Fan Practices

We document the language learning outcomes of an informant affiliated with a community of scanlation when participating in practices of reading, translation, typesetting and proofreading of mangas. We draw on a social-semiotic approach to multimodality and we use ethnographic and discourse-analytic techniques to examine a corpus of semi-structured interviews, recordings of onscreen desktop activity and scanned pages of manga translated by the informant and the corresponding original pages in English. The findings reveal that the informant actively constructs meaning of texts combining verbal, graphic and typographic semiotic resources and that she achieves a remarkable awareness of the specific and socio-culturally situated nature of the use of these resources.

Historically, fan scholars have focused on conducting deep dives into singular cases and revealing trends by comparing cross sections of those cases. While there is undeniable value in conducting close analyses of such instances, the reliance on this method can limit our assessment of long-running trends. By supplementing—or, more productively, combining—specific case studies with diachronic perspectives, we can better situate, contextualize, and trace emerging trends like the evolution of fan/producer dynamics. To model this approach, I analyze 4 years' worth of fan-targeted promotional campaigns on the official Teen Wolf (2011–) Tumblr. The activities—fannish and/or promotional—of all participants in a shared ecological system like Tumblr are significant. They continuously construct, deconstruct, nuance, and challenge the ever-evolving context of fandom and fan/producer dynamics. Supplementing a close analysis of one of Teen Wolf's recent promotional campaigns—the commissioned #TeenWolfExhibit—with a diachronic perspective addresses the ever-evolving ecology of media fandom and traces the evolution of MTV's fannish literacy from 2011 to 2015. The #TeenWolfExhibit reproduces and reflects all the promotional successes, failures, and course corrections that predate it.

The investigation of national fan groups’ engagement with Game of Thrones’ transmedia framework aims at identifying the fans’ practices as determined by their exploitation of the universe of the text and their ability to re-work/re-use original material from that universe in alternative ways, outside of the established paths provided by traditional media producers in the first place.

The analysis of Italian fans’ devotion to Game of Thrones extends to psychological considerations about the construction of viewer subjectivity and inter-subjectivity, with reference to the process of engagement with the series. In particular, the notions of ‘text’ and ‘context’ are found to be mutually influential: the narrative properties of Game of Thrones – i.e., production values and complexity of the storylines – tend to influence the viewing process of the show, which in turn confirms the incursions of the text into the context.

Статья рассматривает воплощение жанра «реальное преступление»
(англ. true crime) в цифровых медиа на материале развлекательного аудио-подкаста «Мое любимое убийство» (США, 2016 – наст. вр.). В тексте представлен анализ подхода авторов подкаста к повествованию о реальных преступлениях, проведенный с целью ответить на вопрос: какие возможности предоставляют аудио-подкасты для взаимодействия авторов нарративов в жанре «реальное преступление» и их аудитории? Исследование опирается
на теорию Генри Дженкинса об партиципаторной культуре (или «культуре соучастия»). Независимый статус ведущих подкаста и их саморепрезентация как фанатов жанра «реальное преступление» позволяют им участвовать в циркуляции и производстве популярной культуры, строить виртуальное сообщество единомышленников.

In the current multi-modal environment rich in on-demand content, audiences operate as active users by exercising control over their viewing schedules and by integrating media texts into their lives according to new patterns of consumption. My analysis investigates this new form of agency possessed by the audience with reference to two television texts: Game of Thrones and Mad Men. The two popular American TV shows are typical products of the convergence era (Jenkins 2006), which is characterized by trans-media storytelling. Audiences' freedom in the modes of consumption, however, is limited by the control that media corporations still exert on the circulation of media texts; this struggle for media content management becomes central for the understanding of the changes in the television texts as well as in audiences' behaviors. My research is structured as a comparative study between two countries: Italy and New Zealand. Comparative research has been applied by scholars as a valid way to investigate audience practices. However, there is still a dearth of international, cross-cultural comparisons. In selecting and comparing two nations that are different from the dominant media market (the US), my study aims to show that audiences' behaviors are specific to the culture and society to which they belong. The methodology employed for the data collection is the focus group, which allows for a rich understanding of

Television as a traditional medium has been changing for a number of years due to the development of a complex scenario characterized by the growing proliferation of platforms and the interconnection of multiple media forms. In this current multi-modal environment rich in on-demand content, audiences operate as active users of media content by exercising control over their viewing schedules, and by integrating media texts into their lives according to new patterns of consumption. My analysis focuses on the relationship between Italian and New Zealand fan groups and the trans-media structure of the popular television series Mad Men. The show's imaginary universe has been conceived in a way that allows complex and diverse forms of audience engagement. Indeed, Mad Men's trans-media narrative constitutes a "world-building experience, unfolding content and generating the possibilities for the story to evolve with new and pertinent content" (Gambarato 4). The show' multi-level architecture offers audience members different venues of consumption as well as the possibility to appropriate original media content in order to produce and distribute new content as a result of individuals' free labor.