The Unbearable Whiteness of Fandom and Fan Studies

Stanfill, Mel

doi:10.1002/9781119237211.ch19

Cited by 25 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Because of this study's sample and the demographics of transformative fandom, our findings are able to speak more broadly to the experiences of adult women-loving-women, with trans and nonbinary individuals to a lesser extent, but not necessarily to cisgender gay men. Because the demographics of many fan communities skew white, we also find it important to note that we may be missing important non-white voices in this data [94], including fandoms for non-Western media properties. In addition to these limitations, our findings cannot speak to how current youth populations (people under 18) are coming to and interacting with fandom beyond how our participants describe interacting with younger community members as mentors.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

"Coming Out Okay"

Dym

Brubaker

Fiesler

et al. 2019

Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact.

167

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Online communities provide support for those who are vulnerable, such as LGBTQ people while coming out. Research shows that social support and personal narrative construction are important when recovering from personal crises and traumatic events. As an online community focused on writing fanfiction and also consisting of a large number of LGBTQ members, transformative fandom provides an opportunity to examine the relationship between support, crisis, and narrative. Through an interview study with 31 LGBTQ fanfiction authors, our findings mirror Herman's model of trauma recovery: these spaces self-organize to support recovery work through constructing "community narratives" that help LGBTQ people establish safety when exploring their identity and build LGBTQ support structures without publicly outing themselves before they are ready, challenge stereotypes, and support others through reshaping existing media that perpetuate inaccurate or harmful LGBTQ narratives. These online communities embody "selective visibility"-that is, though not specifically designed as support structures for identity work and recovery, their design allows people to selectively find and create communities of support for stigmatized issues that they might be unable to safely seek out in other spaces. Based on lessons learned, we generate insights that can inform the design of safe support spaces online.CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing; • Social and professional topics → Sexual orientation.

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Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

"Coming Out Okay"

Dym

Brubaker

Fiesler

et al. 2019

Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact.

167

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Additionally, the participants were predominantly White. This is an important demographic note, given that a number of scholars such as Stanfill (2011Stanfill ( , 2018 and Pande (2018) have critiqued the mostly-white and thus racially exclusionary nature of many fan spaces. A full interrogation of this factor is essential in exploring inequalities in fan spaces (both racial and otherwise); however, it is beyond the scope of the present paper.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I found what I needed, which was a supportive community”: an ethnographic study of shared information practices in an online cosplay community

Vardell

Wang

Thomas

2021

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PurposeThis study explored the information practices of cosplayers, as well as the social norms, social types and information infrastructure of an online cosplay Facebook group, the Rey Cosplay Community (RCC).Design/methodology/approachTo better understand individual behavior, the authors made use of ethnographic methods and semi-structured interviews. Observation of the RCC was combined with information gleaned from select participant interviews.FindingsThe results suggest that the RCC can be conceived of as an information community where fans obtain and share information about cosplay costume making. Sufficient and well-organized information and positive community culture greatly help community members make their costumes.Originality/valueThis works serves as a bridge between fan studies and information science research in its exploration of online communities, shared information practices and creating non-toxic virtual environments. It also lends support to the idea that positivity, respect for community rules and a tight-knit connection between members play essential roles in building a non-toxic fan and information community.

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“…Kamblé, 2014, pp. 131–56; Stanfill, 2018; Thomas, 2019; Young, 2016; Vera & Gordon, 2003). The conventional whiteness of popular culture, nonetheless, arguably makes such spaces open to exploitation by white FREs.…”

Section: Medievalism Historical Fiction and Racismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Popular fiction and white extremism: Neo‐Nazi ideology and medievalist crime fiction

Young

Downes

2022

Literature Compass

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Dystopian near‐future fantasies of violent white revolution and genocide—most infamously, William L. Pierce's The Turner Diaries (1978)—are the most well‐known and studied fictions by white extremists. They are, however, not the only genre through which the extreme far‐right engage with popular culture. In this article, we explore how popular historical fictions can accomodate white extremist presence and propagandising. We analyse generic conventions in the medieval murder mystery The Black Flame (2001) by self‐identified neo‐Nazi Harold A. Covington (1953–2018), showing that the book shares trends and tropes with contemporary medievalisms, including in historical crime fiction and other popular genres and media. By focussing on these conventions, we seek common places in the popular that can, paradoxically, create space for the fringe extreme.

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The Unbearable Whiteness of Fandom and Fan Studies

Cited by 25 publications

References 34 publications

"Coming Out Okay"

"Coming Out Okay"

“I found what I needed, which was a supportive community”: an ethnographic study of shared information practices in an online cosplay community

Popular fiction and white extremism: Neo‐Nazi ideology and medievalist crime fiction

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