“I Am Fan of an Entire Universe Created by Fans Rather Than Just the Source Text on Its Own.”

Home , Fan labor, Harry Potter fandom, Henry Jenkins

“I am fan of an entire universe created by fans rather than just the source text on its own.”

An exploration of the new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture with regards to fandom

BA Thesis Renske Jacobs Student number: 2011467/u500734 Online Culture: Digital Media Department of Culture Studies School of Humanities and Digital Sciences July 2020 Supervisor: dr. S.E. van der Beek Second reader: dr. M. Hou

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 4 1.1 Relevance of the study 4 1.2 Setup and research questions 5 2 Theoretical Framework 6 2.1 Convergence Culture 6 2.1.1 Participatory Culture` 7 2.1.2 Transmedia Design 8 2.2 Fandom 8 2.2.1 Fans 9 2.2.2 Media Fandom 10 2.2.3 Online Fandom 12 2.3 Areas of Fandom 13 2.3.1 Practices 13 2.3.2 Affectivity 14 2.3.3 Social dynamics 16 3 Methodology 18 3.1 Case Studies 18 3.2 Research Strategies 20 3.2.1 Insider Ethnography 20 3.2.2 Qualitative Interviewing 23 A. Participants 23 B. Procedure 24 C. Data Analysis 25 4 Results 27 4.1 How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture with regards to practices? 27 4.1.1 Creating fanon and lingo: Transmedia Design 27 A. Fanon 27 B. Lingo 29 4.1.2 Promotion by fans: Fan Labor 30 4.1.3 “Fangirling”: Expressing Fandom 33 4.2 How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture with regards to affectivity? 35 4.2.1 Stereotypes 35 4.2.2 Identification and Meaning 36

4.3 How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture with regards to social dynamics? 38 4.3.1 Hierarchies within Fandoms 38 4.3.2 The Power of Social Media: Maintenance & Internet Friendships 40 5 Conclusions and Discussion 43 5.1 Convergence Culture and Fan Practices 43 5.2 Convergence Culture and Fan Affectivity 45 5.3 Convergence Culture and Social Fan Dynamics 45 5.4 Conclusion and Suggestions for further Research 46 5.5 Limitations of the Study 47

References 49

Appendices 52

Appendix A – General overview of participants in the interviews 52

Appendix B – Information letter used for this study 53

Appendix C – Consent form used for this study 56

Appendix D – Interview questions used for this study 57

1. Introduction

The field of fan studies is an everchanging and dynamic field of research. With the development of the Internet – and more specifically, the Web 2.0 – fans have been provided with a new platform to express their fandom and with opportunities for new types of fan practices (Lamerichs, 2018, pp.20-21). This online visibility has offered a new area of focus within the field of fan studies, namely online fandom and the way it compares to, differs from or complements offline fandom discourses.

In 2006, Henry Jenkins introduced the topic of convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006, p.2). Convergence culture to him, is the culture in which content flows dynamically across media, in which multiple media industries cooperate and in which media audiences are on a hunt for bits of entertainment that they enjoy for which they will go to great lengths to be able to consume it. This concept is an interesting phenomenon, since it partakes in a participatory cultural setting. Different cultural practices are being facilitated by this, such as transmedia design and hierarchy construction which is enabled by convergence culture its underlying power dynamics. Convergence culture as a process thus facilitates new dimensions of cultural practices. This thesis focuses on the way contemporary fandoms make use of these new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture.

1.1 Relevance of the study

In this thesis, I seek to explore the concept of convergence culture, the intricate world of fan communities, and the way the two influence each other. Exploring these concepts will result in an attempt at mapping out how contemporary fan communities make use of convergence culture and the new dimensions it facilitates.

This thesis deals with matter that is very much of the current age we are living in; it focuses on fandom in the digital age and the way convergence culture as a process has allowed online fandoms with new dimensions for expressing their fandom. The study focuses on processes that take place in a participatory culture, which is very much a dominant culture in nowadays society and should thus not be overlooked in fan studies. Therefore, this study is very much of its time and relevant. Secondly, the current media landscape is constantly changing and so, the academic community has to change with it as well. This research contributes knowledge derived from online insider ethnography and qualitative interviewing that focusses on topics not yet extensively discussed in the field of fan studies. These topics include but are not limited to the concept of “fangirling”, internet friendships, and the power of social media with regards to maintaining fandoms and their scope. Lastly, this study has a very specific focus, namely the way fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture. These new

4 dimensions have constituted a new definition of what fandom is, namely fandom as those groups of individuals that actively go into dialogue with a source text of which they are a fan across different platforms. This new understanding of fandom has to be explored further, and this study aims at doing such a first exploration and therefore is very relevant.

1.2 Setup and research questions

In my theoretical framework, I outline the most important academic concepts that are relevant for my study. This includes academic literature and contemporary stances on concepts such as convergence culture, participatory culture, transmedia design, fandom, fans, media fandom, online fandom, fan practices, affectivity within fandom and social dynamics. In the methodology, I will defend my choices for a digital ethnographic approach, with focuses on insider ethnography, case studies, and qualitative interviewing. In the methodology part, I will also introduce my case studies and the participants, and will reflect on my position as an aca-fan. The results and conclusions are aimed at answering the central research question: How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture? In order to help myself in constructing an answer to the final research question, three sub-research questions where constructed based on the three central areas that are relevant in this study. The results and conclusions both follow the sub-research questions as guidelines through the process. The sub-research questions are phrased as the following:

1. How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture with regards to practices?

2. How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture with regards to affectivity?

3. How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture with regards to social dynamics?

2. Theoretical Framework

2.1 Convergence culture

Since this research focuses on convergence culture and the way it influences fandom, we first need to correctly understand what is meant with “convergence culture”. In order to correctly understand what the concept entails, we need to look at its roots and its related notions. Henry Jenkins introduces the concept in his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006) alongside the two related concepts of “participatory culture” and “transmedia storytelling”. As Jenkins says in the introduction:

“Welcome to convergence culture, where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways.” (p.2)

Through the concept of convergence culture, we are able to study a culture in which content flows from one medium to another, in which multiple media industries cooperate and in which media audiences are on a big search for the type of entertainment they want and for which they will go to great lengths. Where once a book was a book, and a movie was a movie, books can now become scripts for movies and games, and can inspire unauthorized authors to write their own stories inspired by this source text. Content flows from medium to medium, and is constantly rewritten, repurposed and re-interpreted. Important to note here is that a “source text” does not necessarily only include forms of actual textual sources; a source text is understood in this research as a cultural artefact. The concept of a source text thus includes a broad variety of “things” such as literal texts, music, videos, people or even someone their aesthetic.

In Convergence Culture Reconsidered (2015, pp.15-16), Georgi and Glaser note on the idea that multiple scholars, such as Jenkins (2006, p.11) himself and Van Dijck (2013, p.14) share the idea that not only technological developments have made convergence culture what it is. The process of globalization, for example, plays a big role in the emergence of convergence culture. Now that people have the opportunity to go wherever they want quickly – may this be by physically going somewhere else, or by connecting digitally with someone who is somewhere else – the spread of stories from these new places goes quicker as well. We are also more interested in stories from these other places that are now reachable for us, and therefore these stories are more likely to be retold. As Georgi and Glaser (2015) explain, the shared idea about convergence culture is that it is influenced by different technological, social, cultural and global changes (p.15). The concept thus has an interdisciplinary origin.

This interdisciplinary origin allows us to understand convergence culture as a process that is embedded in these different areas of life; convergence culture is affected by, and in return also affects technological dynamics, social dynamics, cultural dynamics, and global dynamics. It has allowed for us to become more engaged with different and new technologies, and has allowed us with new social processes such as sparking dialogue with a source text and sharing about this, and has allowed us with the ability to gain a better understanding of global interpretations of the same source text. A central cultural aspect that comes with convergence culture, and actually facilitates it, is the idea of participant culture.

2.1.1 Participatory Culture

In 2006, Henry Jenkins argued that “the contemporary media landscape is innovative, convergent, everyday, appropriative, networked, global, generational and unequal.” (Jenkins, 2006). These eight aspects of the contemporary media landscape according to Jenkins allow for what he calls participatory culture. Where media consumption used to be understood as passive, and media producers and consumers were seen as two separate things, we now live in a society where the boundaries are not as clear anymore and media consumption is often an active consumption. This is what “participatory culture” entails according to Jenkins. (2006, p.3) Participatory culture refers to the idea that producers and audiences are in a constant dialogue with the source text, and are able to influence each other while still being unequal in power; if a producer writes a storyline for a character, every fan will see it, while not everyone will see it if a fan writes a storyline for a character. As a concept, participatory culture shapes the conditions in which convergence culture can emerge. It functions as a facilitator of convergence culture, since it frees a path for source texts to flow between different platforms because fans are in a constant dialogue with the source text on these different platforms. Since it is a necessary aspect for convergence culture to happen, it is of importance that we view this research as set in an era of participatory culture.

The idea of a participatory culture, especially in relation to fandom, where not everyone is equal but consumers are increasingly supported to become co-creators has sparked discussions on underlying power dynamics, and has allowed for new ideas to be shaped. (Lamerichs, 2018, p.16). An example of an idea shaped by this is Stebbins (2007) his idea of viewing fandom as “serious leisure”.1

1 This idea will be further explored in the discussion about fan labor in the section on fan practices (section 2.3.1).

2.1.2 Transmedia Design

Transmedia storytelling is a concept which is facilitated by convergence culture and of importance when studying lived cultures, in which the focus lies on a certain source text and the distribution of this source text. As the line between producers and audiences becomes thinner, both groups interact with each other to construct a world for a certain source text to live in. Jenkins defines transmedia storytelling as “the art of world making” (p.21). As he explains:

“To fully experience any fictional world, consumers must assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels, comparing notes with each other via online discussion groups, and collaborating to ensure that everyone who invests time and effort will come away with a richer entertainment experience.” (Jenkins, 2006, p.21)

Transmedia storytelling thus refers to the idea that in order for fans to be active, they have to construct their own worlds which is done by using different media platforms in which a certain source text can live and exist.

However, in her book Productive Fandom: Intermediality and Affective Reception in Fan Cultures (2018), Nicolle Lamerichs proposes the idea of changing the name of this concept to “transmedia design” (p.27). This she justifies by mentioning and showing in her case studies that transmedia storytelling is often not limited to the practice of “storytelling”; transmedia performances or play is often at hand as well which is why using the word “storytelling” is not a good manner to phrase this concept. Secondly, she mentions that the use of the word “design” more clearly identifies the commercial gain which lies at hand of transmedia content. (pp.27-28) Transmedia storytelling does not refer to this commercial gain, but Jenkins does mention it as an important aspect and therefore, I feel like Lamerichs way of naming the concepts “Transmedia Design” is more fitting. With transmedia design, I thus refer to the idea of creating a transmedia world for a certain source artefact to live in.

2.2 Fandom

In order to look at the way convergence has influenced fan practices, we first need to clearly define some concepts that come with fandom. This section will provide a clear definition and discussion of the terms “fandom”, “fan”, “media fandom”, and “online fandom”. The next section on Areas of Fandom will be used to deepen the understanding of fandom by looking at different areas that can be found with fandoms and are of importance in understanding fandoms. I have decided to separate these two sections since the first gives more a general overview of the concept “fandom” and how we can explain it, and

8 the second section explores three areas of fandom that are of importance in this research. This is also why these three areas are the ones we explore with out sub-research questions.

Hellekson and Busse (2006) say that “fandom” can be defined and approached in different ways; where Couldry (2003) approached the concept as a type of religion, Lancaster (2001) as well as Coppa (2006) looked at the concept as a form of performance and Lamerichs sees fandom as “a subset of an increasingly larger participatory culture” (2018, p.233). This is only a grasp of the way fandom is being approached and defined in the diverse and interdisciplinary field of fan studies. In order to remain clear, I will use the following description of the concept mentioned by Lamerichs (2018, p.14):

Fandom can be seen as “the sum total of the fan communities and individuals who are connected by their love for a particular text. Moreover, fandom refers to the interpretive and creative practices in which invested audience members engage.”

This description of fandom is one that comes from a scholar who functions as an aca-fan herself in researching fandom. The definition itself originates from her book on productive fandom in the age of participatory culture, and therefore I felt like using this definition was very useful for my own research. I would like to defend this notion by stating that I as well focus on fandom in participatory culture – with a focus on the aspect of convergence culture – and have defined the same three areas of focus for my research (practices, affectivity and social dynamics) as Lamerichs implies as important areas of fandom with this definition.2

2.2.1 Fans

As explained by Henry Jenkins (1992), the term “fan” has been derived from the term “fanatic” which is an abbreviation of the Latin term “fanaticus”. Fanaticus translated in its literal form to a strong devotee of religion, but quickly obtained a negative aura which lead to the idea of a fanaticus as an overly enthusiastic person (Jenkins, 1992). Even though the negative connotation to the word “fan” have somewhat disappeared from concrete definitions we can find in today’s dictionaries, fans still seem to face negative responses due to stereotypes that come with the term. According to Jenkins (1992, p.10), stereotypical fans (like in his case example the Star Trek fans called Trekkies):

“a. are brainless consumers who will buy anything associated with the program or its cast;

b. devote their lives to the cultivation of worthless knowledge;

c. place inappropriate importance on devalued cultural material;

2 A reference to and broader explanation for this last argument is given at the start of section 2.3: Areas of Fandom. 9

d. are social misfits who have become so obsessed with the show that it forecloses other types of social experience;

e. are feminized and/or desexualized through their intimate engagement with mass culture;

f. are infantile, emotionally and intellectually immature;

g. are unable to separate fantasy from reality.”

The stereotypes that thus come with the concept of a “fan” are fairly negative and often still used today. However, in my research I will not necessarily look at these stereotypes, but I will take them with me in the back of my mind when conducting said research. This I do because I believe that being aware of the stereotypical way fans are being viewed can have a significant impact on the way that fans portray themselves and their identities both online and offline.

For the purposes of my research, I want to define a fan as a keen follower or enthusiast of a certain person or narrative (a source text), that actively engages with this source text by participating in affective, creative or social practices. In doing so, I divide the “casual follower” of a certain something, from the “fan” by putting the emphasis on a fan’s creative engagement; where the casual follower just listens one’s music for example, the fan tweets about it or makes their own cover of it.

2.2.2 Media Fandom

As mentioned before, the field of fandom studies is a dynamic field, partially due to the fact that there are fans of so many different types of source texts; from fans of a certain sport to fans of a celebrity or a book series, there are passionate followers of almost everything. This means that there is not just “one type” of fandom; fandoms that focus on a different type of source text have different types of practices that come along with it, and even within a fandom, different individuals attribute different meanings to the concept of fandom (Duffet, 2013, p.51-52). In order to capture this variety in possible fandoms, this research incorporates three different fandoms. All of these fandoms can be classified under the umbrella term media fandom.

Duffet (2013, p.24) defines media fandom as “the recognition of a positive, personal, relatively deep emotional connection with a mediated element of popular culture” (Duffet, 2013, p.2). To me as an aca-fan, and with regards to the previously-defined concept of fandom, this definition feels very incomplete. This because fandom in general is not “just a recognition” of an affective connection towards a source text; it is a sum of individuals, communities, and affective or social practices that are connected by their love for a certain source text. Therefore, I would like to propose using a part of Duffet his definition but enrich it with my chosen definition by Lamerichs (2018,

10 p.14). In this research, media fandom will be regarded as the sum total of the fan communities and individuals who are connected by a shared positive, personal, relatively deep, and emotional connection with a mediated element of popular culture. This connection leads to the engagement of audience members in interpretive and creative practices. It is an umbrella term for different types of fandom, and in itself also a category of “fandom” in general since there is not just one fandom.

In his book on television fans (1992), Henry Jenkins wondered if the fans he discusses in his book – i.e. fans with television narratives as source text – are necessarily identical to fans of for example music or specific media personalities (1992, p.286). I agree with Duffet who states that Jenkins is right in saying that fans of different source texts are not inherently identical to each other (2013, p.26). However, even though they are not identical, they share the idea that their source text is a mediated element of popular culture. As Duffet mentions with regards to a same type of source text: “Media fandom holds together narrative and personality, criticism and emotion. Its different forms – represented at their extremes, perhaps, by sci-fi and popular music fandom – are associated with different theoretical perspectives, yet they are not completely distinct.” (2013, p.27). This implies that popular culture contains multiple, different “categories” of fandom. In my research, I will address two different categories of media fandom: telefantasy fandom and celebrity-following fandom.

Telefantasy fandom is described by Duffet as fandoms that have as their main focus “a broad genre of television programming that includes sci-fi and fantasy narratives.” (2013, p.26). This description leaves out sci-fi and fantasy narratives that are not necessarily related to television programming. Even though I know that telefantasy linguistically implies that it is related to television programming, I would like to argue that the telefantasy fandom can contain fandom of any type of content that has a fantasy or science fiction narrative, as long as it is remediated towards film at one point in its existence. I think using this definition of telefantasy fandom is very much of the current age of digitalization in which we live, since participatory culture and convergence culture have increasingly allowed fictional narratives to be remediated. Therefore, a lot of fandoms that originally do not fall under the category of telefantasy fandom – like the Harry Potter books for example – can now be categorized under this name since I think that they rightfully belong there.

Where in telefantasy fandoms, the element of popular culture is a fictional narrative, in celebrity- following fandoms this element is the celebrity themselves (Duffet, 2013, p.26). Duffet talks about popular music fandoms as one of the most famous examples of celebrity-following fandoms. I once again want to add an elaboration to the definition provided by Duffet. In this research, I would like to argue that celebrity-following fandoms have as a source text the celebrity as a person themselves, or/and the products or aesthetic created by the celebrity. Fans sometimes start at the product-level; take the popular music fandom example of Duffet. A person hears a song by a band like The Beatles

and will start to create an admiration for the music, and will become a fan of the music. They are then already part of a celebrity-following fandom, even though they might not be fan of the actual celebrity rather than the product that the celebrity has created. Becoming fan of the celebrity themselves is a second layer in this case, where one researches about The Beatles their band members and stays up to date on their lives. This is not necessarily a crucial step in order to be part of a celebrity-following fandom, but it is a possible step. The same goes the other way around; a person can for example be a fan of Kim Kardashian-West as a person, but might not be completely interested in the products that she eventually started creating. Still, this person is part of a celebrity- following fandom.

2.2.3 Online Fandom

With the process of digitalization, it was only a matter of time until fandom would expand to online communities as well. As Matthew Hills correctly notes, online fandoms cannot “merely be viewed as a version or reflection of ‘offline’ fandoms.” (2002, p.135). This new, online sphere allows for practices that were not an option before and therefore, online fandoms are not identical to or reflections of offline fandoms. However, it is important to note that the two can work complementary; where there was a The Beatles fanbase long before the Internet and social media platforms were a thing, there now is an active The Beatles community online as well (Roessner, 2016, pp.222-223). This gives us the idea that fandoms have basically “grown up” and grown with the process of digitalization.

Another notion that is made about online fandom by Hills (2002, pp.141-142) is that fans are now more involved in looking for what is interesting to them and consuming only content that is relevant for them. In the pre-digital age, a fan could just consume that content that was given to them; there were only restricted sources available on the source text, like the source text itself or the occasional article in a magazine about it. In this digital age, there are so many sources available constantly, so fans get to choose which content is relevant for them, and therefore consumption is more interest-based. If as a One Direction fan you secretly dream of Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson (two of the members) being together in a romantic relationship, there will be enough fanfictions online that can turn this dream into a narratively reality.3 Even if these relevant sources were not available, you can now easily make them yourselves and share them with the world. Fan productivity has become even more important now that online fandoms exist.

3 Examples are Charlotte.H.Davis’ What if it never happened? (2020) on Fanficition.net (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13545311/1/What-if-it-never-happened) or LifeOfTheMusic’s Changed By Love (2012) on Wattpad (https://www.wattpad.com/story/1142581-changed-by-love-larry-stylinson). 12

2.3 Areas of Fandom

This section seeks to explore the academic ideas connected to three areas of fandom that are of importance in this study: practices, affectivity and social dynamics. As defined as the leading definition of fandom earlier on in this chapter, fandom is understood in this research as “the sum total of the fan communities and individuals who are connected by their love for a particular text. Moreover, fandom refers to the interpretive and creative practices in which invested audience members engage.” (Lamerichs, 2018, p.14). This definition implies these three areas are subsets of what defines a fandom: there is a certain connection in fandoms (social dynamics), that is constituted by a shared love for a source text (a sense of affectivity), and which is manifested through engaging in interpretative and creative practices (practices). This is why these three areas are understood in this study as of academic importance for understanding fandom and will now be defined and analyzed critically.

2.3.1 Practices All creative, affective or social practices that set the fan apart from the casual follower can be coined under the term “fan practices”. Already in 1990, John Fiske noted that audiences of popular culture are rather active consumers that adapt to this culture and go in dialogue with it, rather than passive consumers. Jenkins (2006, p.20) adds an argument valid for the digitalized age in which we live today that builds further on this notion. He states that industries urge consumers to become cocreators due to the fact that they now share more spaces with their audiences; on social media for example, an author can be followed by fans and vice versa, authors can ask fans for their opinion on how a story should continue, but authors can also find fans’ own work inspired by the source text without explicitly asking the fans to create it. Fans have increasingly become partakers in a participatory culture where they are encouraged to engage in a dialogue with the source text. To refer back to Lammerichs’ definition of fandom I used before, these dialogues that fans have with the source text are the “interpretive and creative practices in which invested audience members engage” (2018, p.14) that she describes as a key feature of a fan. The concept of fan practices thus refers back to these dialogues between a fan and the source text, and therefore I define fan practices as an umbrella term for all the creative, affectionate and social practices that fans enact, regardless of the size or significance.

Since fan practices is an umbrella term, I want to specifically point out one form of fan practices that has been a topic of discussion and interest in the field of fan studies. This type of fan practices is called fan labor. Fan labor contains those unpaid fan practices from which media industries actively gain a profit (Lamerichs, 2018, p.16). These unpaid practices range from writing fanfictions that can eventually be sold as scripts for movies – both the Fifty Shades of Grey (original text from 2009) and the After (original text from 2013) franchise originated as fanfictions – to unpaid

13 promotion by fans – “Omg! Harry Styles just brought out a new single! Listen to it here!”-like tweets. Fans do these actions deliberately without the intention of profiting from it in a commercial way, but media industries excessively rely on and exploit these actions.

Here is when the linguistic debate comes in: the use of a word like “labor” can imply a sense of unwillingness. Mayer (2017) states the following with regards to the use of the word labor in Media Studies: “In its most common uses, the term “labor” refers to either an organized system of exploitation or a personal source of pleasure.” (p.115). According to this definition, “labor” seems to have an either/or relationship with regards to exploitation and pleasure. This would mean that fan practices that are coined as fan labor are either just for personal pleasure and are not exploited, or a form of serious leisure where exploitation is key and fans do not necessarily enjoy the production of these fan products. However, in practice this does not seem to be the case. As Banks & Humphreys (2008) already note correctly, the two are not always mutually exclusive. In order to name something as a form of fan labor, we need to have a product where exploitation and pleasure are simultaneously present (Stanfil & Condis, 2014, section 2.3).

When talking of fan labor, I thus refer to those fan practices that are a personal source of pleasure for the fans that enact them, but that are also a part of an organized system of exploitation by media industries.

2.3.2 Affectivity

Affect is one of the building blocks of fandom (Lammerichs, 2018, p.18). As Lammerichs puts it: “Being a fan is an experience that is grounded in a feeling – an admiration of texts that are used to connect to others and the world itself.” Without a certain affective relationship towards the source text, a fan would be a casual witness that does not feel something excessively when they encounter the source text. Therefore, affect is a driving force that enables fandom rather than a process that represents a something (Rentschler, 2017, p.12). Affectivity comes with different processes that are of importance in this research: affect enables processes of identification, stereotyping, and relationship formation. I will now further outline each of these processes from the academic point of view.

In 2.2.1 I brought up the traditional stereotypes of fans that were mentioned by Jenkins (1992, p.10). All of them have a certain relation to affectivity; in general, all the stereotypes proposed have in common that they view the almost-obsessive, intimate engagement that fans show with their source text as something that is inappropriate and weird and therefore, fans are seen as outsiders. Affect can thus facilitate negative processes for fans, since being stereotyped can make them feel uneasy and can make them change their behavior accordingly. All of this is related to wanting to belong, whether this is belonging to either a certain fan community and therefore acting overly- affective towards a source text, or belonging to the general public and therefore changing your

“normal” fan behavior. Wanting to belong and identifying with is an affective process in itself, and it also occurs in fan communities.

As we have established, being a fan of a certain source text means both having an affective connection with the source text and actively engaging in conversation with this source text. Since being a fan of something is not “just a way to spend you pastime” but rather an emotional processes that requires active involvement, being a fan can become a part of one their identity (Duffet, 2013, p.60). Duffet calls this “personal fandom: the fannish identity and experience of an individual person”. Being a fan of a source text thus brings a sense of identification with the source text; there is a point in time where one has a certain admiration or at least fascination for the source text and will take this admiration on in their self-identification (Duffet, 2013, p.61). This self-identification can come with a sense of familiarity or a sense of “coming home” in the sense that whenever a fan engages again with the source text, it will feel as if they are where they belong and they can actively engage with something that comforts them. As Walsh (2019, p.xvi) states about self-identification with fictional source texts: “Sociological and psychological research indicates that fictional representation impacts self-identity. When people connect to a character, they imagine themselves occupying that role.” Put simply, representation matters. For my research I would go as far as saying that being able to identity with any type of source text – fictional or not – impacts self-identity and therefore, being represented can provide an affective connection that is of importance.

Lastly, affectivity can enable the formation of relationships. In fandoms, affective relationship formation happens in two ways. First there is the affective relationship between the fan and the source text, and secondly there is the affective relationship amongst fans that makes for fan communities. The fan-source-text-relationship is an extensively discussed one. It is often seen as an unhealthy one since it is a para-social relationship: it is a one-way relationship that consists out of the idea that a fan thinks they “really know the source text” based on all the mediated content they have seen of the source text (Horton & Wohl, 1956). However, after doing research for an extended period of time, Stevers (2009) found that there is a large group of fans that is more motivated by a genuine interest in the source text rather than an actual obsession with the source text that outnumbers the group of the almost psychopathological fans used in the example of Horton and Wohl. Therefore, the para-social relationship is not necessarily as dangerous or as unhealthy as described by Horton and Wohl. Even though the larger group of fans with a genuine interest in the source text still engage in a para-social interaction (they go in dialogue with the source text by engaging with it and not necessarily getting something back from it), it is not necessarily unhealthy since it sparks them joy and does not harm anyone. Secondly, there are the affective relationships amongst fans. Louisa Stein argues that fandom as it is in this age of digitalization has brought a “culture of feels” with it that is also at the beginning of why fans share and why they create communities; “emotions remain intimate but are no longer necessarily private; rather, they build a

15 sense of an intimate collective, one that is bound together precisely by the processes of shared emotional authorship.” (2015, p.156). Sharing of emotions has allowed us to build communities, based on shared feelings towards a certain source text. Affectivity thus enables the building of relationships.

2.3.3 Social dynamics

As mentioned in the subsection above on affectivity, the building of relationships is enabled by affectivity and intimate collectives are being shaped by sharing affective emotions with others (Stein, 2015, p.156). This is when a fan become part of a fandom; a community of different people – or even different sub-communities – where affective and social practices with regards to the source text are central. Since there is now a larger community of fans, social dynamics come into play. Social dynamics is described as the study of interpersonal relations within a group and the way they influence group behavior or the behaviors of individuals within a group (Durlauf & Young, 2001). In this research, social dynamics look into the way people in fandoms behave as a group, the constitution of interpersonal relationships within these groups and the outcome of certain behavior of individuals in these groups. I would like to academically discuss the two concepts of hierarchies within fandoms and internet friendships since they are two important forms of social dynamics that can be studied in fan culture.

Matthew Hills (2002) argues that the work of Pierre Bourdieu on processes of cultural distinction could be applied on fan studies since it effectively “allows us to consider any given fan culture not simply as a community but also as a social hierarchy where fans share a common interest while also competing over fan knowledge, access to the object of fandom, and status.” (p.20). Fandoms can thus not only be seen as communities, but also as social hierarchies where different individuals have obtained a different status. This idea brings with it a sense of competition and a sense of inequality that is important to keep in mind when studying fandoms. The negative feelings of inequality and competition could namely influence the way fans interact with each other as well as with the source text. Therefore, viewing fandoms as a social hierarchy next to as well as a community is an important social dynamic point of interest in studying fans and fandom.

On the exact opposite of a sense of inequality and competition lies another important social dynamic point of interest: internet friendships. Internet friendships are a topic that has not been explored quite intensely in the academic field of fan studies. The very basic idea of an internet friendship – as the concept linguistically implies – is that a genuine friendship can be started and underheld online. What has been academically discussed about friendships on the internet is that we look for social connections online because we are lonely but afraid of intimacy (Turkle, 2012). Technologies that facilitate these social connections are merely technologies that can give us the illusion of companionship rather than true friendship. This would therefore suggest that internet

16 friendships as meaningful connections do not exist, or are not necessarily meaningful relationships. However, since fan communities exists out of multiple individuals with a shared interest and since there is so little research done on the topic of internet friendships as a social dynamic (especially within fandoms), I explicitly decided to include this in my research to start a broader academic discussion on internet friendships.

3. Methodology

In order to obtain an answer to my research question, I analyze the way digitalization and convergence culture have offered new tools to fan communities to engage with. My main focus is on analyzing the way convergence culture has provided fandoms with opportunities in the areas of fan practices, affectivity and social dynamics. In order to do so, I take a mainly ethnographical approach. By partaking in the discipline of digital ethnography, I focus mostly on the online dimension of fandoms while not excluding the offline dimension completely (Hine, 2017, p.25). In digital ethnography, the two work complementary and therefore this is my method of choice. However, due to the recent developments with the COVID-19 virus in The Netherlands, it is currently hard to undertake offline research. Therefore, my research will have a major focus on the online world in which fandoms function. I do, however, observe online fan practices and ask fans how their practices offline work complementary to their online practices in order to at least stay aware of the offline dimensions that come with fandom. I will further explain my research strategy in the upcoming sections, but firstly want to justify my choices.

As explained by Lamerichs (2018, p.47), “the study of fans requires a methodological framework that can account for its social, creative, and affective features”. Since in this research, fandoms are seen as active communities that produce creative goods from source texts that flow across media, we need to observe the source texts on the different platforms where they appear. Therefore, we need a research strategy that allows us to look at different platforms – both online as offline – in order to portray an image that is as representative of fandom as possible. By looking at fans’ behavior online, but interviewing fans as well to obtain information on their offline behavior, I can also observe whether there are differences between the two. This can give me an indicator of the importance of digitalization and convergence culture on fandom.

I will now further explain my choices of research strategies and how this will be operationalized. This I do by introducing my case studies, further explaining my research strategies for these case studies and making a notion on undertaking this research as an aca-fan.

3.1 Case Studies

In order to set certain limits on the scope of my research, I focus on three different fandoms as my case studies. This study focusses on:

1. The Harry Potter Fandom 2. The One Direction Fandom

3. The Jeffree Star Fandom4

I specifically chose three fandoms with a different core-medium in order to try and give a diverse and complete overview as possible of how convergence culture has influenced fandom. As all of these are very broad, I narrow the scope of the fandoms down in size by focusing only on content that is produced by fans with a Dutch nationality. A second reason why I choose for Dutch fans only is to increase the accessibility to the fans since I speak their native language and I can approach them easily for interviews. I also want to mention a specific criterium when it comes to the One Direction fandom and the content that was created there. Since One Direction is currently not operating as a boyband anymore, I chose to focus on fans that have actively followed One Direction during the time that they were still operating as a boyband, as well as actively following the band members’ – or one band member’s – solo career(s). This to ensure that there is still enough data available – since current fan-produced content on One Direction as its whole are rare.

To justify my choices for these specific three case studies even more, I will now outline two key differences between these three different fandoms. Firstly, there is the notion of categorization. As explained in the theoretical framework, there are different types of fandoms and we try to categorize them by generalizing the source text that they are invested with. The two types of fandoms that are visible in my study are the previously introduced telefantasy fandom and celebrity-following fandom, which are the two important sub-categories of media fandom. In my study, the Harry Potter fandom is the case that can be categorized as an example of a telefantasy fandom, since it focuses on the fantasy world of Harry Potter. Secondly, there is the celebrity-following fandom. The One Direction fandom and the Jeffree Star fandom can both be seen as examples of these celebrity-follower fandoms.

Next to this, the three different fandoms all represent a different form of transmedia convergence. Where the Harry Potter fandom focuses mainly on a written narrative and its world which has been transformed into a franchise – from books to movies to online platforms such as Pottermore – the One Direction fandom focuses mostly on music and the artists that create this music. The music is listened, shared and often closely examined, and the artists themselves are followed closely, both online on social media as well as offline by going to their concerts and visiting places where they shot their music videos for example. Lastly, the Jeffree Star fandom started off as focusing only on YouTube content, but has shifted lately to focusing on the entire Jeffree Star aesthetic – which also encompasses offline products such as make-up palettes. The three fandoms have thus a different type of source text

4 I would like to note in mid-June 2020, (online) drama involving Jeffree Star started. The decision of including the Jeffree Star fandom was made long before these controversies came to light, and the interviews with the Jeffree Star fans were held in April 2020. This means that thoughts uttered in the interviews by the fans may be subject to have changed after the recent drama involving the celebrity. For a timeline on the recent drama, I suggest this website: https://www.insider.com/shane-dawson-tati-westbrook-video-jeffree-star-drama-timeline- cancelled-2020-6#dawson-and-star-have-both-had-long-internet-careers-sparking-storied-controversies-over-the- last-decade-starting-in-2018-dawson-and-star-rebranded-as-a-powerful-youtube-duo-with-their-successful- videos-and-merchandise-they-seemed-more-popular-than-ever-1. 19 at its core – books, music, YouTube content – but have all undergone the transition towards an active fandom that changes the medium of the source text – both offline as well as online.

3.2 Research Strategies

As mentioned in the introductory part of this methodology, it is of utmost importance to analyze both offline and online media in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the way convergence culture has influenced fan practices. This mix-method approach is inspired by Lamerichs (2018), because she has also stretched the importance of this type of research when undertaking fan studies. However, due to the developments with regards to the COVID-19 virus the main focus of the study is on the data gathered during online interviews, and online content produced by fans. Therefore, my approach is defined as a Digital Ethnographic one that will include two main research strategies: insider- ethnography and qualitative interviewing.

3.2.1 Insider Ethnography

In her book, Lamerichs mentions the following: “we have gone from text to context, from art to lived cultures that can be studied in mutual dependency” (2018, p.49). In order to study these context-dependent lived cultures, it is of importance that I emerge myself in these lived culture. This is why my approach takes on an insider-perspective; to gain an in-depth understanding of the fandoms I describe them from inside out. The specific research strategy that I undertake that falls under this insider ethnography is participant observation. Participant observation is the idea that a researcher can gain knowledge through observing the community their studying, but also by actively participating in them (Spradley, 1980, pp.39-40). This is quite a traditional, ethnographical approach but very relevant since it helps us better understand why people do what they do. By emerging oneself into a community, the researcher has first-hand experience with the way people act and why they act like this, and through this personal experience they can better understand the people in the community. As explained before, due to the COVID-19 virus, participant observation will be done online. I study the Harry Potter, One Direction and Jeffree Star community for a period of 2 months – one month before and one month during my interviews – so that I can address fans their own specific posts or posts found to be specific for a certain fandoms during the interviews. Important to note is that sometimes, fans discuss posts or fan practices they enact with me that were not of the 2 months in which I performed insider ethnography. In these cases, I look up the specific posts fans talk about using the advanced search button on Twitter, or scrolling through their Instagram feed. Studying these communities takes place on Twitter and Instagram, since these are platforms I – as an aca-fan – are most comfortable and familiar with. I try to focus on accounts who clearly state that their owner is of Dutch nationality, but since these communities exist out of transnational bounds, this is not always possible. Whenever someone their data is used, consent has been asked.

Important to note is that even though participant observation is possible online, it comes with a few challenges. First of all, online spaces are “layered publics” (Hellekson & Busse, 2012, p.46- 49). Even though content posted on “public” accounts are social media are technically spoken open to the public, users often perceive the online space where they publish as more closed than it actually is. If a fan posts a public tweet about their source text, they do not expect to be observed or this tweet to be screenshotted and put in a research report, even though technically their tweet is a public good now. Online spaces thus have different layers of how public they are; there are accounts that deliberately share content publicly in order to serve a certain goal like news outlets, accounts that share content publicly very thoughtfully with the explicit awareness of it being public such as celebrities or bloggers, and accounts that share content public without the explicit awareness of it being public such as the aforementioned example of the fan’s tweet. In order to appropriately deal with this issue of social media sites as layered public, I always ask for consent from a fan for every particular post of them that I use in my research, and blur out details that could give away the identity of this person such as usernames or profile pictures. This is in line with Hellekson and Busse’s suggestions on how to deal with the problem of the layered public, as illustrated by the submission policies established for their prestigious fan studies journal Transformative Works and Culture (TWC) (2008); always put the fan first. Practically this means that the fan their privacy should always be obtained as much as possible by not including direct URLs to their submissions and by asking explicit consent for any fan submission used in a research (TWC Editor, n.d.). With regards to source texts, so for example the publicly shared content created by Jeffree Star or One direction, I run with the idea that what they share is being thought out carefully with an awareness of it becoming now public information. Therefore, it is not necessary to ask for explicit consent. However, including this non-consensual content is done in a responsible and ethical manner which follows the example of Jenkins (1992), Hellekson and Busse (2014), and Lamerichs (2018) when they refer to public source texts. For non-consensuel content, I critically decide whether it is necessary to include and I only include content that is not-controversial or graphic. If I use content that I feel is necessary to include, but that does deal with a controversial topic, I include a warning on this topic beforehand so that the readers are aware of this notion before they continue reading.

Secondly, the way one collects data online is very different than the way we do this offline; we can be anonymous as mentioned before and we have to store our data differently. The manner in which I go about collecting my data is by following what has been done by amongst others Jenkins (1992) and Lamerichs (2018): using the idea of a “thick description”, which is a classical ethnographic approach, to write about observations that are done in this case online. In doing so, I can sketch a situation that has occurred online as if I was standing next to the person that was sharing it. The storage of the data is also as closely related to offline ethnography as possible: I keep notes of content that is valid for my research, accompanied by a screenshot of the situation in order to stay

21 truthful to the situation. Where offline, a picture would be used to set the stage of where a certain situation takes place, a screenshot of the situation functions like that for online spaces.

Lastly, online spaces are merely mediated and technological constructs (Lamerichs, 2018, p.55). This means that what we see online is often very subject to algorithmic processes and is mediated in a sense that people share specific bits of their live rather than the whole picture. Viewing online spaces and the online culture that is being enacted like this can be problematic in a sense that it can give the idea that this culture is not “real” or “truthful”; it is just what people want you to believe it is, rather than the total experience that it actually is. Even though there is a truth in the claim that online spaces are mediated, I would still like to view the culture that is enacted on these online platforms as a “part of culture as a whole: a lived and shared experience, rather than a textual or mediated experience” (Lamerichs, 2018, p.55). In doing so, I follow Lamerichs’ example of dealing with this problem by recognizing that technology in itself is not neutral, but that the users of these technology always give meaning to it. This means that the users make sense of the mediated content that they see online to still construct their own truthful reality. Therefore, online fandom culture is regarded as a part of normal culture where we constantly deal with attributing meaning to something that is being said to us.

One important notion that I would like to make in this part is that I as a researcher, can be described as an “aca-fan”. An aca-fan is in short a scholar that him- or herself happens to be a fan or becomes as fan through the cases that they research (Hills, 2002). In the field of fan studies, the idea of the aca-fan is seen as both positive as well as negative; scholars are aware that being an insider comes with advantages (see Lamerichs, 2018 or Jenkins, 1992) but being an aca-fan is criticized for coming with the risk of glorifying the subject they are studying (as argued by Bogost, 2010). This interpretative bias that is affected by the closeness one has to a subject is a challenge that ethnographers in every discipline face, as argued by Lamerichs (2018, p.53). Researchers tend to grow close to their topic of research and their participants, and will therefore genuinely care about them. The balance between intimacy and distance in order to remain un-biased is not one particular to aca-fandom studies. However, in order to counter this criticism, Lamerichs proposes to use self- reflexivity. Self-reflexivity for an aca-fan can occur by viewing ethnography as an opportunity to be “surprised by the field, which also requires one to stand back, marvel, and experience situations anew when possible.” (p.53). Following this manner of self-reflexivity, I try to explore the fandoms with a sense of wonder; I approach them like I do not know the fandoms and can so be surprised by the insides that come from studying them, while still having an underlying sense of familiarity with the discourses applied in them. This brings me new insights into fandoms I already know, and therefore minimizes the chance of me glorifying or describing the fandom with a bias.

Secondly, I want to argue that even though being an aca-fan comes with challenges, I think in my case it definitely is an advantage that I have a sense of familiarity with the fan communities I am going to study, because this means I already am part of these communities. As Lamerichs (2018) says: “being an insider meant that I could avoid easy mistakes because I was knowledgeable about fan cultures. Informants not only knew that they could trust me, but they also often approached me directly or shared my work.” (p.52). This is the case for me as well: I do not have to search for the fan communities anymore, and I already know how their discourse works. I also already know people that can function as possible participants for my interviews, which makes it easier to find a sufficient amount of data. Having this sense of familiarity with my case studies is thus also a reason why I chose for them since I think it provides me with sufficient pre-knowledge that helps me in understanding their discourse. Ultimately, understanding their discourse lies at the basis of understanding the fandoms and the way convergence culture has had an influence on them.

3.2.2 Qualitative Interviewing

With insider-ethnography, I am mainly able to create an image of what is being produced online right now. In order to understand the reasoning behind the production of fan products, and also to gain some more information on the offline aspect of fan production, I use qualitative interviewing to further broaden my understanding of what fans do and why they do this. Doing the interviews is also aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the awareness of fans when it comes to certain fan practices or social dynamics within fandom, and the way this influences them. Due to the situation in which this thesis is written – during a time in which the COVID-19 virus is present and active – interviews are held via Skype, since face-to-face contact is not possible. The interview is recorded and analyzed in order to obtain an answer to my research question and its sub-questions. I will now explain a bit more about a. the participants, b. the procedure, and c. the data analysis.

A. Participants

As mentioned, the group of participants contains people from three different fandoms. In order to keep the research feasible, a maximum of 10 interviewees per fandom is being used. There is a total of 24 interviewees; 8 Harry Potter fans, 8 One Direction fans, and 8 Jeffree Star fans. Their age ranges from 17 to 25, so they are all in their (early) adulthood. All of them are of Dutch nationality. To have an overview of participants, their age, their fandom and their most-used social media platform for fandom, see Appendix A. Important to note is that in order to retain the privacy of the interviews, pseudonyms are used when referring to them.

In order to find the participants, I posted messages on Twitter and Instagram. In these messages, I explained that I was looking for Dutch fans that self-identified as “an active fan” of one of the three fandoms used in my research. I illustrated the fact that this was for my Bachelor thesis in the original message and if they were interested in joining, I provided them with more information on the purpose of the research and what was expected from them if they decided to join.

My choice to post messages on Twitter and Instagram in order to find participants rather than asking people if they knew someone who could participate, can be justified by the fact that as an aca-fan myself I know that there are very active fan communities on both Twitter and Instagram since these are the platforms I am most familiar with. Therefore, I knew I would find people who are very active as a fan on these platforms, and whose lingo I am somewhat familiar with since I have participated in the communities on these platforms myself. I also specifically chose for Twitter and Instagram because they are very blunt in stating whether a profile is public or not, and therefore I feel less invasive when scrolling on a public Twitter profile then I would when befriending someone I have never met on their private Facebook. Important to note here is that participants are always asked for consent if I use some of the data that they have posted online, even if their profile is public. They also are informed on the possibility of me using their public data in the information letter I shared with them (see Appendix B) and consent to it by signing a consent form (see Appendix C). I do want to note that I am aware that having participants from only two social media platforms might constrain me from being able to make generalized claims – since there are so many different social media platforms – but for the scope of my research I believe that two social media platforms is sufficient.

B. Procedure

As mentioned, the participants are approached via social media and informed on the purpose of the study and their rights during the study through an information letter5 and a consent form6. This consent form has to be signed for an participant to partake in the study. The interviews take place online via Skype/Microsoft Teams/Zoom (whatever platform is preferred by the participant) and are recorded, as consented to in the consent form. These recordings are stored on a personal, external hard-drive to which no one else has access. Each interview takes between 30-60 minutes.

5 The information letter can be found in Appendix B. 6 The consent form can be found in Appendix C. 24

The interview questions are loosely based on the three earlier introduced areas of fandom on which I will try to understand the influence of convergence culture: practices within fandoms, affectivity within fandom and social dynamics within fandom. By using these three areas of fandom as a guideline through my interviews, I explore different processes that fans undertake that fit into these areas and I will be able to see the influence of digitalization and convergence culture on these areas. The questions used in the interview are also related to my theoretical framework in the sense that I sometimes indirectly ask fans about their awareness with regards to academic concepts; I ask them about stereotypes that they have faced as a fan and I ask them to describe a “fan” in general, for example. This gives me a deeper understanding of the academic concepts, since fans themselves who are not consciously aware of the academic naming of certain concepts give descriptions of them that either match or mismatch the academic description outlined in my theoretical framework. In order to gain a generalized overview, the standard interview questions were the main guideline. However, since a lot of fans do different things, I ask suiting questions to them targeting specific things that they do as a fan, in order to understand their specific way of expressing fandom. By doing so, I am given the opportunity to understand different manners in which fans are able to express themselves. This gives me a better understanding than when I would just stick to my general questions and would not go in-depth with each fan.7

C. Data Analysis

The analysis of the interviews and the data found on social media is done in a qualitative way. To understand what is being said during the interviews and what is being posted online, I refer back to my theoretical framework and use this a guideline through the information provided by the participants during the interviews. By using the theoretical framework as a guideline, I am able to point out the data that aligned with my expectations, but I can also point out new findings that differed from what I had expected.

As mentioned, pseudonyms are used when referring to the participants in order to maintain their privacy. When screenshots of their content on social media is being used, explicit consent is asked for the use of these screenshots and I try to provide the participant with as much anonymity as possible (meaning: blurring out their profile picture if picture of themselves and username).

7 A complete overview of my general interview questions can be found as Appendix D. 25

In order to keep the results structured, I will make use of my sub-research questions:

1. How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture with regards to practices?

2. How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture with regards to affectivity?

3. How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture with regards to social dynamics?

My main areas of focus in analyzing the data and constituting the results are thus fan practices, fan affectivity, and the social dynamics within fandoms.

4. Results

4.1 How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture with regards to practices?

The process of digitalization has provided fans with a lot of new tools and opportunities; social media allow us to connect with people from all around the world who share the same interests. It has also allowed us to become producers of our own narratives, based on source texts. As mentioned in the theoretical framework, convergence culture encompasses the idea that we currently live in a culture in which content flows from one platform to another, different media industries cooperate and lines between producer and consumer becomes increasingly thinner (Jenkins, 2006). Convergence culture has thus enlarged fans their worlds with new ways to share and to engage with their source text of adoration. I will now illustrate this idea by referring back to my data while zooming in on three different types of practices: creating fanon and lingo, fan promotion, and the so-called “fangirling”.

4.1.1 Creating fanon and lingo: Transmedia Design

Transmedia design is an important part for fandom, since it is the creation of a world in which a source text can live and exist, and therefore, it is an essential step for fandom (Jenkins, 2006). Without a world agreed upon by fans, the source text would just live in a void of unconnected fan products. By actively starting a dialogue with the source text, and continuing this dialogue on different platforms, fans design the source text’s world. This implies that the process of transmedia design is being facilitated by convergence culture.

I will now illustrate two examples that can be found in my case studies that are processes of transmedia design. First, there is the literal transmedia worldbuilding in the case of the Harry Potter fandom, where fans create a certain knowledge base called “fanon”. Then there is the production of “fan lingo” which is an implicit form of transmedia worldbuilding, which happens in both in the One Direction as well as the Jeffree Star fandom.

A. Fanon

The creation of fanon – or acknowledging the existence of fanon and its importance – is mentioned and observable in every conversation with or almost all online content of Harry Potter fans. Fanon is a term that is constructed out of the words “fan” and “canon”, and it basically can be described as “accepted knowledge or truths so widespread in a fan community that they’re considered canon but aren’t in the source text.” (Firestone & Clark, 2018, p.16). An example could be certain knowledge about characters that every fan sort of knows of, even

27 though this has not been given in the original source text; as Lara (17) explains about certain Harry Potter characters “Take the Marauders for example. They have so much character right now, even though they have not been discussed much in the books or films. But still every fan kind of knows what kind of characters they were as a teenager or what their family drama is about while this has never been discussed by JK Rowling.” The Harry Potter fandom loans itself very well for worldbuilding, since it is set in an incomplete, fictional world that can be co- expanded by the consumers of the original source text. As Firestone and Clark explain: “But let us never forget that Rowling didn’t create Harry and his world all on her own (Hillier). Yes, the idea is certainly hers, but every good writer knows that outside editors are essential to the process, and those readers help to shape everything from characters and plot to worldbuilding.” (2018, p.16). In my interviews, fans explained how they were more a fan of this “fanon world” that has been co-created rather than just the source text alone. Anna (18): “Harry Potter books were kind of the beginning, and the fans took this and constructed an entire universe out of it in which the books only are one planet. As a fan, I am now fan of the entire universe that is been created by fans rather than just the books alone.” As mentioned, the construction of fanon is a perfect example of participatory culture in which producers and consumers of a source text are in a constant dialogue, and fanon can thus be described under the earlier introduced term transmedia design (Lamerichs, 2018, p.27). To quote Lamerichs (2018, p.14):

“(…) fans produce different types of narratives and objects and express themselves through play and performances. Through these homages, fans mediate existing symbols, plotlines, characters, and settings. These fan creations are heavily inspired by the existing text or “source text”, but they also create new textual relationships.”.

In order to name the construction of fanon as a form of transmedia design, it has to be a process that takes place across different media. This was pointed out during the interviews in different ways. The three most noted forms of “homages” as Lamerichs calls them were fanfiction (from source text to story), cosplaying (from source text to construction of an “offline” world in which a character really exists), and the creation of fan products for commercial gain (from source text to related physical product). I will now further explore these three forms of homages in order to make a statement about the influence of convergence culture on them.

The interviews suggest that writing fanfiction is an important fan practice within the Harry Potter fandom since it serves as a way to create fanon. As Esra (19) says, “sometimes fans have written fanfiction about characters that are very flat in the [Harry Potter] books, and then you really like those characters based on stuff that actually only is fanon. And still it really feels like coming home when you read the original books because you know this world and you know the

characters that live in it.” Fanfictions and the ideas that are constructed there about certain topics are characters can thus help the fans in identifying with the source text and making the source text a meaningful place where they feel at ease.

The idea of cosplaying as a form of transmedia design also came back in the interviews. Even though only Vera (23) mentioned actively engaging in cosplaying, she said it was a great way to keep the fantasy going and to be able to better understand the Harry Potter world since she could now partake in it. Lamerichs (2018, p.33) says the following on cosplaying: “Fans purposely create their own identity within cosplay by identifying themselves with fictional characters and explicitly actualize narratives in daily life to bring characters to life.” This idea is described by the example of Vera, since cosplaying helps her make the world feel more “real”.

Vera also was one of the interviewees that mentioned the creation of fan products for commercial gain. She explained that one of the things she did as a fan was “making potions” and selling them to other fans. This means that she remade potions explained in the source text to physical products that fans can collect. By making something from the source text in a physical product, the source text is altered in the sense that there now is a material equal of what was first described in words. Collecting these positions, or other fan-made products, can once again help a fan to identify the source text as a more intricate and more “real” place.

Figure 1. A picture provided by Vera of (a part of) her Harry Potter collection, including the aforementioned potions which are fan-made products.

B. Lingo

For both One Direction fans and Jeffree Star fans, the creation of a “fanon” happens as well, but in a very different way. Since the source texts that they follow are “real life” people that share aspects of their real life rather than fictional characters like in a telefantasy fandom, it is

very hard to construct a world around them in which source texts can live. However, transmedia design is still a concept that can be used for these fandoms as well; it is just not necessarily done in the way of literal world-building. For One Direction fans as well as Jeffree Star fans, we can see that they create a sort of lingo that only the fans of the same source text will understand.

Figure 2. A screenshot of a Tweet by interviewee Olivia in which common Lingo of the One Direction fandom is very visible; to an outsider, this may seem a strange collection of word but to a One Direction fan it means something.

This lingo is derived and related to things that are mentioned by the source text (like the common use of “Hiii! How are ya?” amongst Jeffree Star fans, since this is the catch phrase of the YouTube star) but is used out of its original context and medium. This suggest to us that the building of common lingo within a fandom can be seen as a form of fanon, and so as a form transmedia design. The building of lingo is enabled by convergence culture, because fans attribute new meanings to something a source text has said which is taken out of its original context and medium. Important to note here is that the creation of fanon – may this be literal transmedia worldbuilding which happens in the Harry Potter fandom or the creation of lingo– is a very time-related and inequal concept. The example mentioned in the screenshot from Olivia is something that can be related back to the early stages of the One Direction fandom (it uses lingo that has gained its meaning in the early 2010’s), and it so excludes fans that have not been a part of this fandom for that long. With regards to worldbuilding, not having read as much fanfiction as others for example could lead one to not understanding a certain concept as fanon. The feeling of inequality within fandoms can create a social hierarchy within them.8

4.1.2 Promotion by fans: Fan Labor

As explained already in the theoretical framework, there is a type of fan practice that we can define as fan labor. Fan labor are those fan practices which are being exploited by media industries and of which the media industries can actively profit, while there is no (intention of) profiting on the side of the fan. These fan practices have given scholars like Stebbins (2007, p.xii) the idea that fandom can be viewed as a form of “serious leisure” (Stebbins, 2007, p.xii). I already discussed the linguistic problems that come with both the phrasing of “fan labor” and “serious leisure”, namely

8 This idea will be explored further in section 4.3.1. 30 that this could imply that these fan practices are not being enjoyed by fans rather than done “just to be a good fan”. I will explore the concept of fan labor while keeping in mind Banks & Humphreys (2008) correct notion that exploitation and pleasure are not always mutually exclusive.

In this section, I will discuss three examples of fan labor that are being facilitated by convergence culture. Both examples take the source text and promote it through different channels, and therefore are a prime example of fan labor that is influenced by convergence culture. The examples that will be discussed now are literal promotion (offline, remediated online, and/or simply online), stream parties, and the buying of products from your idol.

While studying the online One Direction community, I noticed that on Diana (23) her Twitter page there were videos of her friends and her going out in public to promote new material brought out by one of the One Direction members. Diana and her friends would hand out flyers with Spotify codes on them that led to the new song, or would put the flyers in public spaces that are visited often, or they would walk around with a life-sized promo-board on them. This is a perfect example of a form of fan labor, since the artist profits from something that a fan does, and it also a perfect form of a fan practice that is influenced by convergence culture; it takes the source text (in this case, the new song) out of its own context and creates something new from it (in this case, creating flyers of it), which is then being spread in a new context (in this case, offline in order to reach new people) and eventually remediated which makes the content flow to yet a different platform (in this case, the video that is being posted on Twitter). With regards to this form of promotion as serious leisure, Diana says about the promotion videos, “I don’t feel obligated to do certain things, but I just like being creative and I really enjoy doing it for myself so that is why I do it.”.

Figure 3. A screenshot of one of the promotion videos and -tweets that Diana posted on her Twitter account.

Stream Parties are a concept that are more common in fandoms, but have different names since not all source texts are possible to stream. The idea of a stream party is that fans all collectively decide to stream a certain song or video by their idol as much as possible so that it gets into the top of hitlists, or because it will get more streams on Spotify for example and therefore will get their idol more attention/money. These stream parties are started as a fan initiative which is spread on social media and talked about on social media. It is a clear form of fan labor, since it has as a goal to get the source text a form of financial gain. However, it is a very passive form of fan labor since it can be done really easily without paying actual attention to it. As Ellen (24) said, “Last year I was at my workplace during the day, and then I would just leave my laptop back at home and would leave the song playing there on replay because I couldn’t really listen to it anyways so it wouldn’t matter if it was the same song playing over and over again.” Ellen also explained that it was very different this year, since she is not at work all day long anymore and therefore has to listen to what is playing. Now she does not do the stream parties anymore because she saw them as something more “obligatory” for her to do in order to be a good fan, rather than something that she enjoyed to really do, so she stopped participating in them.

An important notion to make with regards to this “enjoying the practice or not” is that collectively playing a song, or for example collectively deciding to watch Jeffree Star videos, or Harry Potter read-ins are not necessarily always for commercial gain; sometimes fans decide to host streaming parties, watch parties or read-ins because they want to do something fun or celebrate a certain anniversary of the source text. In order to really count it as a fan labor practice, I would argue that the stream party has to have a commercial goal.

In the case of the Jeffree Star fandom, buying his make-up pallet can be seen as a form of fan labor since the fans pay for a product created by their idol, and often make looks with the pallet and share this online which makes for free promotion. To see whether the fans felt obligated to do so, I asked them whether they would buy a make-up pallet by Jeffree Star which they knew they were not going to use, but just to be a good fan. All of them answered that they would not or would maybe buy it later when it was on sale just so that they would have their collection compete. They all indicated that the product making them happy was their indicator for whether they would buy something or not, which again shows that fan labor is not necessarily something that fans do not enjoy.

Figure 4. A screenshot of a fan labor product made by a Jeffree Star fan. The fan tags their idol and the brand for promotion purposes, which turns something they did for pleasure -- namely doing their makeup -- into a form of promotion, and so a form of fan labor

4.1.3 “Fangirling”: Expressing fandom

One of the fan practices that has not been discussed extensively in academic literature – or at least not under this specific name – but is very much evident in online fan communities, is the so- called “fangirling”. Fangirling is “to exhibit fandom often to an excessive degree : to behave like an extremely devoted or overly excited fangirl.” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). Even though I am not fond of the stereotypical and gendered biases that come with the naming of the concept, I think it is the most simple fan practice that comes in lots of different forms and therefore should be a subject of academic studies. It is also very visible and recognizable in undertaking online ethnography; digitalization encourages excessive sharing. However, fangirling is a fan practice that has become even more apparent and almost a part of regular society due to influences of convergence culture as a facilitator. This since convergence culture has allowed people to go in dialogue with the source text on different mediums, in different formats and the dialogue being shared does not have to be of a particular value.

This section seeks to explore the concept of fangirling as a dimension that has become more apparent due to convergence culture by giving multiple examples from online ethnography, and by making a connection towards the next part on affectivity.

We have talked about expressing fandom by creating literal products; we have seen that fans construct a transmedia world through the production of fanon – both by writing fanfictions, cosplaying, making physical products with commercial purposes as well as by creating lingo – and participate in forms of fan labor such as offline and remediated promotion, streaming parties and buying products, which are all practices facilitated by convergence culture. However, what about the simple “Omg I love One Direction!”-tweets? These simple, cultural products which do not have a significant value or meaning other than just expressing fandom, are creatively speaking not interesting. I do want to argue that these fangirling-products could be viewed as a new dimension facilitated by convergence culture since they still show a dialogue between the fan and the source text. The value of the dialogue, however, is not important. Fangirling in this research I therefore define as any practice that is inheritably about just the ability to express fandom rather than the value of the expression.

Figures 5.-10.Screenshots of expressions of fandom online that could be referred to as part of the “fangirling practice”. Included are 2 fangirling-posts about each of my case studies.

These products of convergence culture inheritably do not contain any value, as explained. The lack of value in the case of fangirl-products could lead us to believe that the process of fangirling as facilitated by convergence culture can be seen a form of phatic exchange. A phatic exchange is “a communicative gesture that does not inform or exchange any meaningful information or facts about the world. Its purpose is a social one, to express sociability and maintain connections or bonds.” (Miller, 2008, pp.393-394). These exchanges not necessarily have informational value, but let other individuals know that we are still here online as a part of a certain community and – in the case of fandoms – are interested in a certain topic which makes us happy. During the interviews, fans repeatedly talked about being able to just share the bare minimum about the source text that they loved, gave them a sense of “home” and made them happy. This suggests that fangirling is about

the social and affectionate dimension of sharing, rather than the informative dimension. As Ellen (24) mentions: “It does not really matter what you do on the internet, as long as it makes you happy you can and should post it”. Therefore, I will make a suggestion later on in section 5. Conclusions and Discussion that we should look into the way value attribution to fan practices is of importance, because fans show behavior that appears to have no particular value to us, but can have an important affective meaning to themselves. This affective meaning is one that I will discuss in the upcoming section.

4.2 How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture with regards to affectivity?

As outlined in my theoretical framework, an affective connection with the source text is crucial. Affectivity has already come up in the section above on fangirling (section 4.1.3.) as a product of convergence culture, and this section will further deal with the way convergence culture has provided new dimensions of affectivity within fan communities. In order to illustrate this, we look into two different concepts related to affectivity that stand out when analyzing my data. These topics are stereotypes, and identification and meaning.

4.2.1 Stereotypes

There are a lot of (negative) traditional stereotypes that come with fandom and the word “fan” that can make fans feel uneasy and make them change their behavior in a certain type of way, as my theoretical framework already implies. In this section, I want to argue that convergence culture has influenced stereotypes in the sense that they both facilitate and diminish certain stereotypes. This paradoxical claim will be defended by looking at the way certain stereotypes are related to convergence culture, as well as by looking at the way they have been normalized by convergence culture.

The number one stereotype mentioned by One Direction fans – all 8 of them in my case study– is the idea of the “1D gekkie”. The “1D gekkie” is the crazy, overly-attached, often feminine and young fan that is constantly screaming and crying whenever they hear about One Direction, according to Diana (24) and Madelief (21). This is the stereotype that most One Direction fans have to deal with when they tell some that they are a fan of One Direction. It is a stereotype that is very much related to affectivity and to convergence culture; it gives the idea that the fan is constantly looking for ways to engage with the source text on different platforms and almost dedicates their life to this. They have an unhealthy, affective relationship with something that does feel the same affect for them, and therefore it is regarded as strange. This has influenced fans in the sense that

35 many of them (6 out of 8) say that they do not share fan-related stuff on each and every platform; they do not want to be depicted as the 1D gekkie and therefore decide to not share about One Direction on platforms were a lot of judgmental people will see them, like platforms such as Facebook were family and co-workers follow them. Jeffree Star fans also deal with stereotypes that are enforced by convergence culture; 3 participants of the interview explained that they deliberately decide to post not too much about the source text on their own social media because Jeffree Star has been the topic of many controversies. Since these fans do not necessarily want to be associated with these controversies or thought of as “Jeffree Star Apologists”, they decide not to share about it. The stereotype of Jeffree Star fans as people that blindly agree with everything he says or does, is one that is related to an affective relationship that they supposedly have towards Jeffree Star. This stereotype could not be present without convergence culture, since convergence culture facilitates constantly sharing about the celebrity despite controversies which maintains this stereotype. Lastly, concluding from my interviews, Harry Potter fans suffer the least from stereotypical depictions. The one that was mentioned by Lara (17) and Esra (19) is the stereotype that Harry Potter fans are always young people. This stereotype is not necessarily related to convergence culture.

Stereotypes can thus be affective connections that people assume about fans that are established through or facilitated by convergence culture. However, convergence culture has also made fandoms way more visible; since fans ensure that the content about a certain source text flows across platforms, the presence of the source text and its fandom has become more visible. This has lead to fandoms becoming a very normal and very apparent part of online culture, which can diminish fan stereotypes. Becoming more familiar with fandom, and not regarding them as outsider anymore since they are a part of large communities that dominate certain online spaces such as Twitter, is a process that is thus facilitated by convergence culture. Therefore, convergence culture can both help in constructing stereotypes, as well as diminishing them.

4.2.2 Identification and Meaning

The theoretical framework suggests the idea that representation matters: fans relate to a source text because they can identify with it on an affective level. Identification with a certain source text is of importance because it comes with an affective connection that makes the fan feel certain things. The processes of digitalization and in particular, the process of convergence culture have influenced the way this identification is facilitated. I will explore this idea by re-defining the idea of a para- social relationship between fan and source text, and looking into active engagement and identification and the affective meaning of this.

Fan-source text relations are traditionally seen as para-social relationships (Horton & Wohl, 1956); where a fan felt very connected to and identified with a source text, the source text had little

36 to no ways of knowing this particular fan existed or felt a certain connection with them as source text. However, with the age of digitalization, the source text is allowed to expand its platforms due to convergence culture, and therefore a more social relationship can occur. Due to the culture of feels (Stein, 2015, p.156) where fans seek to establish real connections, and convergence culture which implies that fans go in dialogue with a source-text, the fandom-source text relationship has thus changed. Fans now can have the possibility to actually engage with their source text through different platforms, and the source text or the creators of it have the possibility to respond to this. Even having the idea that an actual interaction could be possible already redefines the para-social fan-source text relationship into a at least semi-social one. These semi-social relationships can make for a stronger affective relationship with the source text, and therefore an increased sense of affectivity.

Due to the fact that convergence culture has allowed us to share about the source text on different platforms, fans are encouraged to be way more engaged with the source text than when they could not share about it on social media in a pre-digital age for example. Therefore, their affective connection to the source text has become more intimate; the more engaged you are with a certain source text, the more you feel for this artefact and the more you can identify with it. Being a fan and the source text itself can now become a big part of a fan their own identity as well, since they are always invested with it. As the One Direction fan Sabine (22) says: “Everything I experienced while growing up, from being a teenager to an adult, I experienced while I was fan of One Direction and while I was listening to their music, so it [being a fan] really means so much to me. I also kind of feel attachment to concert tickets for example. If someone would take all of it away, I would be so upset. (…) I made so many friends through the fandom, and when I think about it, there are so many things I would not have in my life if I hadn’t started as a fan of One Direction. I don’t think I would have ended up in the entertainment industry myself if I hadn’t experienced it already through fandom and noticed there how much I like it.” Fans thus take the source text and make it their own through various platforms, but also through strongly making it a part of their own identity. 24 out of 24 participants say that their fandom and being a fan is definitely an evident part of their identity to both themselves as to others. “If you would ask anyone that knows me to describe me with 5 words, most – if not all – of these words will be either Jeffree Star related, or fandom related.”, states Isa (20). Fandom can thus mean so much to a fan that it becomes a part of their identity. This new dimension – being able to engage so much with a source text that others start to define you with it – is facilitated by convergence culture, since it is about the possibility of engaging with the source text on many different platforms.

4.3 How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture with regards to social dynamics?

Social Dynamics is the study of interpersonal group relations and the way group behavior is influenced by individuals and vice versa (Durlauf & Young, 2001). Within fandoms, there are different social dynamics that can be studied. In this section, I will focus on hierarchies within fandom, and the power of social media and internet friendships. Where on the first a lot of academic research has already been done, the second area remains rather shallow when it comes to academic literature available. Since both areas are very much affected or facilitated by convergence culture, I consciously decide to include them in this study.

4.3.1 Hierarchies within Fandoms

In the theoretical framework, I mentioned Hills’ (2002) idea of viewing fandoms both as communities, as well as hierarchies. This is a very important aspect to look at when studying social dynamics within fandoms, since it implies that there is a structure of communication build into fandoms which creates inequality and senses of superiority for some. With regards to convergence culture, I would like to argue that fandoms that make use of the new dimensions provided by convergence culture are fundamentally hierarchical. This because the concept of convergence culture itself has hierarchical power dynamics embedded in it. In order to illustrate why I make this claim, I want to refer back to the data found during my research. I structure my data with regards to two different concepts: fans’ opinions on the existence of hierarchies, and the embedded existence of fan hierarchies due to convergence culture.

Online, we can find several discussions of fans calling others “elite” or “superior”, or claiming that certain fans feel as if they are better since they have for example interacted with the source text more often or have a higher number of followers. As an aca-fan, I have been called elite just for hanging out with the people that see the same band in concert a lot. Do I feel elite? No, I do not. And that is where the complicate, social dynamics come in: the perception of superiority by others might not be the same as the experience of superiority by the self. The fans that according to certain fan “rules” are superior than others, are the ones that are most likely to claim that there is no hierarchy. However, since they are still perceived as superior or as “acting superior” there might be.

Figure 11-12. Screenshots of tweets by fans that are regarded as “superior” according to a certain rule but who explain that adhering to these certain rules does not make you superior.

In general fans agree upon the fact that there should not be a hierarchy within fandoms, regardless of whether there is one or not. This because it is perceived as something “bad” since it creates inequality over things that people cannot do anything about, such as the possibility to spend money or time on the production, creation or consumption fan products.

Figure 12-13. Screenshots of tweets that shows the inequality between fans that comes with the idea of a social hierarchy within one fandom.

With regards to convergence culture, the claim of fans that hierarchies should not exist is very remarkable. This because convergence culture is a process that emerges in participatory culture, and participatory culture in itself has revealed underlying power dynamics (Lamerichs, 2018, p.16). This since consumers are not equal to producers when it comes to how much power they hold over a certain source text. However, they are increasingly supported to become co-creators and so power dynamics shift. These power dynamics occur in a hierarchical structure: the producer of the source text has the most power, followed by those who co-create very closely to or even with the producer, followed by the ones that sometimes co-create and in the last place there is the casual masses that

39 rarely to never engage with the source text in a co-creating way. An example of this is the creation of the 8th story in the Harry Potter franchise, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016). This book is the script of the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which was written by Jack Thorne based on a story Thorne, Rowling and play-director John Tiffany co-wrote together. The idea here is that Rowling has the most power: she thought of the source text in the first place. Then there is Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, of which Thorne has claimed to be a big Potter-fan himself (Thorne, 2018) are next on the hierarchy of power over the source text. Since Thorne is a fan of Harry Potter himself, he knows that “fanon”-side of the original stories, which have been created by active fans. This knowledge of the fanon-side is apparent in the book since according to many readers, the script is nothing more than a published fanfiction (Fallon, 2017). These active fans that have created the fanon that is now apparent in the 8th official Harry Potter book are next in the power hierarchy. Lastly, there is the fans that just read but have not helped constructing the fandom. They have had little to no power over the source text as it appears in The Cursed Child. Convergence culture, a process that occurs in participatory culture, is thus inherently a hierarchical concept. Therefore, it stands out that fans are so opposed to this hierarchy since it is embedded in the cultural processes that underlie fandom.

The social dynamics of fan hierarchies are thus very complicated, since fans do not necessarily want them. However, I do want to argue that social hierarchies in fandom are initially embedded into fandoms since the participatory culture in which they occur are inherently hierarchical. Even though fans do not want hierarchies, they indirectly admit that they are there: fans continuously address that there should not be a hierarchy a within fandom, but in the interviews the fans still talk about different types of fans. They mainly address the difference between a “fan” and a “stan”. A stan is someone that “really travels a lot for a certain artist [source text] and actively tries to meet them and stuff like that. Without this, you are just a fan.” (Madelief, 21, One Direction). Stans are thus the fans that go the extra mile, and according to the idea that engaging more with the source text makes for more power over the source text, these stans are higher on the hierarchical rank than normal fans. The explicit dynamic thus might not be called or perceives as a hierarchy anymore by fans themselves, but academically speaking, there definitely is a social hierarchy within fandoms that has been constituted due to convergence culture.

4.3.2 The Power of Social Media: Maintenance & Internet Friendships

With digitalization and globalization, social media has risen to the occasion and allow us to share extensively with anyone in any place of the world at any moment. Being able to share this extensively has increased the possibility of large communities mentioned, social media allow for sharing in large communities. Social media thus have a certain power; it allows for source texts to become bigger since it easier to share about them. This is a process of convergence culture; due to

40 the fact that source texts can be shared across different platforms now, the fan base can grow because more people get access to (a part of) the source text. In this section, we will thus discuss the power of social media and the influence of convergence culture on this with regards to the maintenance of fandom.

Even though fandoms got large in size in the pre-digital age – think of The Beatles fandom – fandoms now with the help of social media can become even larger and more connected and allow source contexts to become as big as they are now. Diana (24) acknowledges this: “I think that for One Direction, social media has played a very important role, because at the moment that they had their breakthrough, they were not necessarily the best band or the band with the best music. They were just lucky that social media was booming at that moment, because that has allowed them and their fandom to become as big as it has been, and still is!” However, large communities in general are harder to maintain since there are more people involved in the maintenance. The aspect of fandom that makes them easier to maintain is the fact that they are dynamic: fandoms are open communities where people can come and go and therefore, when some leave, others will join. This is one reason why fandoms are maintained. However, there are some processes of maintenance that are connected with convergence culture.

First, there is the idea that convergence culture keeps the fandom relevant; fans are encouraged constantly to go in a dialogue with the source text that is present at different platforms, and since fans still share about the source text, it remains relevant. As Firestone and Clark (2018, p.5-6) say in the preface of their book on the world of Harry Potter and convergence culture: “We wanted to create this book, not because no one is talking about Harry Potter anymore, but because we are still talking about Harry Potter 20 years after the ﬁrst book was published. There’s a reason we’re still talking about the Potterverse and why we will probably continue to do so for decades to come: the series is profoundly culturally relevant.”.

Secondly, fandom is maintained since fans themselves are more encouraged to stay engaged. 24 out of 24 fans interviewed indicate that if social media did not exist, they would have been a very different fan. Most of them (17 out of 24) indicate that they would probably have never been as big of a fan as they are or have been at one point in their “fan career”, and would have probably never been a fan for such a very long period of time. Anna (18, Harry Potter fan) explains this with a nice metaphor: “For a long time, I was a FAN in capital letters, so I was very out there and active and constantly engaging with Harry Potter, but now I am more of a small letters fan, in the sense that I am still a fan and engage a lot with Harry Potter, but are less out there and not as active as I used to be. If social media did not exist, I probably would have never been a capital letters FAN.” Diana (23, One Direction) makes the statement that kind of agrees with this notion since she claims that

“Social media just keeps your fan-being going.” She talks about a friend group of her middle school who were also One Direction fans, but that have not remained fan because they never were active fans on social media. She says that she would have probably gone the same path as them if it had not been for becoming an active fan on social media. Social media thus allows for being this capital letter FAN that is constantly engaging and sharing, which is the fan that is actively influenced by convergence culture.

Lastly, fandom is maintained because meaningful connections are created between fans in the form of internet friendships. Based on the data of the interviews, I would like to disagree with the previously mentioned idea by Turkle (2012) that internet friendships are merely “illusions of companionship rather than true friendship”.9 I want to suggest the idea that connections between fans can lead to meaningful friendships that can transcend online boundaries and that keep fandoms together. Olivia (24, One Direction) mentions the importance of having internet friendships in order to remain a fan: “Purely having people that you have met through the internet that you can connect with, that you can talk to about the source text, that you can go to concerts with, that really helps with being a fan and maintain a fan community for a long time. If I didn’t have my fan friends, I would have been long gone.” Ellen (24, One Direction) agrees with this by stating that she would only remain an active fan without social media if she still could share her fandom offline with the friends she has originally made via the internet because of One Direction. Without these friends, she claims she would probably not be as active as a fan anymore. This illustrates the importance of affective relationships between fan members in a community; internet friendships can extend outside of the borders of the internet and remain meaningful connections since there is a shared love for a source text. This thus also refutes Turkle’s idea that connections made on the internet only give us the illusion of friendship, rather than an actual meaningful connection. Convergence culture is here seen in the sense that the source text allows for a meaningful connection between others that is shared over different platforms and contexts, and therefore, internet friendships are a process that are affected by convergence culture.

9 This definition has been given in section 2.3.3. 42

5. Conclusions and Discussion

Convergence culture is a process that has been able to occur due to the participatory culture in which we currently live (Jenkins, 2006). The process itself has a disciplinary origin since it is influenced by different technological, social, cultural and global changes (Georgi & Glaser, 2015, p.15), and can be defined as “a culture in which content flows from one medium to another, in which multiple media industries cooperate and in which media audiences are on a big search for the type of entertainment they want and for which they will go to great lengths”.10 This research has discussed its relationship towards fandom, which is a concept that has been defined as “the sum total of the fan communities and individuals who are connected by their love for a particular text. Moreover, fandom refers to the interpretive and creative practices in which invested audience members engage.” (Lamerichs, 2018, p.14). Lamerichs’ definition implies that there are three areas fandom that be studied: practices, affectivity and social dynamics. These three areas were defined in our sub-research questions as helpers in an attempt at answering this research its main research question:

How do contemporary fandoms make use of new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture?

5.1 Convergence Culture and Fan Practices

The influence of convergence culture is very apparent in fan practices: new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture are used for many different fan practices that had not been heard of before. Three areas of fan practices can be defined in which the influence of convergence culture really stand out: transmedia design, fan labor and expressing fandom.

With regards to transmedia design, the creation of fanon is the main dimension facilitated by convergence culture. Transmedia design is the idea that fans go in dialogue with the source text and through this practice, they can construct a transmedia world for the source text to live and exist in (Jenkins, 2006). This idea of worldbuilding thus happens because the source text is taken out of its original context and reimagined, repurposed or remediated on a or multiple different platforms. In general, fanon can be defined as “accepted knowledge or truths so widespread in a fan community that they’re considered canon but aren’t in the source text.” (Firestone & Clark, 2018, p.16). The creation of fanon is a form of transmedia design, since it often occurs on different platforms – both online as offline – but always with the intention of making the world in which a source text can live feel more real and understandable. The study showed that different kinds of fandoms have different ways of constructing fanon: where in the Harry Potter fandom (a telefantasy fandom), fanon was created through the writing of fanfiction, the art of cosplaying and the production of fan objects for commercial gain, in

10 This definition has been given in section 2.1. 43 both the One Direction and the Jeffree Star fandom (both celebrity-following fandoms) fanon was constructed in the form of shared lingo. All of these practices are new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture, because they involve an evolution of the source text onto another or multiple other platforms.

Fan labor is defined as those fan practices that are a personal source of pleasure for the fans that enact them, but that are also a part of an organized system of exploitation by media industries.11 This definition acknowledges the existence of both exploitation and pleasure in fan labor, which is important to explicitly state. Labor namely can refer to either one of those two, but they are simultaneously present rather than present as an either/or-situation (Stanfil & Condis, 2014, section 2.3). With regards to fan labor, convergence culture has made it easier to partake in fan labor since it loans itself well for processes of promotion. Fans sometimes physically go out to promote their source text, which already takes the source text out of its original context. However, these attempts at physical promotion are remediated afterwards when they are being shared on social media. This process taking the source text out of its original context and sharing it across different platforms with the goal of profit – since it is promotion – is a perfect example of how convergence culture has facilitated fan labor. Secondly, there is the idea of “stream parties”. Stream parties are often fan-initiated projects where people are asked to “consume” a certain something – streaming a band their new single for example – as much as possible at an agreed upon time. Important to note is that there has to be a commercial-aspect to these actions for them to count as fan labor; sometimes, fans will organize read-ins or watch parties just for fun. Stream parties with a commercial intention are held in order to get an artist their single into the Billboard chards, for example. Therefore, stream parties are a form of promotion. Convergence culture can be seen as their facilitator since once again, the source text is repurposed and taken out of its original context with an intent of commercial gain.

One fan practice that is very apparent when doing online ethnography, and for fans is assumed to be a very normal practice, is the so-called “fangirling”. I define fangirling as any practice that is inheritably about just the ability to express fandom rather than the value of the expression.12 Since convergence culture has allowed fandom to be expressed in many more different ways without necessarily a creative or valuable intent, it is a facilitator for the concept of fangirling. Academically speaking, there is only little known on the concept of fangirling. Further research is needed, especially in its relation to the value of the actual “fangirl”-product being produced. The value namely seems very little, but fans appear to obtain a certain positive affective feeling from it. This relates the practice of “fangirling” to the concept of “phatic exchanges”, which is interesting for further research.

11 This definition has been given in section 2.3.1. 12 This definition has been given in section 4.3.1. 44

5.2 Convergence Culture and Fan Affectivity

Affectivity is one of the key factors of fandom. Fans feel a certain connection with their source text that allows them to experience various feelings. Convergence culture has had a big influence on the way that affection is established in fandoms. This mainly manifests in the area of stereotypes, and identification and meaning.

Stereotypes are ideas of fandom that are related to the affective practices that fans undertake and that set them apart from the general, non-fan public. Convergence culture allows for new dimensions of these stereotypes in the sense that it both facilitates them as well as diminishes them. Fans are constantly judged for being too invested with being in dialogue with a source text, while this is actually encouraged by convergence culture. Certain stereotypes can also influence the way that fans share across different platforms; fan-related content is often not shared on platforms where family and co-workers follow the fan because they are scared of being stereotyped. However, convergence culture has also made fan culture a bigger and more apparent aspect of the current media landscape. Therefore, fans have become rather normal since there are only spaces that are dominated by them – such as Twitter – where non- fans are regarded as outsiders rather than the social norm. This implies that convergence culture, where fans share their source text across platforms and therefore are more visible, can also diminish stereotypes.

Due to convergence culture, being a fan has become a more affective process than ever before. Fans attribute a certain meaning to their connection with the source text, and so they take up the source-text itself or “being a fan” in general as a part of their identity. Convergence culture allows for this: fans are constantly engaged in dialogue with the source text and share this dialogue on different social media platforms that all together construct their identity. Where being a fan was an affective connection only, it is now an affective part of identity as well.

5.3 Convergence Culture and Social Fan Dynamics

Social Fan Dynamics are being affected by convergence culture in the sense that convergence culture deals with underlying hierarchical power dynamics, and therefore fandoms have obtained hierarchical power dynamics since these are inevitably embedded in fandoms. I do would like to argue that this hierarchy within fandoms is not always as apparent to fans themselves as we think; the fans that are being called “elite” the most often are the ones that claim the hardest that each fan is similar, regardless of how much they engage in dialogue with the source text. Fans thus really do not want social hierarchies. I argue that this is an interesting claim since hierarchy is embedded into fandoms due to the fact that convergence culture is embedded in fandoms nowadays, and this is a process with an underlying hierarchical power dynamic.

Convergence culture is also related to social fan dynamics in the sense that convergence culture allows fandoms and source texts to grow as big as they can be in nowadays society, and it plays an important part in maintaining fandoms. Since convergence culture allows source texts to move between different platforms, more people can engage with the source text and therefore, the source text and the fan community surrounding it can become larger. In general, larger communities are maintained less easily. However, in the case of fandoms, convergence culture also plays a role in the maintenance of fandom. First of all, due to convergence culture, the source text stays relevant. When a source text is consistently being shared about on different platforms, it stays relevant and people keep being reminded of its existence. This could keep people interested in the source text, and therefore it stays more relevant. Secondly, convergence culture ensures that people stay engaged. By continuously allowing them to share about the source text, people are more likely to do so. This option to share is a driving factor for fans to remain as big of a fan as they are, and for a longer period of time, as indicated by 17 out of 24 participants. Lastly, fandom is maintained because fans have created meaningful connections over social media in the form of internet friendships. Even though these friendships have started off on the internet, they often transcend this online space and become meaningful connections offline as well. Without having these people to share with, fans indicate that they would not remain the fan that they are right now. Convergence culture facilitates this practice of creating internet friendships, since it allows for finding people with the same interest because they excessively share about their love for the source text as well.

5.4 Conclusion and suggestions for further Research

The purpose of this research was to conceptualize the ways in which contemporary fandoms make use of the new dimensions facilitated by convergence culture. These new dimensions used by fandoms are areas on which further research can be focused. In general, I can conclude that convergence culture is a very influential concept in relation to fandom studies, and there are multiple areas – some more researched than others – in which further research could be done. With regards to applicability to the current media landscape, phrasing and accuracy of academic concepts relating to fandom often lack. The most important conclusion of this study is the idea that convergence culture is a first and foremost a facilitator of fandom; many fan practices, affective connections or social dynamics would not be a part of current fandom if convergence culture did not play a role in it.

I would like to suggest four different areas for further research, based on my main research question and the three sub-research question. First, I would suggest that further research is needed into the way online fandom and offline fandom are related to each other, with regards to what convergence culture has brought to the table. This was the initial idea for my research as well, but due to the recent developments with regards to COVID-19 in The Netherlands, a comparative study has not been possible.

Therefore, this research lacks information on offline fandom and further research could be advisable for this unexplored territory.

Secondly, further research into the practice of “fangirling” is needed. The practice as described in my study is a very simple one and already often included in academic literature, but never with this particular name attributed to it. Furthermore, research into the naming of this phenomenon is needed. It is an interesting topic for research since value of fan products and the frequency of producing these products has not been studied before. Therefore, seeing certain fan products as “phatic exchanges” could be an interesting area of focus for further research.

Third, with regards to affectivity, looking into meaning attribution of the fan-identity could be an interesting area to further explore. This because identifying with a source text and finding representation in it, and therefore seeing fandom as something that means a lot to the fan themselves is already very much discussed. However, being a fan as part of one’s identity and what that means with regards to their relationship with others has not yet been deeply explored, and could therefore be an area of interest for future studies.

Lastly, I would like to plea for more research into internet friendships. As this study has shown, internet friendships are one of the most important social dynamics with regards to maintaining fandoms. The concept, however, has very little academic sources available on it yet, especially with regards to fandom. Since the interviews in my study have explained internet friendships as such an important part of fandom, I think it would be advisable to further research this concept.

5.5 Limitations of the Study

One of the limitations of the study, is the fact that this study only discusses data with regards to online fandom. In doing so, we describe the way convergence culture has facilitated fandoms with new dimensions. However, this study thus not illustrate in which way these online fandoms affected by convergence culture relate to offline fandoms and its dimensions. The initial idea of this study was to do a comparative research between online and offline fandom in order to see the influence of convergence culture after comparison. However, due to the cancellation of all offline fan-events and the inability to meet with offline fans that both have been caused by the recent developments of COVID-19 in The Netherlands, there was no possibility for me to have done it differently. I do think that this came as a blessing in disguise, since focusing on a smaller niche of fans only has allowed my research to be more specific, narrowed-down and feasible. Comparative research between offline and online fandoms with regards to convergence culture is necessary for a better understanding of the influences on fandom as a whole.

Secondly, having a narrowed down study comes with the restriction that the scope is limited. Only three fandoms were observed in this study and in all three, only people with a Dutch nationality were spoken to and observed. All of these people and there content were also only observed on two social media platforms. Since there are many more social media platforms with different infrastructures, data found in this study may not immediately apply to them.

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Appendices

Appendix A – General overview of participants in the interviews

Name Fandom Age Social Media Platform where they were found/most active on 1. Lara Harry Potter 17 Instagram 2. Anna Harry Potter 18 Instagram 3. Esra Harry Potter 19 Twitter 4. Kim Harry Potter 23 Twitter 5. Sam Harry Potter 22 Twitter 6. Vera Harry Potter 23 Twitter/Instagram 7. Lola Harry Potter 25 Twitter 8. Iris Harry Potter 23 Twitter 9. Madelief One Direction 21 Twitter 10. Sabine One Direction 22 Twitter 11. Ellen One Direction 24 Twitter 12. Olivia One Direction 22 Twitter 13. Diana One Direction 23 Twitter 14. Femke One Direction 19 Twitter 15. Denise One Direction 23 Twitter 16. Imke One Direction 22 Twitter 17. Fenna Jeffree Star 19 Twitter 18. Inez Jeffree Star 20 Instagram 19. Maaike Jeffree Star 22 Twitter 20. Isa Jeffree Star 20 Instagram 21. Robin Jeffree Star 19 Twitter/Instagram 22. Maartje Jeffree Star 21 Twitter/Instagram 23. Jet Jeffree Star 24 Instagram 24. Manou Jeffree Star 20 Instagram

Appendix B – Information letter used for this study

Beste participant,

Via deze brief wil ik je graag verder inlichten over het onderzoek waar je voor bent uitgenodigd om aan deel te nemen.

Als eerste wil ik mij even kort voorstellen. Mijn naam is Renske Jacobs en ik ben een 21-jarige student van de bachelor Online Culture: Arts, Media and Society met de track Digital Media aan de Universiteit van Tilburg. In deze studie leren wij over de klassieke cultuurwetenschappen, maar er ligt een focus op de manier waarop “nieuwe prosessen” zoals digitalisatie en globalisatie deze klassieke cultuurwetenschappen hebben verandert en beïnvloed. Mocht je nieuwsgierig zijn naar onderwerpen waar wij over schrijven en leren, raad ik je aan om een kijkje te nemen op de site Diggit Magazine (https://www.diggitmagazine.com/) waar wij onze geschreven academische papers kunnen publiceren. Ik wil je nu graag verder informeren over de inhoud van mijn onderzoek, de verwachtingen van jou als participant, en verdere informatie die belangrijk is voor jou als participant.

Waar gaat dit onderzoek over?

Je leest deze brief omdat ik in contact met je ben gekomen in verband met mijn scriptie-onderzoek. Sinds januari ben ik bezig met mijn eindscriptie. In mijn scriptie doe ik onderzoek naar de manier waarop de zogenaamde “convergence culture” van invloed is op fandoms en fan activiteiten. Kortgezegd is “convergent culture” een tijdperk waarin oude media en nieuwe media samenkomen en waarin de lijn tussen de consument en de producent van een bepaald product steeds dunner worden. In fan-verband kun je hier bijvoorbeeld denken aan het schrijven van fanfictie; een Harry Potter fan verandert bijvoorbeeld het originele verhaal van JK Rowling en schrijft een nieuw verhaal waarin Harry en Ron verliefd raken en publiceert dit op WattPad. De fan is nu producent van een verhaal over Harry Potter, maar tegelijkertijd ook consument van de originele wereld gecreëerd door JK Rowling.

Om mijn vraag te beantwoorden focus ik mij op drie verschillende fan-groepen binnen Nederland:

1. Nederlandse Harry Potter fans 2. Nederlandse One Direction fans 3. Nederlandse Jeffree Star fans

Door te kijken naar het gedrag online van deze fans (bijvoorbeeld wat ze posten, waar ze posten, gebruiken ze bepaalde hashtags, etc.) en door fans uit deze groepen te interviewen probeer ik er achter te komen waarom fans doen wat ze doen, en hoe de digitale wereld waarin wij momenteel leven deze fan-acties mogelijk maakt. Als verloopt zoals gewenst zal mijn scriptie klaar zijn voor Augustus 2020.

Wat houdt deelnemen aan dit onderzoek in?

Aangezien je deze brief leest, betekent het dat jij actief deelneemt in een van de bovenstaande fandoms. Zoals gezegd wil ik graag fans uit deze groepen interviewen, en daarom is een van de verwachtingen van jou als participant dus dat jij wilt deelnemen aan een interview. Dit interview zal ongeveer 30 minuten duren, maar dit kan iets uitlopen als er veel te vertellen valt! Gedurende het interview zal ik vragen stellen over jou als fan en wat voor een fan activiteiten je uitvoert.

In verband met de Corona crisis is het moeilijk om dit interview in persoon te doen, en daarom zou ik het graag via Microsoft Teams willen laten plaatsvinden. Ik heb gekozen voor Microsoft Teams omdat het een betrouwbaar programma is voor videochatten, en omdat het hier mogelijk is om ons gesprek op te nemen. Ik zou ons gesprek graag willen opnemen zodat ik het terug kan luisteren en aantekeningen kan maken voor mijn onderzoek. De opnames en aantekeningen worden bewaard op een externe harde schrijf waartoe alleen ik beschikking heb, en zullen verwijdert worden zodra mijn onderzoek is afgerond en goedgekeurd. Deze opnames krijgt dus niemand anders ook te zien; alleen de aantekeningen naar aanleiding van de opnames komen terug in mijn eindscriptie die gelezen wordt door mijn scriptiebegeleidster en een tweede lezer. Mocht jij als participant echt een bezwaar hebben tegen Microsoft Teams dan is er ook de mogelijkheid om via een ander platform het interview plaats te laten vinden, maar ik hoop dat je mijn keuze voor het programma begrijpt.

Daarnaast zou ik het fijn vinden als ik toestemming van jou kan krijgen om het social media account waarop je het meeste je fandom uit (bijvoorbeeld je Twitter account of je Instagram account) te mogen bekijken, en screenshots te mogen maken van posts die ik kan gebruiken als ondersteunend bewijs in mijn eindscriptie. Hierbij wil ik benadrukken dat:

1. Je gebruikersnaam altijd doorgestreept zal worden; 2. Je profielfoto onherkenbaar wordt gemaakt; 3. Je naam doorgestreept kan worden als je dit graag wilt; 4. Je het recht hebt om aan te geven als je bepaalde posts niet gescreenshot wilt hebben; 5. Alleen posts die gaan over fandom gerelateerde dingen worden gebruikt.

Vóór het inleveren van mijn eindscriptie zal ik jou laten weten of er screenshots van jouw posts gebruikt worden, en zo ja van welke posts dit zijn. Deze screenshots zullen dus wel deel uitmaken van mijn eindscriptie en dus bekeken worden door mijn scriptiebegeleidster en tweede lezer. Net zoals met het videomateriaal geldt verder dat deze screenshots worden bewaard op een externe harde schijf waartoe alleen ik beschikking heb, en dat ze worden verwijdert zodra mijn onderzoek afgesloten is.

Ik zou je willen vragen om het bijgevoegde “consent form” – oftewel toestemmingsformulier – in te vullen en naar mij terug te sturen. Lees het formulier goed; door het te ondertekenen stem je in met het

54 meedoen aan mijn onderzoek (met de mogelijkheid om je op elk moment terug te trekken) en geef je toestemming tot het gebruik van de door jou verstrekte informatie.

Wat moet ik verder nog weten als participant?

Het belangrijkste wat jij als participant niet moet vergeten is het feit dat je deelnamen aan dit onderzoek volledig vrijwillig is. Dit betekent dat je op elk moment het recht hebt om te zeggen dat je bepaalde vragen niet wilt beantwoorden, bepaalde stukken informatie niet wilt delen (bijvoorbeeld je voor- of achternaam, of bepaalde posts op social media), of dat je niet meer wilt deelnemen aan het onderzoek. Mocht je niet meer willen deelnemen aan het onderzoek, dan kun je dit aangeven en ben je niet verplicht om uitleg te geven over je reden om te stoppen.

Verder kun je in principe geheel anoniem deelnemen aan dit onderzoek als dit gewenst is. Ik zou wel graag je leeftijd willen weten, en het geslacht waarmee je identificeert als je comfortabel ermee bent om dit te delen. Dit zodat ik een algemeen beeld kan schetsen van de participanten die mee doen aan dit onderzoek.

Mocht er tijdens dit onderzoek iets gebeuren waar je je niet prettig bij voelt kun je dit altijd aangeven naar mij toe, maar er is ook de mogelijkheid om eventuele opmerkingen of klachten over mijn onderzoek in te dienen bij de universiteit. Hiervoor zou je contact op moeten nemen met de “Research Ethics and Data Management Committee” van Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences via [mailadres]

Ik hoop dat ik je via deze brief genoeg op de hoogte heb kunnen stellen over het onderzoek. Mocht je verdere vragen hebben dan kun je mij altijd benaderen via een mail naar [mailadres] of via een belletje naar [telefoonnummer].

Alvast bedankt.

Appendix C – Consent form used for this study

Toestemmingsformulier

Betreft: Scriptie-onderzoek door Renske Jacobs over de invloed van “convergence culture” op fans en hun activiteiten.

Door het ondertekenen van dit formulier verklaar ik op duidelijke wijze ingelicht te zijn over het onderzoek, de manier waarop dit onderzoek zal plaatsvinden en wat van mij verwacht wordt. Ik verklaar dat ik de informatiebrief over het onderzoek goed heb doorgelezen, en vragen heb gesteld waar dit nodig was. Verder neem ik vrijwillig deel aan dit onderzoek, en ben ik bekend met het gegeven dat ik mij op elk moment kan terugtrekken zonder dat ik verplicht ben om hiervoor een uitleg te geven. Ik geef toestemming tot:

- Het gebruiken van mijn data zoals beschreven in de informatiebrief; - Het opnemen van het interview, met de kennis dat de opnames bewaard worden op een externa harde schijf en dat niemand deze te zien krijgt anders dan de onderzoeker; - Het maken van screenshots van social media posts, met de kennis dat ik ingelicht word als er een screenshot wordt gebruikt, mijn account onherkenbaar wordt gemaakt op de screenshot, ik kan aangeven wat ik wel en niet gescreenshot wil hebben, en alleen de onderzoeker en de lezers van de eindscriptie deze screenshots te zien krijgen; - Het opslaan van de data verkregen in het onderzoek mits deze bewaard wordt op een externe harde schijf zoals beschreven in de informatiebrief en verwijderd wordt zodra het onderzoek is afgerond en goedgekeurd; - Het mee doen aan dit onderzoek.

Participant

Naam: ……………………………………………………

Datum: ………………………… Handtekening: …………………………….

Onderzoeker

Naam: Renske Jacobs

Datum: ………………………… Handtekening: …………………………….

Appendix D – Interview questions used for this study

This appendix includes both a Dutch and an English version of the questions used in the interviews for this study. It is important to note that all the interviews were held in Dutch and therefore the Dutch questions were used. The English version of the questions has just been made and included for the sake of understanding this research as a non-Dutch speaker.

Dutch version:

Introductie:

- Toen ik je uitgenodigd heb voor dit onderzoek zei ik dat ik opzoek was naar actieve [fandom] fans. Zie je jezelf als een actieve fan? Hoe kan iemand dat aan jou zien? - Hoe lang ben je al een fan van [fandom]? - Hoe ben je als eerste bekend geraakt met [fandom]? - Hoe zou jij een “fan” beschrijven? o Heb je het gevoel dat er een stereotype is van een fan en er daardoor vooroordelen gemaakt worden over fans? o Hebben mensen wel eens negatieve dingen tegen jou gezegd toen jij ze vertelde dat je een fan was? Wat zeiden ze dan? - Heb je wel eens bewust ervoor gekozen om mensen niet te vertellen dat je fan bent van [fandom] of laat je dat toch wel aan iedereen zien?

Fan Activiteiten:

- Wat betekent het voor jou om een fan te zijn? Hoe uit dat zich? - Wat voor dingen doe jij ‘als fan’? o Wanneer begon jij deze dingen te doen? - Heb je het gevoel dat “fan zijn” een belangrijk deel van jou is? Of dat het veel betekenis heeft voor jou? - Stel iemand zou jou in vijf woorden moeten beschrijven, zouden ze [fandom] dan noemen denk je? Of gewoon het woord “fan” in het algemeen? - Zijn de dingen die je doet als fan iets wat je leuk vindt om te doen, of heb je het gevoel soms dat je het ook een beetje “moet”? - Heb je ooit contact gehad met [fandom]? o Hoe zag dit eruit? o Hoe voelde jij je erbij? o Is deze interactie iets waar je veel waarde aan hecht?

. Als ze nog nooit een interactie hebben gehad met diegene: Is het echt nog een doel voor je om wel een interactie te krijgen, of is het meer een droom waarbij je er ook okee mee zou zijn als hij niet uit komt? - Vragen over specifieke fan producten die de participant zelf aanhaalt

Convergence culture:

- Wat is je favoriete platform voor fan-dingen? Bijvoorbeeld Twitter of Instagram of wattpad? o Waarom? - Heb je het gevoel dat het [fandom] fandom op bv. Facebook anders is dan op bv. Twitter? o Zo ja, wat is er anders? - Heb je het gevoel dat [fandom] zo groot heeft kunnen worden als dat het nu is doordat fans er op social media over kunnen praten? Of denk je dat het net zo’n groot fenomeen zou zijn geworden als social media niet had bestaan? - Hoe zou je een fan zijn als social media niet meer zou bestaan en zou dat heel anders zijn dan nu?

Afsluiting:

- Heb je enige vragen of andere opmerkingen?

English Version

Introduction:

- Do you see yourself as an active fan of [insert fandom]? How can people see this when they meet you? - How long have you been a fan of [insert fandom]? - How did you first encounter [insert fandom]? - In general, how would you describe “a fan”? o Do you feel like there is a stereotypical fan? Or a stigma around fans? o Have people ever made negative assumptions about you when you told them you were a fan? What kind of assumptions? - Have you ever consciously decided not to tell someone you are a fan of [insert fandom] or do you show that to everyone?

Fan practices:

- What does it mean to you to be fan?

- How did you start doing fan-things? Like [going to concerts, buying the books, watching YouTube videos, posting about your fandom online] etc. o Around what time was this? - What do you mainly do now as a fan? - Do you feel like expressing your fandom is important to you/an important part of you? If someone had to describe you in five words, do you think they would name “fan” or [insert fandom] ? - Is it something you do for fun or do you feel like you have to do it sometimes in order to be a “good fan”? - Have you ever been in contact with [the person they admire]? o How did this happen? o What did the interaction look like? o Do you attribute a lot of value to interacting with them? - Specific questions about the products they create

Convergence culture:

- What is your favorite medium to express your fandom? You can name a social media platform, or name a place online o Why? - Do you feel like the [insert fandom] fandom is different on for example Facebook than Twitter? o If so, what is different? - Do you feel like the [insert fandom] fandom has become as it is today because fans have the opportunity to express themselves on social media? - How would you be a fan if social media didn’t exist?

End questions:

- Do you have any questions or remarks yourself that you still want to make?