Understanding Fandom

Sports Fans and Fan Culture: A Critical Reflection on Fandom as Communicative Leisure in a Commodified World

“…This dismissal of fandom as being the product of low, base cultural forms fed to the masses can be found in Gramsci (1971) as well, who argued that sports and popular music on the radio were a way of keeping the Italians under the fascists from even being aware that they were being in chains. Only towards the end of the previous century did popular music fandom become something more than just a form for hegemonic control, though even Hebdige (1979) is suspicious of how much resistance can be found in sub-genres such as punk (Duffett 2013).…”

Online musicking for humanity: the role of imagined listening and the moral economies of music sharing on social media

“…If anything, they considered it unfair to give more media space to established acts, again understanding their actions to redress the power imbalance between famous and emerging artists. Rose went so far as to say that any social media interaction with famous bands was pointless, a reaction that calls into question whether online fandom practices can be understood as the cultivation of ‘the perception of accessibility and proximity’ (Duffett, 2013, p. 238). As Sandra articulates above in terms of cost, participants give different moral value to these instances of free ‘fan labour’ (Baym and Barnett, 2009; Terranova, 2004), thus socialising and helping to create a fairer music market are privileged over the potential access and benefits to famous artists.…”

“…Recent scholarship addressing internet-bound practices such as curating the musical contents of personal profiles (Durham, 2018), and as computer-mediated replacements of the living-room bookshelf (Wikström, 2013), have updated this interpretation, but without a clear focus on social relationships. Fandom studies that give more attention to social media (Duffett, 2013; Jenkins, 2006; Jenkins et al ., 2013) contextualise studies of music communities online, but tend to neglect the musical practices of casual fans. Beyond the promotional uses of social media by artists (Mjøs, 2012; Suhr, 2012; Harper, 2019) or platform-centric studies (Burgess and Green, 2009; Bonini, 2017; Durham and Born, 2022), the culture-making dynamics of music circulation online remain an under-researched area.…”

The Globalization of Comic-Con and the Sacralization of Popular Culture

“…To be fair, some scholars have described fandoms as actual religions (Bickerdike 2016;Jindra 1994;Melero 2010;Porter 2009;see also, Lyden 2003). This has generated some controversy, as critics claim that this comparison is empirically inaccurate and portrays fans as fanatics (Duffett 2013;McCloud 2003). Indeed, fandoms are not religions in the traditional sense, à la world religions that have developed a wide-ranging theological belief system and a congregation with longstanding social and cultural bonds over many centuries.…”