Journal of Fandom Studies, The - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2015

Fans of one-sixth scale action figures minimize the importance and worth of fashion and dolls in order to counter negative stereotypes that feminize fans in general, especially fans of toys resembling dolls. This apparent anti-fandom wards against further feminization due to fan practices incorporating feminized knowledge, skill and labour to clothe those toys. Previous scholarly analyses minimize or erase the multivalent roles of one-sixth scale action figures. However, this fandom uses both fashion and dolls to alter the roles of action figures, indicating that more complex interactions of fans and their supposed objects of anti-fandom are worth additional academic examination.

This article asks the question: in what ways can Carl Sagan fans and anti-fans be understood within a larger participatory science culture? To answer this question, I use Jonathan Gray’s theory of paratextuality to show how the study of Carl Sagan fandom can contribute to discussions on public participation in science. I draw from Matt Hills, to develop the term secular-religiosity. This term helps to describe how popular texts that feature Sagan allow room for audiences to access scientific knowledge and incorporate it into everyday belief systems. Next, I map a fan-generated Sagan-inspired group of paratexts onto Massimiano Bucchi and Federico Neresini’s public participation in science graph to show that Sagan fans who reproduce secular-religiosity engage in low-intensity but spontaneous forms of public participation in science. I explore these forms of participation by categorizing four types of paratextual routes that Sagan fans and anti-fans create for engaging secular-religiosity. I end with a discussion on how the study of Sagan fandom can help build bridges between public participation in science and fan studies.

Fans of complex television dramas often watch because of eudaimonic motivations – the desire to make meaning from media, to explore their own emotions and to learn about the human experience through the exploration of novel experiences that audio-visual fiction affords. This study analyses the psychology of how fans of Mad Men (2007) construct social realities via online discussions of some of the major relationships and storylines on the show. Our primary goal was to understand how fans create reality from fantasy and our focus was on social relationships and individual character analyses. Using a social science approach, we performed both a computer-automated and an expert-driven thematic analysis on 209 fan comments harvested from social media. The automated analysis revealed common emotional expressions, such as associating hate with the character Betty Draper. The expert analysis revealed that many of fans’ social media conversations centred on evaluating Don and Betty Draper as parents, spouses and people, either condemning or defending them in each of these roles. Fans were evenly split between Betty supporters and detractors. Betty was most likely to be defended as a person and condemned as a mother. In contrast, three fourths of fans condemned Don. This condemnation was mostly directed towards him as a person and spouse, not as a father. We situate these findings in an interdisciplinary literature and explain the psychology behind why and how fans use fiction both to empathize with others and to explore their own realities. We explain from a positive psychology perspective that our analysis of fans’ social media commentary exemplifies how television fandom for complex dramas can be healthy and psychologically beneficial.

This article observes and explores the rise of a particular type of fan club the fan club as an artistic form. It addresses why the fan club became a popular format for artists to appropriate in the 1970s in the United States and Canada, especially in the international correspondence art scene, where participants used the mail as a medium for circulating postcards, letters, flyers, self-designed little magazines and other materials. I contend that fan clubs were counterpublics that offered the mail artists an apt forum for the self-conscious creation of alternatives to the art world, the mass media and mainstream entertainment, so that they could work out individual and collective identities, in particular, the expression of queer identities.

Star Trek fandom is well known as the cradle of slash fiction, particularly Kirk/Spock (K/S) or fiction focusing on the romance between Kirk and Spock. The 2009 film that rebooted the franchise likewise rebooted its fandom, creating several factions in response to the newly canonical Spock/Uhura romance. This article overviews the history of Star Trek slash and investigates how the introduction of Reboot pairings in fandom takes on historic resonances, rewrites historic characterizations and introduces new genres and tropes into the fan writing of this franchise.

Fandom is a collective subculture composed of fans of wide range of media whose shared interests serve as the basis of their communal identity. Fan conventions serve as loci of fan activity uniting fans from multiple fandoms. Whether the convention is industry or fan run, whether it is dedicated to anime, gaming, sci-fi, a specific show, or another fandom, there are certain essential elements that are part of the prototypical convention. The convention will feature guests of interest to the attendees, provide entertaining content in the form of panels and events, and will have a commerce space. This paper, and the survey data it was derived from, focuses on identifying the basics of convention participation. Data analysed includes demographics of attendees, standards of fandom participation, trends in convention attendance, frequency of and preference for participation in convention activities, attitudes towards conventions in general, and barriers preventing convention attendance or participation.

Fandom, Image and Authenticity: Joy Devotion and the Second Lives of Kurt Cobain and Ian Curtis, Jennifer Otter Bickerdike (2014) Hampshire: Palgrave, 199 pp., ISBN: 9781137393524, h/bk, £60

Cult collectors: Nostalgia, fandom and collecting popular culture, Lincoln Geraghty (2014) London: Routledge, 212 pp., ISBN: 978-0-415-61766-6, p/bk, $39.95