research notes: on fandom
things that will never make it to my manuscripts
I am still cleaning the fridge. This time, I went through old research drafts to collect things I wrote but never used, some due to length constraints, some because they were only meant to be notes. Today’s post is mostly about fandom, fan studies, fan identity and engagement. Some passages may highlight my specific study object (K-pop fandom, BTS ARMY). All excerpts written between August 2023 and August 2024. References in the footnotes.
In recent years, acknowledgement of large-scale implications of internet-based political activism led researchers of civilian engagement towards fandom paradigms to better understand facets of the phenomenon that were harder to approach with traditional frameworks of the public sphere. Recently, there is a growing tendency towards studying online political partisanship as its own form of fandom as well (Sandvoss 2012, 2013, Dean 2017, Stanfill 2020, Hinck & Davisson 2020, Barnes 2022)1. One of the reasons for the emergence of political fandom works is the explanatory potential of the affective, passionate dimension of fandom practices (Reinhard & Miller, 2020)2.
As Matt Hills (2002a)3 discusses in “Fan Cultures,” academia and its system of value are driven by a “rational imagined subjectivity” which is thought to be diametrically opposed to “the passions and commitments of ‘irrational’ … fans” (2002a, p. 20). In his understanding, fans were (or have been) the “epistemological other” (Somers, 1993)4 of scholars, the imagined opposite that consolidates “a cohesive self-identity and collective project” (1993, 1). In this sense, the process of recognising fandom in academia, and making room for fan-scholars in research, was confrontational in not only revealing gaps in this absolute imagined subjectivity, but also accommodating the inability of consolidating this illusion of absolute rationality, even in research.
Scott (2019)5 argues that fandom’s original “political project” — of empowering marginalised groups — should be preserved because the so-called “turn to fandom” of convergence culture industry has been engineered to depathologise and affirm the fanboy. Which is not to say that culture has completely and unrestrictedly embraced fandom for all its worth, and moved past mocking stereotypes, but that mainstream culture defines the (new) standards of good, appropriate and “authentic” fandom — or “normative fandom” (Hills, 2005, p. 45)6.
Identity distinction is one of the foundational ideas behind fandom studies—the definition of the boundary that distinguishes the fan and the non-fan. This categorical distinction, albeit helpful, has proven to be insufficient to account for all the different forms of differentiation that fan communities have been observed to give themselves to—fans vs. stans, fans vs. anti-fans, fans of colour vs. (white) fans, etc.
The phenomenon of specialised/high-performance fandom is also a site of distinction. Fans leverage their educational background and their professional credentials to self-empower (Wang & Ge, 2023)7 with distinct property to assess their favourite artists’ merit, implying their elite taste as proof of idols’ superior quality.
In a study about collective identity and self-defining hashtags on Twitter, Barron & Bollen (2022)8 found that there is a high level of coherence between how K-pop fans self-identify on a local and global level. To put it comparatively, the paper finds that being a Texas sports fan doesn’t necessarily indicate a global level of being a sports fan, whereas a local K-pop identity “drastically reduces the uncertainty we have on their global identity membership” (2022, 3). The highest self-defining hashtags in the study were #bts, #army, #exo and #got7 (for the time window 2017-2019).
Although these results concern X/Twitter, a rhizomatic platform characterised by its high context collapse, which is diametrically opposed to the adequateness of Reddit for the present study, these results still hold some relevance when considering the level to which membership as an ARMY has been tied to general membership as a K-pop fan.
For K-pop fans, the issue of stigma and stereotypification is particularly pertinent and resistant, especially due to the relative recency of the rise of Korean contents to mainstream (or else American) global culture. Lyan’s (2023)9 study of all New York Times articles concerning the Hallyu over the years found a lingering sense of stigma permeating the corpus, suggesting a permanent state of shock at not only the popularity of cultural exports from a small East Asian country, but also directed towards fans (2019, p. 31). In addition to the usual contempt reserved for fannish expressions, and the misogyny reserved for fans of boy bands and romance TV dramas, Western fans of Korean culture are also further stigmatised for their consumption of non-Western culture, a practice that is framed as “improper” and “unnatural” (Hills 2002b, Lyan 2019)10.
Maros, Basek & Nadia (2022)11 investigated the feeling of belonging in K-pop fans from different countries in Southeast Asia, and they found that the activity of streaming videos and songs is seen by as a fundamental aspect of membership, along with affection for their group (also extending into trust towards the group), interacting with other fans and being knowledgeable about the idols and the community (such as knowing inside jokes). The study also specifically sought fans who had been involved in fanwars, revealing a link between a desire to “protect their idols’ names and reputations,” based on the aforementioned trust, articulated as belief that any accusation should be “censured and criticised” (2022, 293).
Choi (2020)12 calls the relationship between idols and fans “theatrical interconnectedness” to the extent that both parties understand and agree to keep a performative intimacy (p. 101). This framework of interconnectedness is important to make room for all the ways that idols and fans mutually influence each other. For a network approach, Choi’s concept accommodates how, in idol-fan relationships, the myriad of fans are flattened into a single entity, called by their fandom name — ARMY, in BTS’s case.
However, her study is a reflection concerned specifically with Korean fans — which she differentiates from International fans on the basis of the opportunities for direct interaction (p. 20). In that regard, there is a case to be made about whether Korean/domestic fans, and international fans can be all flattened together, or if the different dynamics of their relationship asks for different nodes and types of ties in a network.
Sandvoss, C. (2012). Enthusiasm, trust and its erosion in mediated politics: On fans of Obama and the Liberal Democrats. European journal of communication, 27(1), 68-81.
Sandvoss, C. (2013). Toward an understanding of political enthusiasm as media fandom: Blogging, fan productivity and affect in American politics. Participations, 10(1), 252-296.
Dean, J. (2017). Politicising fandom. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19(2), 408-424.
Stanfill, M. (2020). Introduction: The reactionary in the fan and the fan in the reactionary. Television & new media, 21(2), 123-134.
Hinck, A., & Davisson, A. (2020). Fandom and politics. Transformative Works and Cultures, 32.
Barnes, R. (2022). Fandom and polarization in online political discussion: From pop culture to politics. Palgrave Macmillan.
Reinhard, C. D., & Miller, J. (2020). Academic dialogue: why study politics and fandom?. Transformative Works and Cultures, 32.
Hills, M. (2002a). Fan cultures. Routledge.
Somers, M. R. (1993). Citizenship and the place of the public sphere: law, community, and political culture in the transition to democracy. American sociological review, 587-620.
Scott, S. (2019). Fake geek girls: Fandom, gender, and the convergence culture industry. In Fake Geek Girls. New York University Press.
Hills, M. (2005). Negative fan stereotypes (" Get a life!") and positive fan injunctions (" Everyone's got to be a fan of something!"): Returning to hegemony theory in fan studies. Spectator-The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television, 25(1), 35-47.
Wang, E. N., & Ge, L. (2023). Fan conflicts and state power in China: Internalised heteronormativity, censorship sensibilities, and fandom police. Asian studies review, 47(2), 355-373.
Barron, A. T., & Bollen, J. (2022). Quantifying collective identity online from self-defining hashtags. Scientific reports, 12(1), 15044.
Lyan, I. (2023). Shock and surprise: Theorizing the Korean wave through mediatized emotions. International Journal of Communication, 17, 29-51.
Hills, M. (2002b). Transcultural otaku: Japanese representations of fandom and representations of Japan in anime/manga fan cultures. Media in Transition, 2, 10-12.
Lyan, I. (2019). Welcome to Korea day: From diasporic to Hallyu “fan-nationalism”. International Journal of Communication, 13, 17.
Maros, M., & Basek, F. N. A. (2022). Building online social identity and fandom activities of K-pop fans on Twitter. 3L, Language, Linguistics, Literature, 28(3), 282-295.
Choi, S. J. (2020). Gender, labor, and the commodification of intimacy in K-pop. University of California, Santa Barbara.