Ivan Askwith (Big Spaceship), Abigail De Kosnik (Professor UC Berkeley), Henry Jenkins (professor currently with MIT, transitioning to USC). Each panelist had a short talk/presentation, followed by Q&A.
Ivan’s talk:
Who are fans? Fandom often makes people think of ComicCon and sci fi, but there are a lot of fans, of lots of kinds of media and other stories/books/properties.
Fan short for fanatic — has negative connotations — also more recently geekish connotations. But fandom comes in a lot of flavors: music, literature, sports, TV, movies, brands/products etc.
Last 20 yrs: fandom has become a mainstream behavior. Moved from being marginal — to now to being encouraged — generating fans is the objective of a lot of media business models. Entertainment properties esp try to create / attract fans. The relationship between brands & individuals has become complex, confused — are we “friends” ( Facebook fan page)? are we “fans” (as of celebrities)? are we “consumers”?
Friendship implies reciprocal relationship. “Fan” implies an admiring but one-way relationship.
Sometimes this relationship gets confused (ie musicians or brands emailing people to ask them to become fans and join a fandom community).
Fan vs Friend vs Follower (different relationship assumptions). Brands experimenting with these concepts of relationship.
Fandom has gone from being unacceptable/weird/underground to being acceptable/encouraged.
Fandom isn’t just about consuming things, watching things, buying things — it involves creative, interactive, social behaviors.
Brands/celebrities coming to appreciate this. If you want fans, you have to let them create and interact. People are not going to be passive obedient recipients for a brand.
Five modes of fandom:
1) “Fan of X” becomes a point of identity for people. “I am a fan of X” helps to identify you to other people.
2) Fan interests leads people to learning new skills and pursuing new types of knowledge — skills/knowledge that from the inside of a fandom makes sense (ie learning elvish or memorizing sports scores) but may not make sense outside of that fandom.
3) Production. Fans create stuff. Fanfic, costume play (cosplay), role playing, etc. Again mainstream media / companies have begun to encourage this / admire this rather than ignore or repress it.
4) Participation. Giving audiences opportunities to influence brands. ARGs (alternative reality games) are an example — allow fans to participate in activities (Dark Knight ARG had people dress up as clowns and create havoc).
Pro westling is a fandom — from the outside, looks silly/naive. But the fans know that it’s a narrative and that fans have roles to play.
5) Appropriation. Once your product/story is out there in the world — you don’t own it anymore. Fans will do something with stories/products and reinterpret them in their own ways — often in ways that companies/IP owners don’t like and that go counter to the “official” brand meaning.
Henry’s talk:
Henry referred to his comment at SxSW last year that “Web 2.0 = fandom without the stigma.” Fans and fan behavior used to be mocked as geeky etc. Now fandom is more acceptable and more open but there’s still stigma. Most fans draw distinctions about their role in fandom, how in / how out they are.
Web 2.0 has enabled and promulgated behaviors that already existed in the fan communities.
If you look at history of new technologies — fan communities have long been early adopters and adapters of new technologies — such as early radio, walkie-talkies, podcasts (Harry Potter communities got into podcasts early) etc. So at any point in the 20th century, audio technologies were being pushed forward by fan activities.
In the 19th century — amateurs/fans used hand presses to create “zines” on various topics to circulate around. And, men and women were involved in these activities (even in mixed groups). Women as well as men were willing to experiment with amateur press technologies early on. People traded information through the mail, often without knowing each other face to face.
Old fandom also worked as a social network. Most every old sci fi writer, agent, publisher, etc. started out in a sci fi fan society. Mutual support system, social network, sharing knowledge, developing skills etc.
The woman/fan who pushed the “keep star trek on the air” was an early consumer activist in media.
Fan communities are a type of “brand” community — they advocate around a certain media brand / activity.
Skill development: fanfiction writers practice “beta reading” where more experienced fanfiction authors act as editors and writing coaches for other writers.
Anime fans “subbing” or adding subtiles to Japanese anime videos — this helped to create a broader audience in the US / english speaking countries for japanese media properties.
Remix culture. Men and women have been doing remix videos for 20-30 years — back before digital technologies — mixing and cutting video, sound, etc.
ComicCon — now a huge public event, massive attendance, used by media companies to promote their properties.
Some new properties are purely online and rely purely on fan support: Joss Wheaton’s “Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog” is a purely internet property.
There is a long history of people suggesting that fans could directly support new media stories — we’re just reaching the point where that is financially and logistically possible.
Fans are interested in mastery — of obscure knowledge, details, etc. This creates a market for detailed secondary materials/books to be sold. For multi-generational media properties — the future generation of creators is born in the fan community.
Collective intelligence — fans pooling their knowledge — creating online knowledge communities.
Fandom as source of activism.
Barack Obama as Fan in Chief — Obama knows the Vulcan salute, reads and collects comic books, reads Harry Potter to his kids etc. His campaign used a lot of web 2.0 (originally fandom) types of behaviors.
Abigail’s talk:
Should Fan Productions Be Free? issue: can / should fans make money from their activities?
Fans make money for a lot of people, and fans make things that people value.
Right now, fan creations are treated as free. We’re in the middle of an IP battle about the reuse / repurposing of owned IP. So right now, fans are trying to avoid lawsuits — and a big way they try to avoid lawsuits, is that they give away their fanworks.
However there are two types of trade cultures: monetary vs gift. These two types of trade cultures exist side by side. In every society, people sell some things for $$, and people give things away (for other reasons than money).
Fanfiction — written primarily by women and given away / shared for free. How big an activity is fanfiction / how many people write / read it? A lot. Fanfiction gets about a dozen mentions in mainstream media per week. Fanfic is written about all kinds of media properties/characters/real people/books etc. but to date — fanfiction has not been monetized.
But other types of fan creations have been monetized. Hip hop came from sampling, which is a fan remix product. it’s very similar to fannish activities — but it’s an accepted form of music now, and people pay for it.
Doujinshi — fan created anime magazines. And, fans make doujinshi of Harry Potter and other western media stories. They are sold for a small amount (usually just to cover costs).
Fan films: like “George Lucas in Love“ made by a fan. you can download it for free or for $1.99 online.
Game Mods (mostly male manufactured) and have better license arrangements w/ the original game companies — can be marketed as their own product, with the approval of the original game company.
Fan literature — lots of new books reworkings of classic literature — Shakespeare, the Bible, Moby Dick, Jane Austin, etc etc. There are lots of these every year, and some of these are bestsellers. But, these are only allowed for non-copyrighted works.
Concerns by some female fanfiction authors of not wanting fanfiction to be visible — that it will result in women/fic being labeled as sexually deviant. But: pornography is well known commodity on the internet and is widely accepted and profitable.
