Scanlators As Produsers

Scanlators As Produsers Fan Participatory Practices Online: Free And Affective Manga Produsage And Distribution Master’s Thesis submitted to the Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University, May 2013, for obtaining the Master’s Degree of Social Science in the field of Media and Communication Studies. Candidate: Stéphanie Ratti Supervisor: Christian Christensen 1 Abstract Web 2.0 and the new decentralized, many-to-many technosocial tools empower consumers and users to reproduce, and distribute content on their own and without permission, shifting the boundaries of participation. Alternative collaborative communities that produce and distribute information, knowledge and culture without seeking profit or operating hierarchically challenge and/or correct commercial entities. This thesis deals with such a variety of collaborative community: the scanlation community. It explores, describes and explains what differences there are in the practices and understandings of scanlators, with a special focus on their attitudes towards legal ownership and profit motives. The main research question is: How do scanlators understand their cultural production, reproduction and distribution practices; with a special focus on which meanings do they ascribe to copyright infringement and the anti-profit motive? In particular, the study provides answers to the following questions: How do some become scanlators? What are the motives of the scanlators? How is scanlation organized? How is it managed? Which beliefs underpin it? Further impacts on and implications for the cultural industry of manga and the society at the level of politics, economy, and culture are taken into account and discussed. Bruns’ produsage based model of collaborative content production and usage is taken here as the main theoretical tool to analyze the participants, processes and principles of the scanlation community. Other concepts derived from fan studies and the political economy of media and communication complement the theoretical framework. Twenty qualitative interviews with individual contributors to the collaborative process of content creation in a variety of groups were conducted. The analysis of the results of the research suggests that scanlators collaborate in competition and cooperation with their open, free, ad hoc and heterarchical alternative model of (unauthorized) manga translation, reproduction and distribution to correct the many shortcomings of the traditional model: it is free, faster and universally accessible; whereas the latter is expensive, slow, and geo- locked. Moreover, scanlators recognize author’s moral rights and do not a priori disregard copyrights, but criticize licensing and rights handling mechanisms together with econonomic and political censorship. Finally, although they do not want to be paid for their free affective labour, they are not adverse to commercial approaches to their produsage, if these take place on their own terms. This thesis serves as a contribution for the better understanding of communal produsage practices, by the produsers themselves. KEY WORDS: scanlation; Web 2.0; participatory culture; fan cultures; produsage; copyright infringement; free labour; commercial approaches. Table of contents 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Research problem .................................................................................................................. 2 1.2 Research questions and goals ................................................................................................ 4 1.3 Theoretical perspectives ........................................................................................................ 5 1.4 Research methods .................................................................................................................. 5 1.5 Relevance .............................................................................................................................. 5 1.6 Structure of the thesis ............................................................................................................ 6 2. Theoretical framework .................................................................................................................. 6 2.1 Web 2.0 and participatory culture ......................................................................................... 7 2.2 Participatory fan cultures 2.0............................................................................................... 10 2.3 Political economies of participatory fan cultures 2.0 .......................................................... 15 2.3.1 Fan participations and copyright infringement ................................................................ 18 2.3.2 Fan participations and the profit motive .......................................................................... 23 2.4 From consumers and users to produsers.............................................................................. 30 3. Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 35 3.1 Choice of method: qualitative interviews ............................................................................ 35 3.2 Sampling: contacting the interviewees ................................................................................ 35 3.3 Materials collection ............................................................................................................. 36 3.4 Materials analysis and interpretation ................................................................................... 40 3.5 Trustworthiness ................................................................................................................... 41 4. Results......................................................................................................................................... 42 4.1 The emergence of scanlation ............................................................................................... 42 4.2 The scanlating process......................................................................................................... 45 4.3 Open participation, communal evaluation........................................................................... 49 4.4 Fluid heterarchy, ad hoc meritocracy .................................................................................. 53 4.5 Unfinished artefacts, continuing process ............................................................................. 55 4.6 Common property, individual rewards ................................................................................ 57 4.7 Attitudes towards copyright infringement ........................................................................... 62 4.8 Attitudes towards the profit motive ..................................................................................... 69 5. Discussion and conclusion .......................................................................................................... 78 5.1 Answering the research questions ....................................................................................... 78 5.2 Impact and implications of scanlation ................................................................................. 80 5.2.1 For the manga industry .................................................................................................... 81 5.2.2 For the copyright regime ................................................................................................. 81 5.2.3 For commercial approaches............................................................................................. 83 5.2.4 For cultural life and society ............................................................................................. 85 5.3 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 86 References .......................................................................................................................................... 89 Appendix: Interview guide ............................................................................................................... 102 List of figures Figure 1: The produser……………………………………………………………………………...31 Figure 2: The information commons of produsage in context……………………………………...33 Figure 3: The modules of the scanlation process……………………………………..…………….45 Figure 4: Scanned Japanese raw……………………………………………………………..……...46 Figure 5: Scanned raw after the cleaning step……………………………………………………....46 Figure 6: Scanned Japanese raw of a double page…………………………………………….……47 Figure 7: Scanned raw after the redrawing of the damaged parts…………………………………..47 Figure 8: Japanese raw……………………………………………………………………………...48 Figure 9: Translated scanlation……………………………………………………………………..48 Figure 10: Cover of a scanlation with credits……………………………………………………….62 Figure 11: Scanlation groups with small teams of scanlators scanlating projects in cooperation and/or competition…………………………………………………..……………………………....88 1. Introduction On the Web, self-publishing and sharing for free is the norm. If you belong to the modest amount of privileged consumers, users, perhaps fans, who own a computer and are connected with the rest of the networked world, chance is that you have been participating in the production

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