<p> Transnational cultural fandom| 1</p><p>Transnational cultural fandom1 </p><p>Dr Hye-Kyung Lee is a Lecturer in Culture, Media & Creative Industries, King’s College London. She researches and teaches on cultural policy, cultural industries and cultural consumption within European and East Asian contexts. Her current writing is focused on cultural policy in South Korea, transnational fandom of East Asian cultural product and creative industries discourse. She recently guest-edited Creative Industries Journal and Arts Marketing: An International Journal, and is co-editing Cultural Policies in East Asia: Dynamics between the State, Arts and Cultural Industries (2014, Palgrave). Address: Culture, Media & Creative Industries, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK. Email: [email protected] </p><p>Introduction In recent years, socio-cultural, technological and geographical contexts where cultural fandom operates have changed noticeably. The advancement of consumerism has resulted in the abundance and diversification of popular culture and more generous social attitudes towards affective consumption of it. Meanwhile, the penetration of online communications and digital technologies in our everyday life of cultural consumption has made the conventional distinction between fans and ordinary consumers difficult to sustain: cultural texts and relevant knowledge that might have been an esoteric terrain of fandom in the past are now easily accessible; and digital technologies greatly assist consumers’ engagement in productive activities around cultural products they admire (Busse and Gray 2011, Jenkins 2006). We are also witnessing an expansion and deepening of the interface between cultural fandom and cultural industries’ marketing schemes that see consumer participation and creativity as a new source for profit making (Banks and Dueze 2009, van Dijck 2009, Ritzer and Jurgen 2010, Zwick et al. 2008). Yet, the interface entails tension generated by the dissimilar logics of fandom and the industries’ commercial business, for instance, the tension around copyrights (Lee 2011, Schwabach 2011, Tushnet 2007). Another visible trend is the ‘transnationalisation’ of cultural fandom, denoting the tendency that previously local fandom has gone global and many places in the world have witnessed fan communities actively forming around popular cultural products from overseas. All these changes are interwoven, making contemporary fandom of popular culture an ambiguous and contentious phenomenon. Here, fan activities are no longer confined to a shadow cultural economy (Fiske 1992), and fans become powerful players in global cultural distribution (Green and Jenkins 2011, Lee 2011) and even an object of nation states’ cultural policy (Huang 2011, Iwabuchi 2002, 2010). </p><p>1 After revision, this draft will be published as a chapter in Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures (2014) (eds. By L. Duits, et al.), Surrey: Ashgate. </p><p>Transnational cultural fandom| 2</p><p>In this chapter, I intend to explore ‘transnational cultural fandom’ and discuss its location within the intricate landscape of cultural globalisation, global cultural business and nation branding projects. The concept of ‘transnational’ concerns the mobility of cultural and media text across national, geographical, cultural and linguistic borders and encourages us to look into the actual process of the movement and fan communities’ roles in it. Compared with the notion of ‘global’, ‘transnational’ is less encompassing or generalising, signifying the complexity of cultural globalisation, where culture and media are trafficked in plural directions by multiple agencies including not only commercial and governmental actors but also cultural consumers who are virtually connected. Transnational cultural fandom is distinguished from the global popularity of US popular culture because the fandom is a product (and a leverage) of not only dominant flow but also ‘contra flow’ consisting of non- US and non-English language culture and media. As fans’ appreciation of cultural and media products from abroad cannot be neatly separable from their broader perception of the products’ country of origin, such fandom may be associated with fans’ discovery and recognition of cultural appeal of the producing countries (e.g., ‘Japan Mania’ and ‘Korean Wave’ in Taiwan) and may become a key concern of the countries’ nation branding projects (Chua and Iwabuchi 2008, Huang 2011, Jung 2011, Sung 2010). This is the case especially with Japan and South Korea (hereafter Korea), who are emerging as new centres of global cultural economy (Iwabuchi 2002, 2010, Sung 2010). In the next section, I will briefly review the existing discussion of fan studies and will point out the lack of attention to the transnational aspect of contemporary cultural and media fandom. This will be followed by an account of contexts, practices and cultures of manga (Japanese comics) and anime (Japanese animation) fandom and K-pop (Korean pop culture) fandom far beyond the producing countries. Some part of these case studies is drawn from my previous study based primarily on interviews with manga and anime fans and analysis of related text on fan fora and fan groups’ websites (Lee 2009, 2010, 2011). In the final section, I will attempt further conceptualisation and theorisation of transnational cultural fandom in relation to cultural globalisation, cultural industries’ global business and nation branding. </p><p>Cultural fandom Fan research has provided fascinating accounts of cultural consumers who deeply admire and feel attached to particular cultural and media text to the level where affection for the text plays determinant roles in shaping their identity and way of life. In spite of varying emphases, we can point out three recurring themes in the existing studies: distinction, Transnational cultural fandom| 3</p><p> productive consumption and dialectic relation between fans and cultural industries. Firstly, fans are regarded as distinct from non-fans and ordinary consumers in terms of the degree of their emotional and psychological involvement with popular cultural texts/icons and their investment of time and resource in them. Against the backdrop of negative projections of fans in the mainstream media, the starting point for fan studies was to readdress the prejudiced distinction of fans as frenzied, irrational and susceptible to manipulation by cultural industries (Jensen 1992). The research has found that fans are capable of enjoying textual and inter-textual play with cultural products and this process – which has emancipatory and empowering elements – involves the generation of subversive and alternative meanings (Baym 2000, Jenkins 1992a, Kozinets 2001). Although there are individualised fan activities, fans are seen as members of a fandom or fan community that provides socio-cultural settings for their interaction with cultural text as well as other fans (Busse and Gray 2011). The second important theme is ‘production’ as aptly demonstrated by Henry Jenkins’s statement that fans are ‘consumers who also produce, readers who also write, spectators who also participate’ (Jenkins 1992b: 208). Fans are productive in the semantic, artistic, social and structural senses: they create meanings, tangible artworks, communities and structures for (alternative or sub-) cultural production (Fiske 1992). The fan community is understood as a field of cultural production where its members develop their own logic, norms, conventions and systems for recognition and reward. Fan production’s affinity with professional cultural production informs our understanding of fandom as a shadow cultural economy (Fiske 1992). The third recurring theme is fans’ dialectic relationship with cultural industries (Hills 2002, Kozinets 2001). Cultural fandom is a product of consumerism and ontologically depends on cultural text supplied by the industries. Fans are the most loyal and vocal segment of the audience. When it comes to niche products they may be the only audience. However, fans challenge the industries via their alternative interpretation of the primary text and celebration of non-commercial and collective culture, which contrasts with the commercial logic behind the production and distribution of the cultural text in question. Meanwhile, the rapidly changing media landscape means that our existing ideas of fans, fan communities and fan- industry relationships are challenged: how can we distinguish fans from ordinary consumers who are engaged in productive activities and exhibiting fannish behaviour and how can we set a boundary of fandom when there is an increasing interface with the industries’ market strategies involving dedicated consumers? (Busse and Gray 2011). It should be noted that the existing literature in fan research is centred on experiences of Western, especially English speaking, countries such as the US and the UK. Many writings Transnational cultural fandom| 4</p><p> tend to view fandom as a ‘local’ phenomenon where some of us consume cultural text produced in our society and in our language (which is English) in extensive and participatory manners (cf. Bennett and Peterson 2004 on translocal and virtual scenes). Cultural fandom being local implies a close distance – geographically, socially or linguistically – between fans and cultural industries. Such proximity may facilitate fans’ contextualised reading of cultural text and therefore may function as a basis of their critical reflection. Meanwhile, non-Western fans and fandom around cultural text originating from non-Western societies still seem a new terrain for fan research (Busse and Gray 2011: 430, Harrington and Bielby 2007). Overseas fandom of Japanese or Korean popular culture has thus far been explored from the perspective of media and cultural studies as well as Asian studies (e.g., Chua and Iwabuchi 2008, Hu 2006, Iwabuchi 2002, Napier 2007, Tasi 2007). Like other contemporary transnational cultural fandoms, this fandom is facilitated greatly by media convergence and participatory consumption. Digital technologies and online communications ease fans’ access not only to cultural text but also to up-to-date information on the text, and help them to take part in communities where various fan activities online and offline are conducted and shared. The fandom may be nurtured by top-down distribution of Japanese or Korean popular culture by local importers such as TV stations and publishing houses, however its main feed is a wide range of contents unofficially disseminated via online communications among fans across borders. The available account of this fandom is concerned mainly with its contexts and fans’ reception of their chosen cultural products and icons. Meanwhile, there is a shortage of investigation into cultures and practices of such transnational fandom and their implications for cultural industries’ global distribution business. </p><p>Transnational cultural fandom: practice and culture Cultural and media fandom existing across national borders is not new. As shown by the worldwide stardom enjoyed by popular US film actors and pop singers over decades, mass culture originated from the US has enjoyed global markets and global fan bases. This phenomenon has been understood and critiqued as the most indicative feature of cultural globalisation that is propelled by powerful cultural and media corporations rooted in the US. Globalised access to and consumption of US film, TV and pop music is attributable not merely to market factors (the economy of scale of their domestic market, advanced global distribution networks and high-budget marketing) but also to political, economic and cultural factors (the country’s political and economic power and cultural hegemony of the English language). Meanwhile non-US and non-English language cultural products, which do not Transnational cultural fandom| 5</p><p> have the above advantages, are subjected heavily to the cultural and linguistic embeddedness of cultural consumption (Collins 1994, Iwabuchi 2002). Perhaps, telenovela (Latin American soap opera), anime (Japanese animation) and manga (Japanese comics) have been notable exceptions to the US dominated cultural globalisation (Iwabuchi 2002, Leonard, 2005, Lopez-Pumarejo 2007, Napier 2007). More recently, Korean TV drama and pop music – which are enjoying huge fandom in Asian countries and are entering more remote markets – have joined the group (H.-J. Cho 2005, Y. Cho 2011, Huang 2011, S. Jung 2011). Despite their growing popularity abroad, however, the consumption of Japanese and Korean popular cultural products is not as globalised as are their US counterparts. Thus their overseas fandom is better conceptualised as transnational. Although the fandom signifies a de-centring and re- centring of cultural globalisation, cultural industries in these countries lack seamless global distribution networks and find substantial entrance barriers in overseas markets. In this context, the fandom can be regarded as a product (and a further trigger) of overseas fan communities’ voluntary and purposeful cultural and linguistic mediation – including translation, cultural footnoting, editing, distribution and marketing – of popular cultural products from the countries. Such transnational cultural fandom has dramatically expanded during recent years, meaning that nowadays a tremendous volume of popular cultural text from Japan and Korea is mediated and widely circulated online via fan networks. The fandom no longer appears a shadow cultural economy: in terms of volume, reach and speed, it outweighs the global distribution business of the industries (Lee 2011). Fans’ inter-textual reception of different forms of Japanese or Korean popular culture hints at their positive appropriation of and attraction to the country of origin and its culture in a broad sense, signalling the fandom’s potential use for the countries’ purposive nation braiding strategies. </p><p>Manga and anime fandom overseas Fandom of manga and anime beyond Japan has existed for a few decades. Napier (2007) explains US anime fandom, which was rapidly expanding in the 1990s, in terms of the deep historical roots of Western culture and popular culture’s fascination and fantasisation of Japan since the 19th century. Meanwhile, Patten’s (2004) account of manga and anime fandom in the US illustrates how it started as a tiny branch of science fiction fandom in the late 1970s and evolved to a fandom of regional and national scale over time. Meanwhile, manga and anime have been more familiar forms of entertainment in some European countries such as France and Italy, where they were introduced in the 1970s and 1980s and have since then found mainstream outlets. In both the US and Europe, manga and anime fandom has grown Transnational cultural fandom| 6</p><p> remarkably during the 2000s and has been closely connected with fans’ positive reception of other forms of Japanese popular culture, such as video games and light novels (novels accompanying characters drawn in manga or anime style), and furthermore the country’s language and way of life. At the heart of the fandom, there exist those individuals and groups who assist manga and anime’s transcultural and translinguistic movement by providing fan- translation and fan-subtitling. These fan activities have been enormously eased by fans’ effortless deployment of digital technologies and online communications. Nowadays, fan- translators (‘scanlators’) digitally scan original manga, translate Japanese to another language, clean the drawing, erase the original Japanese text, insert the translation, quality- check and publish a translated version of manga on the Internet to share it with other fans (for more details see Lee 2009). Similarly, anime fansubbers digitally copy the original anime, translate from Japanese to another language, make subtitles and release the subtitled anime on the internet (for more details see Lee 2010, 2011). Initially, scanlation and fansubbing’s main language was English and the centre of these practices was the US. During recent years, however, these border-crossing activities have become international projects, involving English-speaking fans from Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. At the same time, we have seen a rapid surge of scanlation and fansubbing in other languages. According to popular listing sites dedicated to manga and anime, there are approximately 700 scanlation groups and 740-2000 fansubbing groups. Considering that the lists are composed of mainly English speaking groups, we can assume their number would sharply increase if we add other language groups. The practice and culture of manga scanlation and anime fansubbing can be explained with fan studies’ existing analytical tools. Those who are involved in these activities are passionate and extensive readers, watchers, collectors and reviewers of manga and anime: many of them are familiar with Japan’s ‘otaku’ (geek) culture and happily define themselves as otakus. They are skilled producers of fan-translation and subtitles. Their activities provide the broader manga and anime fandom with source materials (translated text), without which other fan activities and the accumulation of fan-knowledge would be reduced to a great degree. Scanlators and fansubbers are supplemented by individuals and groups who circulate, archive, comment on and list scanlated manga and fansubbed anime. Scanlation and fansub viewers also are a main constituent of the scene. Scanlation and anime fansubbing, as fields of cultural production, have developed a distinct culture: e.g., a non-profit making principle, collective and community spirit, emotional support for the industry, the convention of ‘stop the project when licensed’ in the local market and the socially constructed view of copyrights Transnational cultural fandom| 7</p><p> primarily as rights for attribution. Groups sometimes compete and collaborate for better products, reputation, popularity and speed. It is noted that one-click access to fan-translated manga and anime and related knowledge online has made the traditional distinction between fans and non-fans obsolete. The viewer can instantly consume various manga and anime text and fan-generated news and take part in fan fora, and can even setting up a fan-translation group when like-minded people who have relevant skills have been identified and recruited. As some anime fansubbers comment, such a situation may lead to a dilution of the fandom’s identity and culture (Lee 2010). Meanwhile, the organisation and management of fan- translation groups look alternative to the professional production of translated manga and anime: virtual and global networks as production units are sustained by fans’ voluntary donation of time and skills and coordination via online communications. The field of fan production and distribution shows extreme productivity: endless manga and anime titles of diverse genres – both old and new, and niche and mainstream – are fan-translated and freely available for fans, dwarfing the industries’ overseas distribution. </p><p>K-pop fandom beyond Korea An examination of overseas fandom of contemporary popular culture originating in Korea (the so-called ‘Korean Wave’ phenomenon) gives further insights into the nature of transnational cultural fandom. The core content of the Korean Wave is TV drama, film and pop music (the term ‘K-pop’ is often used to encompass all these areas). Initially the wave was a regional phenomenon centred on South East Asian and East Asian countries but it has been growing in other areas such as North and Latin America and Europe (E.-Y. Jung 2009). Compared with the transnational fandom of Japanese popular culture that has gradually built up overseas markets and fan bases over a few decades, the Korean Wave has been happening in a more rapid, intense and epidemic way over a short period. It started in the later 1990s in Vietnam and China, and gained momentum when Winter Sonata, a Korean TV drama series, received unexpectedly passionate responses in Japan in 2003. Since then K-pop has become a major trend in pan-Asian pop culture (Y. Cho 2011). Like the transnational fandom of Japanese popular culture, the K-pop fandom is a highly inter-media, cutting across film, TV drama, TV comedy show, pop music, online games, animation and characters. The fans’ desire is not limited to a particular medium or genre but often seems overarching across different aspects of Korean popular culture, or ‘anything Korean’ (Huang 2011, E.-Y. Jung 2009, S. Jung 2011). Consuming media text is linked to other fan activities, e.g., joining fan meetings, following K-pop idols, participating in fan fora, circulating posts and videos, Transnational cultural fandom| 8</p><p> writing and reading fan-fiction, cover dancing and even visiting Korea to meet their idols and see shooting locations for their favourite drama (Chua and Iwabuchi 2008, S. Jung 2011). Despite the increasing volume of writings that analyse the Korean Wave as a cultural and social phenomenon, there is a lack of interest in its transnational fandom aspects. In this context, S. Jung (2011) provides an interesting case study of the Indonesian fandom of K-pop by showing how K-pop crosses national, cultural and linguistic borders via fan-driven circulation of new media, especially social media. Nowadays transnational fans of K-pop engage themselves in real-time and immediate access to relevant news and contents online (which are translated and mediated by fans themselves), mainly via K-pop websites, K-drama fansubbing sites and distribution sites, Facebook pages and Tweeter messages, in an extensive way. Fans’ own mediation and circulation of K-pop contents contrasts with the lack of authorised K-pop products in their local markets. Numerous groups exist who translate and subtitle Korean TV drama and film into other languages, particularly English, French, Italian, Malay, Arabic, Polish and Spanish. FansubWiki lists a total of 324 drama fansubbing groups who are specialised primarily in fansubbing East Asian TV drama and we can guess many of them are committed to Korean drama.2 As of the first quarter of 2012 a total of 29 on-going Korean drama series are being fansubbed in real time by four English language groups and 15 other language groups.3 The membership and operations of these groups are international. Groups consist of a number of members who take specific roles – such as translators, timers and editors – and are virtually coordinated by administrators. Their size varies but English- language groups tend to be large: e.g., two of the most active groups boast of approximately 300 and 200 members respectively. The huge size is useful in terms of speeding up the translation and subtitling process, for example by allowing numerous fans to carry out a bite- size translation simultaneously. Although the groups work on some old series, their primary concern is seamless delivery of on-going drama series to overseas fans almost in real time. Most groups have their own communications channels, such as a website, but there also exist fansubbing distribution sites that provide links to videos. For instance, My Soju, one of the biggest distribution sites, provides a list/links of 470 Korean TV drama series subtitled in English in addition to many other East Asian TV drama series (accessed: 29 June 2012).4 Transnational fandom of K-pop and Korean drama fansubbing in particular is characterised </p><p>2 http://fansub.d-addicts.com/Category:Fansub_Groups [accessed: 29 June 2012].</p><p>3 http://fansub.d-addicts.com/Kdrama_Fansub_Map [accessed: 29 June 2012].</p><p>4 This website ceased to exist in early September 2012 for unknown reasons. Transnational cultural fandom| 9</p><p> by voluntarism, non-commercialism and collective culture. While desiring to know about and support Korean cultural industries and their overseas business, the fandom is relying heavily on free borrowing and sharing of the industries’ commodities, revealing potential discord between the logics of the fields of commercial and fan production. </p><p>Transnational cultural fandom within bigger contexts </p><p>Transnational fandom complicating cultural globalisation The above case studies demonstrate that transnational cultural fandom is emerging as a powerful force of cultural globalisation and is making the globalisation process further complicated. So far cultural globalisation has often been viewed from the perspective of the global reach of cultural and media contents – image, news, knowledge and entertainment – originated in the West, especially the US, and their impact on local communities (Herman and McChesney 2000, Thompson, 2000). Local strategies of negotiation, resistance, localisation and hybridisation is an important part of the discussion, however, the globalisation of culture and media is projected by and large as a top-down, industry-driven process. Meanwhile, transnational cultural fandom, where fans work as both gate-opener and gate-keeper via choosing, mediating, circulating and promoting cultural text beyond its country of origin, serve as a bottom-up initiative of cultural globalisation. Probably the very existence of such fandom indicates the not-yet-global characteristic of global cultural dissemination via commercial means. Transcultural fandom of non-US and non-English language cultural products can foster ‘contra flows’ that both challenge and complement one- directional and US-dominated global traffic of popular culture (Thussu 2007). Fans’ own circulation of, for instance, Japanese and Korean popular cultural products constitutes a bottom-up contra flow in itself. Furthermore, it may stimulate a contra flow consisting of authorised products by nurturing overseas markets, helping the two countries to rise as influential players in the global cultural economy. A well-known drama fansubbing listing site shows a mapping of fansubbed TV drama, which is mostly Japanese and Korean.5 However, concluding that fan-translation and mediation serve only as a contra flow would be misleading. Recent news reports from China demonstrate that fansubbing is the most popular and dominant method for Chinese people to access US TV and film contents in addition to those from Japan and Korea (Shanghai Daily 2009). Certainly, fansubbing is a new way for US audiovisual contents to penetrate the areas where their authorised distribution is restricted</p><p>5 http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/subtitles.php [accessed: 29 June 2012]. Transnational cultural fandom| 10</p><p> for political and economic reasons and where fans’ demand exceeds authorised products on offer (Barra 2009 for Italian fansubbing of US TV shows). Facing US cultural industries’ tight control of copyrights, however, fansubbing and sharing of US audiovisual contents is mostly carried out underground and therefore its mapping is difficult. Nevertheless, we can draw the conclusion that transnational cultural fandom complicates and intensifies cultural globalisation, by assisting both dominant and contra cultural flows and by strikingly increasing the volume of contents and the speed of their circulation.</p><p>Transnational fandom out of shadow cultural economy Existing fan research points out cultural fandom’s textual and interpretative interventions in cultural industries’ creative strategies while understanding fandom as a symbolic cultural economy, thus its impact on the industries’ business is rather limited. However, the contemporary trend of convergence culture and participatory consumption – along with the industries’ marketing strategies aimed at engaging participatory consumers – is challenging such a perception of fandom-industry relations. For both those who celebrate the trend (e.g., Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004) and those who critique it (e.g., van Dijck 2009, Zwick et al. 2008), it is obvious that consumers today – especially devoted and participatory fans – cannot be clearly separated from the process of planning, making and marketing of cultural goods and services. We can view transnational cultural fandom from this perspective: fans undertake cultural intermediation and distribution – which used to be carried out by professional cultural intermediaries – free of charge (Banks and Dueze 2009, Barra 2009, Baym and Burnett 2009). Their work may function as free market research, marketing and advertising. At the same time, however, it also generates unprecedented tension in fan- industry relations as the fandom considerably pushes the boundary of copyright ownership held by producers of the original text and licences by overseas publishers and distributors. Despite fandom’s ‘stop the project when licensed’ convention, a wide range of licensed items (e.g., popular manga currently being serialised in Japanese manga magazines and Korean drama series that are already available on licensed streaming websites) as well as non- licensed ones are ceaselessly fan-translated and distributed, forming dominant streams of a global flow of Japanese and Korean popular culture. In terms of fans’ mediation capacity (e.g., the number of fan-translators and fan-editors, the number of available languages, etc.), the efficiency of their virtual communications and coordination (at almost zero cost; any cost internalised by individual fans) and project operation unbound by local time, fan-translators and fansubbers can easily surpass their professional counterparts (Lee 2011, also Baym and Transnational cultural fandom| 11</p><p>Burnett 2009). Equipped with ever-expanding mediation capacity and collective culture, transnational fandom may sit uncomfortably with the industries’ commercial and profit- centred logics of global distribution business. Witnessing fan-translation, subtitling and distribution surging as a dominant mode of the transnational movement of cultural contents and realising the potential profitability of online/mobile distribution of the contents, cultural industries in Japan and Korea began to frame these fan activities as piracy reducing the overseas market demand for authorised products (Lee 2010). Although their main targets are distribution websites rather than fan- translation groups, the message is clear: fans should stop free-borrowing of manga, anime and drama contents and should access them via authorised channels. The industries have also started to imitate transnational cultural fandom’s practices, for instance, real-time translation, the involvement of voluntary translators, online/mobile distribution, the provision of free contents (with advertisements), and the provision of virtual space for fan discussion. At the moment, it is hard to see how the transnational cultural fandom affects the relevant industries and how the industries’ anti-piracy campaign influences fans. This is because both the fandom and the industries are evolving rapidly, and supplementing and competing with each other in terms of content delivery to overseas markets. In addition, the social, linguistic and geographical distance between them appears to make their relationship still rather indirect and exploratory. </p><p>Transnational fandom as an object of nation branding projects Transnational fandom of manga, anime and K-pop is tied to individual fans’ and fan communities’ positive recognition of the country of origin and its culture in general. One explanation for this might be that the distance between fans and the producing countries leaves the former desiring to ‘discover’, ‘find’ and ‘explore’ the latter in order to make better and fuller sense of their chosen cultural text. Another explanation would be the great degree of inter-media cross-over characteristic of Japanese and Korean popular culture. Using popular narratives, characters and stars across different media is a well-known strategy of the Japanese cultural industries, and it has been actively adopted by Koreans too, aptly demonstrated by the rising trend of renting talents between the Korean TV and pop music industries. This effectively assists overseas fans of one medium to be effortlessly exposed to other medium originating from the country and to develop interest in the country’s culture in a broad sense, including language, food, fashion and way of life (E.-Y. Jung 2009, Mori 2008, Niper 2007). Transnational cultural fandom is hardly bounded by national governments’ Transnational cultural fandom| 12</p><p> regulations on cultural content, import/export and copyrights. Nevertheless, the last decade has seen the fandom becoming an object of national cultural policy concerned with nation branding (Huang 2011, Iwabuchi 2010, Lam 2007). Nation branding, as a combination of cultural diplomacy and cultural industries policy, aims at strengthening a nation state’s soft power (Nye 2004) via increasing its domestic cultural contents’ attraction to others and their transnational flow. It has internal and domestic implications too, for example, from identity formation, social legitimation of popular culture to justification for government support for cultural industries. Japan and Korea, as emerging centres of cultural globalisation, have shown conscious aspirations to utilise the overseas popularity of their cultural contents to enhance their countries’ international reputation and competitiveness. In spite of the difference in Japan and Korea’s traditional approach to cultural policy (market-driven and state-driven respectively), they are in common in initiating nation branding projects, mainly after overseas media reported the remarkable popularity of their popular culture (‘Japan’s Gross National Cool’ as dubbed by a US journalist Douglas McGray in 2002 and the expression ‘Korean Wave’ was coined by the Chinese media around 2000). In a sense, the nation branding projects were conceived as a cultural policy response to transnational fandom of the countries’ popular culture. In the past years, the Japanese government, the Japan Foundation and commercial sectors collaborated in undertaking schemes to enhance the country’s brand (‘Cool Japan’) overseas: for instance, International Manga Award (2007-), Cultural Ambassadors for Anime (2008-) and Japan Creative Center (Singapore) (Lam 2007, Tsutomu 2008). National-level policies have proliferated since 2011 when the government adopted proposals (Creating a New Japan) by the Cool Japan Advisory Council (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry 2011). These policies include the Cool Japan Daily web portal, various Cool-Japan themed conferences, Cool Japan Strategy Promotion Programme, Cool Japan Overseas Expansion Projects (Singapore, China, India, US, France, etc.) and the ministries’ active participation in the annual Japan Expo Paris where anime and manga are the biggest attractions. In Korea, the Korean Wave has been a top agenda of cultural policy since the phenomenon gained full momentum in 2003. Central government, the Korea Creative Content Agency, Korea Foundation, Korean embassies abroad and numerous local governments have been proactively engaged in promoting the wave (Sung 2010). One recent example can be found in the London-based Korean Cultural Centre’s K-pop contest and K-pop night in 2011, which was held in collaboration with a K-pop fan community and brought in a large number of fans from the UK and other European countries (Joong-ang Daily 2011). In 2012, the Centre also Transnational cultural fandom| 13</p><p> organised a 12-week K-Pop Academy where 30 fans were selected and provided with the opportunity to learn Korean pop culture, entertainment industries, Korean history, food and the Korean alphabet as well as meeting with Korean pop idols and diplomats (Korean Cultural Centre London 2012). Such efforts are sometimes happily met by fan groups who define themselves as disseminators of the Korean Wave. However, government-led, top down initiatives to expand transnational fandom are critiqued as ineffective and often counter- effective. They are also seen as politically driven actions that address domestic rather overseas audiences (Tsutomu 2008): e.g., Cool Japan strategies introduced in 2011 are intended to assist the Japanese government’s effort to recover and revitalise Japanese society since the earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear crisis (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry 2011). Another issue with nation branding projects is that, as Iwabuchi (2010) comments, they reduce the cultural and social significance of transnational cultural fandom by seeing overseas fans mainly as current and potential markets for domestic cultural products and potential visitors to tourist destinations. As bearers of Cool Japan brand or Korean Wave, the fans are encouraged to look at the stylish and fancy sides of contemporary Japan or Korea while any further engagement with the complexities in either society is discouraged.</p><p>Conclusion So far, transnational and transcultural aspects of contemporary cultural fandom, especially that around Japanese and Korean pop culture, have been discussed by media and cultural studies and regional studies researchers whose primary concern is (national and regional) identity and the audience’s interpretation of the popular cultural text. Bringing in a fan studies perspective could lead to richer accounts of such fandom. The practices and cultures of transnational fans of manga, anime and K-pop – their passion for and emotional involvement with their chosen text, extensive investment of time and resource, forming and partaking in communities, promoting collective culture and sharing, developing their own rules and norms and constructing an alternative field for cultural production – can be explained with theoretical and conceptual tools provided by existing fan studies. Meanwhile, I propose that a transnational perspective gives us a useful analytical framework, with which we can make better sense of the complexity of contemporary cultural fandom within the globalised and converged media environment. Powered by digital technologies and online networks, transnational fans actively take part in intermediating and distributing popular cultural contents beyond the country of origin. In doing so, they extend, Transnational cultural fandom| 14</p><p> deepen and diversify the cultural globalisation process from the bottom up. From the industries’ point of view, transnational fans’ voluntary intermediary activities look like double-edged swords: whilst functioning as the most effective and zero-cost marketing, they also pose challenges by transforming the industries’ commodities into public goods and creating markets for these public goods. Perhaps a significant part of these markets will never be converted into paying markets. The two case studies discussed in the chapter demonstrate the extent to which the dialectics between the fandom and the industries are being made further convoluted within the rapidly changing media environment. It appears that transnational cultural fandom flourish in the disjuncture of cultural globalisation (Appadurai 1990). Not to mention disjoints between different domains (or ‘-scapes’) of globalisation, we are witnessing disjuncture within the global ‘mediascape’, for instance, gaps between territory-based cultural business and the transnationalised desire of consumers and the incongruence between the ownership of copyrights of media text and that of electronic means to reproduce and disseminate the text. It is within these gaps and differences transnational cultural fandom finds its location. The nature of the fandom becomes more complicated when policy makers try to square it with their nation branding framework, by reducing and subjectifying it as a carrier of the prestige and cultural appeal of the nation in question. I would like to propose that a transnational perspective can benefit fan studies by inviting macro and global perspectives. It reminds us that cultural and media fandom takes place not only at the centres of global cultural economy but also at its peripheries. It also points out that contemporary cultural fandom often is more than a local or domestic phenomenon: it may be a site where local fans interact with overseas fans, navigate and appropriate popular cultural and media text from overseas, and facilitate its transnational dissemination. Transnational fandom could be seen as a manifestation of cultural globalisation which is characterised by the co-existence of dominant and contra flows, the involvement of multiple agencies including the industries, governments and fans and the disjunctures caused by tension and contradiction between difference globalising forces. Therefore, it can function as a useful analytical tool to connect fan studies to the discussion of cultural globalisation and the global cultural business. Here, fan scholars are encouraged to find new terrains of research, such as the cross-cultural analysis of the fandom of globally and transnationally popular texts/icons (they could even map a ‘global fan-scape’ of popular cultural and media texts) and the investigation of the transnationalised and transculturalised relationship between fans and the industries. How fans’ critical and reflexive faculties are played out and work as a challenge to global cultural business would be another interesting Transnational cultural fandom| 15</p><p> area to look at. There might be potential challenges in terms of methodology as researchers’ language abilities confine their observation of fan culture beyond their linguistic zone. Still, they can try to listen to findings by fan researchers working in other languages, particularly in the peripheries of global cultural economy, and pursue research collaboration. </p><p>References Appadurai, A. 1990. 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