Fan Studies On Fandoms

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Audience research plays a crucial role in the study of fandom as it offers insightful information about particular media texts. The study of fandom involves having a thorough understanding of textuality and of the great variety of interactions that occur between text and audience. In addition to the study of fans, the study of anti-fans and non-fans are imperative to investigate as a part of media research as they offer different textualities. The Internet is rapidly altering the landscape for media audiences by expanding its ability to interact with popular texts. This essay will explain why investigating fandoms is so useful in broadening understandings of the audience to find out what a particular media text is about and how it is relevant …show more content…
In early phase of fan studies, “political intervention sided with the tactics of audiences in their evasion of dominant ideologies…that set out to rigorously defend fan communities against their ridicule in the mass media and by non-fans” (Gray, Sandvoss & Harrington 2007). Fan scholars aimed to use what was often considered a derogatory practice and status to transform it into a positive one. After failed efforts to modify media producer’s decision-making, Tulloch and Jenkins (1995) referred to fans as a “powerless elite”. They defined fans as “structurally situated between products they have little control over and the ‘wider public’ whose continued following of the show can never be assured, but on whom the survival of the show depends” (Tulloch and Jenkins 1995, p. 145). Early fan studies aimed to disprove many of the negative characterizations that had been linked to fan activities. John Fiske remarked that fandom is “associated with the cultural tastes of subordinated formations of the people, particularly those disempowered by any combination of gender, age, class, and race (Fiske 1992, …show more content…
His theory of taste was used to assess, contrary to popular beliefs, that “fans clearly practiced forms of cultural discrimination” (Fiske 1992). The differences between fan communities were identified and they were divided according to hierarchies in taste. This allowed for scholars to further examine fans construction of identities. People also defined themselves through how they identified themselves with fan-objects. Fandom began to become more positively acknowledged in the culture industries as people started nourishing their fan communities in what was a highly competitive
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