Interpreting Soap Operas and Creating Community: Inside a Computer-Mediated Fan Culture Author(S): Nancy K

Interpreting Soap Operas and Creating Community: Inside a Computer-Mediated Fan Culture Author(s): Nancy K. Baym Source: Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 30, No. 2/3 (May - Dec., 1993), pp. 143-176 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3814314 Accessed: 15-10-2016 15:23 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Folklore Research This content downloaded from 138.253.50.158 on Sat, 15 Oct 2016 15:23:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Nancy K Baym INTERPRETING SOAP OPERAS AND CREATING COMMUNITY: INSIDE A COMPUTER-MEDIATED FAN CULTURE Folklorists initially responded to the computer and related technologies with a mixture of trepidation and enthusiasm. On the one hand, technology was seen as a potentially community-fracturing force that could displace, and perhaps destroy, folkloric practice. As Dell Hymes put it, "Our present world may seem increasingly a world of technology and mongrelization of culture in which the traditional has less and less a place" (1975:353). On the other hand, technology has been seen as amenable to folklore, providing new topics and facilitating its transmission. As Alan Dundes wrote: Technology, especially as it impinged upon communication techniques, was thought to be a factor contributing to the demise of folklore. Not true! The technology of the telephone, radio, television, xerox machine, etc. has in- creased the speed of the transmission of folklore.... Moreover, the technology itself has become the subject of folklore. (1977:32) A third possible impact of technology on folklore, one which has been far less explored, is that advanced communications technology, specifically interactive computer networks, can become sites for the creation of entirely new communities, each with a distinct folkloric tradition. This essay exam- ines one such community. Rec.arts.tv.soaps ("r.a.t.s.") is a highly successful computer-mediated discussion group ("newsgroup") about American day- time television soap operas. R.a.t.s. is distributed in the form of electronic messages through the Usenet network that links universities, research institutions, governmental organizations, computer businesses and other commercial institutions, and private individuals. Computer-mediated communities like r.a.t.s. challenge early conceptions of the folk group, which demanded, at the least, shared location and unmediated interaction. Usenet participants, in contrast, are distributed across international boundaries. Their interaction spans time asynchro- nously and is technologically mediated. They may never encounter one Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 30, No. 2/3, 1993 Copyright ? 1993 by the Folklore Institute, Indiana University This content downloaded from 138.253.50.158 on Sat, 15 Oct 2016 15:23:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 144 Nancy K. Baym another face-to-face nor hear one another's voices. However, later conceptions of the folk group have insisted only that groups share "at least one common factor" and "some traditions which it calls its own" (Dundes 1965:2), or that traditions must be grounded in distinct shared rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech (Hymes 1986:54). Computer-mediated groups share the topics around which they organize, the system that links them, and the communication that passes between them. These three sets of resources are enough to create distinct ways of speaking, and hence distinctive folk groups and folkloric traditions. This paper begins with an overview of my own relationship to the group and my methods of inquiry. In the second section, I turn to the group's technical and participatory structure, looking in particular at the ways these structures mitigate the spatio-temporal separation of group members. Third, I look at some of the emergent traditions in r.a.t.s., focusing on two sets of conventionalized ways to frame speech. Finally, I look at performance in r.a.t.s., asking by which criteria performance is evaluated. Method The work discussed here is part of an ongoing ethnographic study of communication in the r.a.t.s. newsgroup community. My position in the group is that of a participant at least as much as a researcher. As a long-time fan of soap operas, I was thrilled to discover this group. It was only after I had been reading daily and participating regularly for a year that I began to write about it. As the work has evolved, I have shared its progress with the group members and found them exceedingly supportive and helpful. They have acted as research participants as well as subjects and have treated me more as an ambassador than a researcher. The data for this study was obtained from three sources. I access r.a.t.s. through an account provided by my university. In October 1991, I saved all the messages that appeared on r.a.t.s. Additional messages have been col- lected through January 1993. I have analyzed these messages for the mul- tiple activities they mediate, as a source of explicit discussion about the merits of the group, and for demographic information about the senders. The second form of data is eighteen participants' responses to a set of open- ended questions I posted to r.a.t.s. These lent insight into who the users are, how and why they use r.a.t.s., what they understand the conventions to be, how they view their relationship to other participants, and how they think reading r.a.t.s. and watching the soap operas influence one another. Third, personal e-mail correspondence with ten other r.a.t.s. participants provided further perspectives and information. I posted two notices to the group explaining the project and offering to exclude posts by those who preferred not to be involved. No one declined to This content downloaded from 138.253.50.158 on Sat, 15 Oct 2016 15:23:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms INTERPRETING SOAP OPERAS AND CREATING COMMUNITY 145 participate. All names and e-mail addresses have been changed in the examples, though the gender of the authors (when known) has been retained. In an effort to provide a feel for the appearance of the originals, excerpts from posted messages are in a mono-space font. Spelling and grammar in posts and in questionnaire responses remain as they were written. Group structure Usenet. In order to understand any technologically-mediated community, one has to understand the infrastructure of its system. R.a.t.s. is shaped largely by its host, the Usenet computer network, and its accompanying software, which provide both logistics and possibilities for its organization. A full description of Usenet is far beyond the scope of this paper, so I will concentrate on those aspects of the network structure that enable the creation of community. Usenet's sole function is to distribute as many as 4,500 topically organized informal discussion groups through almost 28,000 sites worldwide. It does this in part by connecting to other non-commercial networks, such as Internet and Freenets. Originally envisioned as a way for computer scientists to share programs between two sites, the system has grown to link millions of users worldwide. The topics span politics, computer programming languages, gardening, sex, and most everything in between. The contents of each newsgroup are electronic letters called posts or articles. These are contributed by individuals from private accounts at their sites. With the exception of some site restrictions and some moderated groups, these articles can be any length and are not censored prior to distribution. Newsgroup articles are read and written through programs called newsreaders that keep track of which articles have already been read, allow people to edit what they will read, and allow people to reply to posted messages. When people read newsgroups, they see only the articles that have arrived at their sites since the last readings. The number of messages passing through Usenet is enormous. In early 1993, statistics provided by newsstats, who track traffic through one of Usenet's larger networks, uunet, show that in two consecutive weeks 338,657 messages written by 76,919 people were distributed. There was a daily average of 46 megabytes of material (approximately 23,000 printed pages) (newsstats 1993). This huge discourse, unlike most written material, is fleet- ing. Most sites store messages for only a few days or weeks. Until a private company recently began archiving Usenet on cd-roms, few messages were stored. This ethereal quality makes messages in many ways more like talk than like writing. The conversationality of Usenet is also fostered by newsreader designs and accompanying normative conventions that invoke This content downloaded from 138.253.50.158 on Sat, 15 Oct 2016 15:23:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 146 Nancy K. Baym social contexts for messages. These structures provide the basic resources out of which distinct cultures can be built. I will focus in particular on the role of the quotation system and headers in overcoming spatial and temporal separation and thus facilitating the creation of social context and community. When one responds to a message in a newsgroup, most newsreaders make it easy to quote the entire earlier post.

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