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A Good-Enough Fan Within the Online Fan Community of Game of Thrones: an E-Ethnographic Study

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A Good-Enough Fan Within the Online Fan Community of Game of Thrones: an E-Ethnographic Study A Good-Enough Fan Within the Online Fan Community of Game of Thrones: An E-Ethnographic Study Student: P.D.T. Staps (Tim) ANR: 558935 Supervisors: Dr. M. Spotti Dr. S. Milan Second reader: Dr. M. van Zaanen Master thesis Communication and Information Sciences Track Data Journalism Faculty of Humanities, Tilburg University May 2014 A GOOD-ENOUGH FAN WITHIN THE ONLINE FAN COMMUNITY OF GAME OF THRONES ii A GOOD-ENOUGH FAN WITHIN THE ONLINE FAN COMMUNITY OF GAME OF THRONES Preface My career as a student of Tilburg University is coming to an end. It was fun being a student and I enjoyed it very much. For me it is the end of an era of being a student and the beginning of a new period of my life, with a fulltime professional career maybe? You may want to know why I wrote a master thesis about the fandom of Game of Thrones. This report is the final product of my master thesis, which I carried out as part of the master program Communication- and Information Sciences, specialization Data Journalism. The road towards the point of graduation and completing this thesis was not easy. What made it challenging and fun for me was changing topic. My first topic was about social media that enables and provides fans a certain level of “backstage access” to their favorite artists. In other words, they have a direct line to their favorite artist. After abandoning this topic I switched to the question: what is a good-enough fan? Being a fan of a cultural object is something I personally ‘spread’ around: I openly state that I am a fan of FC Barcelona, Game of Thrones, J.R.R. Tolkien, Marvel comics, New York Knicks, Dennis Bergkamp, Robin van Persie, Zinedine Zidane, Star Trek, and Back to the Future. I consider myself a fan of all of these mentioned ‘cultural objects’, but I am more a fan of FC Barcelona than I am a fan of Back to the Future for example. There is some kind of inherent hierarchy within my Self that makes this distinction. And that is what I see in Others as well. This was the starting point of this thesis. The theory of Enoughness got a grip on me after I read all characteristic features an Irish pub should have to be considered an Irish pub. As a proud drinker of Guinness, which I consider a black liquid gold, and my name at the wall of my local Irish pub, I’d consider myself a good- enough fan of Irish pubs. Drinking a pint of Guinness could be explained as a fan activity that I undertook and continue doing. In the theory of Jenkins ‘participatory culture’ I would be called a prosumer, which is a word-aggregation of producer and consumer: telling people I like Guinness is considered producing word of mouth about the drink, while drinking it is considered consuming. This and other theories were used as the framework of the idea a member of an online fan community could be considered a good-enough fan. Further, I would like to take this opportunity to thank several people who guided and supported me during my stay at Tilburg University. iii A GOOD-ENOUGH FAN WITHIN THE ONLINE FAN COMMUNITY OF GAME OF THRONES First of all, I want to thank my supervisors dr. Stefania Milan and dr. Max Spotti, and my second reader dr. Menno van Zaanen. Their advice, guidance and critical remarks regarding the topic and research method helped a lot in the construction of my thesis. Second, I want to thank Barbara for proof reading my thesis, and hopefully upcoming texts. Third, I want to thank my friends from Tilburg University. More specifically, I want to thank them for the coffee breaks, Thursday night parties, discussions about all sorts of political issues, and all the good memories I will have for the rest of my life. Finally, I want to thank my parents, sister, my aunt, grandparents, girlfriend, and friends for their support on a personal level. You have helped me a lot becoming the person I am today. Knowledge is power! Tim Staps Tilburg, May 2014 iv A GOOD-ENOUGH FAN WITHIN THE ONLINE FAN COMMUNITY OF GAME OF THRONES Abstract This master thesis focuses on the emergence of normative rules for Self and Others within the online fan community of Game of Thrones. In this thesis Self stands for the individual fan, Others is a reference to other fans and the fan community. Game of Thrones is a high fantasy television series which is based on the A Song of Ice and Fire, a novel series of George R.R. Martin. The main goal in the thesis is to show how enoughness and fan theories collaborate regarding fan activities, fluency, choice, spreadability and being considered a good-enough fan related to fan levels. Spreadability is a notion that describes the way (online) content circulates among websites, its users and fans. This thesis analyzes the normative rules set within the fan community of Game of Thrones on social media platform Tumblr, within an e-ethnographic framework combining insights and methods drawn from fan studies, e-ethnography and media studies. This thesis shows how politeness among members and higher levels of fan-being are key features within an online fan community. Keywords: levels of fan-being, fan activities, good enough fan, enoughness, spreadability, Tumblr, fan studies, and e-ethnography. v A GOOD-ENOUGH FAN WITHIN THE ONLINE FAN COMMUNITY OF GAME OF THRONES Table of contents Preface .................................................................................................................................. iii Abstract .................................................................................................................................. v List of figures ....................................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 9 1.1 Focus and aim ........................................................................................................... 10 1.2 Research questions ................................................................................................... 10 1.3 Thesis Outline ............................................................................................................ 11 Chapter 2: Conceptual framework ................................................................................... 13 2.1 Identity on Web 2.0 .................................................................................................... 13 2.2 Identity and Fandom .................................................................................................. 15 2.3 Fan engagement regarding enoughness .................................................................... 17 2.4 Towards a conceptual model of the ideal fan ............................................................. 19 2.5 An ‘ideal’ fan .............................................................................................................. 20 Chapter 3: Research design ............................................................................................. 22 3.1 Justifying online research ........................................................................................... 22 3.2 Criteria for selection of (fan) websites and Tumblr-pages ........................................... 23 3.3 Methodology .............................................................................................................. 24 3.3.1 Lurking ................................................................................................................ 24 3.3.2 Email-interviews .................................................................................................. 25 3.3.3 Coding ................................................................................................................. 28 3.3.4 Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis with NVivo .................................... 30 3.4 Respondents .............................................................................................................. 32 Chapter 4: The online fan community of Game of Thrones ........................................... 33 4.1 Science fiction/ fantasy genre .................................................................................... 33 4.1.1 History of A Song of Ice and Fire ......................................................................... 34 4.1.2 History of Game of Thrones ................................................................................. 35 4.2 Fan communities and the Internet .............................................................................. 36 4.3 Community of Practice ............................................................................................... 37 4.4 Community of Practice in GoT-fandom ...................................................................... 37 Chapter 5: Results ............................................................................................................. 39 5.1 Fans about online and offline ..................................................................................... 40 5.1.1 The role of the Internet ........................................................................................ 40 5.2.2 GoT-friends in- and outside the fandom ............................................................... 41 vi A GOOD-ENOUGH FAN WITHIN THE ONLINE FAN COMMUNITY OF GAME OF THRONES 5.2 Self for Self in relation to fandom ............................................................................... 42 5.2.1 Respondents’ own identification .........................................................................
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