected knowledge of and shared response to the source material from which they are drawn and the implicit and explicit rejection of it.
Tonkin’s ‘Songs in a Key of Fandom: Studying Fanmixes Through the 8tracks API’ will present the results of a study on fanmixes, or playlists, and the use of the online radio site 8tracks as a distribution medium.
In ‘Remixing the Medium: The Use and Reuse of Technology by the Media Fan Community’, Galiza uses media archeology techniques to review the changing technical landscape as seen through the lens of fannish activity. Her paper will look at the way that the affordances of the various platforms appealed to the fan community and how the strengths and limitations of their designs helped to shape future interactions.
In bringing these three papers together the panel uses the fan community to present an interdisciplinary look at the way in which technology and media have been remixed by the community using them and have remixed that community in return.