Fan Culture: Social and Cultural Transformations during the Digital Era

Fan culture, also referred to as fandom, is a subculture of popular culture, and characterized by the different fan communities that share a common interest towards a particular aspect of popular culture such as a celebrity, a television series, or a particular book. Fandom can be traced back as early as the 1900s, when groups of individuals were witnessed publicly mourning the “death” of the fictional character Sherlock Holmes and publishing fan-generated stories in order to “revive” him. Since then, fan communities have grown enormously alongside popular culture. It is particularly interesting to examine how the mass arrival of the Internet in the 1990s have influenced the behavior of fans. This paper will argue that the era of the net age has given fans further agency in their behavior and empowered them with new ways to collaborate with each other.

Before going into the different ways fans have been affected by society’s digital transformation, let us first explore their general characteristics highlighted by academic research over the past few decades in order to understand how fans are socially and culturally defined. During the beginning of the 20th century, fans were characterized by many as being too radical, being “frighteningly ‘out of control’, undisciplined and unrepentant, rogue reader[s]” (Jenkins 64). However, in the past few decades, this characterization of fandom was challenged by many scholars. For example, in the analysis of Bruce Lee’s legacy, Bowman argued: “martial arts fandom might easily be ‘diagnosed’ as fetishistic. And this may be so. Yet such a diagnosis too hastily downplays the complexity of the doubt and desire that can arise in response to the spectacle” (Bowman 52). These scholars argued that fans were the opposite of traditional consumers, as they went beyond the intentions of the producers and actively consumed media to derive their own meaning and social experience, “a way of transforming mass culture into popular culture” (Jenkins 66) known as “participatory culture”, coined by Henry Jenkins. He argued, for example, that for fans, the show “Star Trek is not simply something that can be reread. It is something that can and must be rewritten to make it more responsive to their needs, to make it a better producer of personal meanings and pleasures” (Jenkins 66). Rather…