Fan Studies Network Conference 2014
I’m back from the Fan Studies Network conference 2014 (okay I was back last night but it was 10pm and I’d been awake since 3am and I was actually still hyper but anything I wrote would be semi-coherent at best at that point) and I feel I can state with no exageration that it was awesome. The organizers did a great job (memories_child: you're awesome)and there were keynotes by Rhiannon Bury and Orlando Jones both of which were excellent and thought-provoking. I did have some issues with Professsor Bury’s talk- though she made it clear when I brought them up that we don’t really disagree on this, it’s just that time constraints/constraints of her project maybe made it come across as more technologically determinist than the finished output will be, but basically she’s suggesting as we enter a third age of fandom (and fan studies), the aspects of community that defined the second age are not going to be fundamental anymore and that new platforms will not support it, because they are not designed to.
Now obviously periodising anything is more a matter of historical convenience than anything else, but we can considers very roughly that first era fandom (i.e. zine cultures, very occasional meetups, etc, which develops in the 1960s through 80s as VHS, photocopying etc enters home and office space develops into a second era of connectivity and UGC via listservs followed by LiveJournal and DW. Prof. Bury has been doing a lot of interviews with older fans who rememeber listservs and in some cases zine culture and they talk about how the structures of LJ enable community and connectivity via things like comms, flists, tagging, privacy/public filtering and so on. And now fandom is moving onto other kinds of social media and increasingly noticed/integrated/appreciated/appropriated by industry. So she calls this third era 'follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook' and argues that the social and technological structures of these sites (and Tumblr) don't support the same kind of fan communities. Consider - FB is mostly people we know IRL and people have different degrees of comfort and security in how much fandom stuff they put out there where say, their boss is gonna see it (ALTHOUGH of course some people are in situations where they can/will share it all whatever). Fan pages on Facebook are generally professional ones where you follow HBO or whatever (ALTHOUGH fans reappropriate this space and repurpose it like they've always done with technologies). Twitter is 140-character graphic limited - though again people repurpose it. And Tumblr is more of a showcase/scrapbook medium with limited search/connectivity functions that older respondents typically report they like, but don't quite 'get'. I count myself in this category. Of course we can re-train ourselves but Tumblr is very much not a natural home for me and I mostly use it to look at stuff other people have posted. If community is possible via these new structures is something we'll only really see once the Tumblr generation comes of age.
When the floor was opened to comments, someone suggested that these changes need not be attributed to neo-liberal market forces of fandom co-optation but rather that maybe new/younger people are bringing different needs and making different uses of these new technologies. I tend to get a bit dismayed when I think of fandom co-optation by industry (though I'm all for negotiation and participation), but, as I commented, the research I've been doing on the work of young fans on Ff.net lately would support this. It does appear much easier now for young people to be 'out' as fans than it was for (many of) us. They talk about reading and sharing fanfic with their friends, watching shows with siblings and peers, etc - and the increased visibility of fandom and rise of geek culture is definitely a factor in this. Of course, it's easier to be out as some kinds of fan than other - a techno-geek fanboy who makes sophisicated machinima and game mods has more cultural capital and more statistical chance of profit than a teenage girl using slash and h/c to negotiate her budding sexuality - but I would say that overall, culturally, there have been changes that perhaps mean teens are bringing less need for community than I did in the heady days I first discovered reams of LOTR fanfic on ff.net (insert appropriate hallelujah.gif here) and realized I *wasn't the only person in the entire world who created and wanted more of this*. Or if not less need for community, different needs. Like peer training, for instance. But that's speculation at this point.
Oh yeah and I presented a paper and it went great. :). I'll get the slides up on academia.edu soonish. And then I came home and smothered the cats with kisses going MAMMY MISSED YOU LADIES and Zara was a like wtf.
ETA: Here are the slides for my paper. https://www.academia.edu/8543883/South_Park_Fanfic_and_the_Political_Realm
Bear in mind this project is very much a work in progress and all nodes will be properly explored in the finished output. Conclusions are 'so far'. Also I'm trying to get permission from the ethics board to interview under-18s without parental permission. Interview them about *their own cultural activity* to which their parents are not party. This is taking approximately twelve million years to secure. I'm just imaging myself at 15/16. 'Want to be interviewed about your fanfiction and culture? OMG YES I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY. You need parental permission. HAHAHA. No.'
Now obviously periodising anything is more a matter of historical convenience than anything else, but we can considers very roughly that first era fandom (i.e. zine cultures, very occasional meetups, etc, which develops in the 1960s through 80s as VHS, photocopying etc enters home and office space develops into a second era of connectivity and UGC via listservs followed by LiveJournal and DW. Prof. Bury has been doing a lot of interviews with older fans who rememeber listservs and in some cases zine culture and they talk about how the structures of LJ enable community and connectivity via things like comms, flists, tagging, privacy/public filtering and so on. And now fandom is moving onto other kinds of social media and increasingly noticed/integrated/appreciated/appropriated by industry. So she calls this third era 'follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook' and argues that the social and technological structures of these sites (and Tumblr) don't support the same kind of fan communities. Consider - FB is mostly people we know IRL and people have different degrees of comfort and security in how much fandom stuff they put out there where say, their boss is gonna see it (ALTHOUGH of course some people are in situations where they can/will share it all whatever). Fan pages on Facebook are generally professional ones where you follow HBO or whatever (ALTHOUGH fans reappropriate this space and repurpose it like they've always done with technologies). Twitter is 140-character graphic limited - though again people repurpose it. And Tumblr is more of a showcase/scrapbook medium with limited search/connectivity functions that older respondents typically report they like, but don't quite 'get'. I count myself in this category. Of course we can re-train ourselves but Tumblr is very much not a natural home for me and I mostly use it to look at stuff other people have posted. If community is possible via these new structures is something we'll only really see once the Tumblr generation comes of age.
When the floor was opened to comments, someone suggested that these changes need not be attributed to neo-liberal market forces of fandom co-optation but rather that maybe new/younger people are bringing different needs and making different uses of these new technologies. I tend to get a bit dismayed when I think of fandom co-optation by industry (though I'm all for negotiation and participation), but, as I commented, the research I've been doing on the work of young fans on Ff.net lately would support this. It does appear much easier now for young people to be 'out' as fans than it was for (many of) us. They talk about reading and sharing fanfic with their friends, watching shows with siblings and peers, etc - and the increased visibility of fandom and rise of geek culture is definitely a factor in this. Of course, it's easier to be out as some kinds of fan than other - a techno-geek fanboy who makes sophisicated machinima and game mods has more cultural capital and more statistical chance of profit than a teenage girl using slash and h/c to negotiate her budding sexuality - but I would say that overall, culturally, there have been changes that perhaps mean teens are bringing less need for community than I did in the heady days I first discovered reams of LOTR fanfic on ff.net (insert appropriate hallelujah.gif here) and realized I *wasn't the only person in the entire world who created and wanted more of this*. Or if not less need for community, different needs. Like peer training, for instance. But that's speculation at this point.
Oh yeah and I presented a paper and it went great. :). I'll get the slides up on academia.edu soonish. And then I came home and smothered the cats with kisses going MAMMY MISSED YOU LADIES and Zara was a like wtf.
ETA: Here are the slides for my paper. https://www.academia.edu/8543883/South_Park_Fanfic_and_the_Political_Realm
Bear in mind this project is very much a work in progress and all nodes will be properly explored in the finished output. Conclusions are 'so far'. Also I'm trying to get permission from the ethics board to interview under-18s without parental permission. Interview them about *their own cultural activity* to which their parents are not party. This is taking approximately twelve million years to secure. I'm just imaging myself at 15/16. 'Want to be interviewed about your fanfiction and culture? OMG YES I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY. You need parental permission. HAHAHA. No.'