Just wanted to say that you can now find the study on Instagram and Dreamwidth!!! Feel free to interact with the posts over there; and keep spreading the word to any interested parties you like!

Research Study: Fandom & Generative AI still looking for participants!

I'm still recruiting research participants for my PhD dissertation study!!! If you've already participated, thanks so much! If you haven't participated yet, please consider responding to a quick survey, and sharing with your friends!

I'm interested in understanding fans' perspectives on and experiences with generative AI (text and image generation software). That means perceptions both positive and negative! However you feel about genAI, I'm interested in hearing from you. We're especially seeking diverse perspectives from underrepresented demographic groups of people.

If you're over 18, can speak/understand English, and are interested in participating you can learn more information and take the survey here. I've also made a FAQ post about the study that I've pinned to the top of the blog, and you can see more info on the shareable flyer below. You can also view posts on Twitter/X, Bluesky, and Reddit about the study and share info there! Spreading the word is greatly appreciated :)

The study is anonymous and voluntary, and you'll be asked about your fandom background, attitudes towards generative AI, and demographic information. The survey should take about 15-20 minutes, and you can skip over any questions you want. You can also elect to participate in a follow up interview, if you want to. The full details are on the consent form, which you'll be able to read before taking the survey! Feel free to reach out with any questions.

For the folks taking this poll, might I recommend participating in an academic study on this very topic??? :)

There are currently ~2300 works in AO3 tagged with "Created Using Generative AI"

I'll be upfront with my opinion, which mirrors my opinion in regards to my field: using AI will only hasten your own obsolescence. The point of fanfiction is not to crank out fics, but rather to enjoy the hobby and communities of writing and fandom.

Hi! I wanted to ask how long the survey was going to be open for? I really wanted to participate in it but there are still three months till i turn 18

it'll be open until mid-May, so it'll be closed before you can participate unfortunately, sorry!

Just wanted to say, thank you so much for taking on this project. It's actually really refreshing for someone to go out of their way to really ask others what they think and then actually listen to and consider those opinions when it comes to new technologies. (Instead of the corporate approach of just shoving it onto people and forcing them to get used to it)

Oh, thank you! I mean, that's what academia is supposed to be for, isn't it? We're supposed to actually go out and collect the data for people to do something with it, and especially with an evolving cultural moment like this, the data is going to be important!

hey sorry i just wanted to send a little straight up apology- i did not think me entering in the survey that im not 18 would affect the data in any way- gonna delete the tags and reblog adition once have reblogs back. again so sorry for the inconvenience

oh! sorry, i think i may have misunderstood you; i meant that you shouldn't lie about your age and say that you're 18 to take the survey when you aren't, since THAT could get me into ethical trouble (i don't have ethics clearance to study minors, since there are additional approvals you need to get in that case). if you answer "no" to the question of "are you 18" it'll just skip you right to the end of the survey and those responses can be filtered out easily, so that's not a big deal.

My big concern is folks saying you're 18 when you aren't, *that's* the thing you shouldn't do, as it will screw up the data. But i appreciate you deleting the tags! that way it won't encourage folks to potentially do that :)

I can’t stress this enough, please do not participate in the study if you are under 18. This is a legal/ethical restriction, I cannot collect data on minors, and this also distorts the data in ways that are counterproductive to good, accurate research. (if you answer "no" to the are you 18 question, it will just skip you to the end of the survey, so that isn't a big deal, but please, please do not lie about your age in order to participate.

Fans' attitudes toward AI-generated works

Irina Cisternino, a PhD candidate of Stony Brooke University, is writing their research on topics related to technology, art and fandom. You can participate by filling out a survey and additionally, signing up for an interview. The survey is expected to last until at least the end of April, those, who signed up for the interview, will be contacted later. You need to be at least 18 years old to participate in either, be able to understand and speak English and identify as a fan.

After the completion of the research, it will be accessible as the dissertation of the researcher. If you have further questions, you can contact Irina Cisternino at [email protected] or Lu-Ann Kozlowsky at [email protected].

is the interview a video call like on zoom or over email

on Zoom!

are you worried about/accounting for bias produced by tumblr's content propagation system?

Hi! to be honest, my bigger concern at this stage is dealing with bad/fraudulent data (I have a multi-step cleaning process & validation checks that will hopefully weed that out, but fraudulent data has become the more salient problem in online survey research than things like sample bias lately) rather than sample bias.

for one thing, I didn't really plan for the study to go somewhat viral on tumblr, and even though I've advertised the study in other spaces (1, 2, 3, 4) and planning to push it in some additional places & encouraging folks to share it in their fandom spaces that *aren't* tumblr, tumblr is really the only platform where it's gotten traction, and there's only so much that's within my control. OTW also pushed out the study on twitter, but it hasn't gotten nearly the same attention there. they've tentatively agreed to put it in their Signal newsletter, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen yet.

all I can really do at this point is try to compensate as best I can. Social media recruitment is unwieldy and difficult to manage, but my goal from the beginning was to cast as wide a net as possible and subsequently to be very careful about the claims made based on a nonrepresentative sample (which is best practices anyway when dealing with a mixture of purposive and convenience sampling). My plan is for right now is to just try and get it to some other spaces outside of tumblr and encourage folks to do the same. but i'm also of the opinion that if my intent is to target fans/folks within digital fandom communities, tumblr is a good place to find those people.

Finished your study - best of luck!

One space I'd consider looking into for further discussion on this topic is Dwarf Fortress.

The game is an expansive world, randomized and unique to each player, which relies heavily on procedural generation. Despite the machine-generated and ephemeral nature of the game's stories - similar, one could argue, to AI-produced fiction - they are ultimately written by the players. You might find some interesting comparisons there which could serve as a counterpoint to anti-AI *and* techbro-AI-optimist sentiments. Check it out maybe!

oh, thanks! I hadn't heard of this before, but I'll look into it. If you know of specific spaces where fans/fan communities around that game tend to hang out, feel free to share the study there! those folks might have some interesting perspectives to share

can i just say... i was desperate to see someone in academia do something like this because all the talk i see in studies seem very disconnected from the actual discussions/concerns online, so thank you very much! looking forward to seeing what comes out of this.

P.S. i'd also be curious to see if the responses from a non-fandom crowd are different, and exactly where they differ.

hi! There's actually several academics working on these issues at the moment (I've connected with some other folks in the social sciences who are working on similar questions at the moment; in fact, another phd student in psychology is recruiting a broader range of queer artists for an interview study on GenAI right now, so go check that out if you like!).

There's also been some studies coming out of other fields too re: how people respond to works of art made by AI and by humans:

This report in Nature last year and this study from 2019 both come to mind off the top of my head, though I'm sure there's been some more recent work that's come out in the few months I haven't kept a close eye on it (AI art has been a thing well before Midjourney exploded, so folks have been studying this from even before that)

neither of these are in a fandom context but the work's definitely of interest to academia for sure.

update: forgot about this preprint released in january re: artists' attitudes towards AI https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.15497

Hi! Just finished your study. I noted that you had initial ethics clearance for 500 participants, how far past that are you at the moment, and where do you think you'll get to? Hopefully a high volume of data doesn't make any problems for you - my partner is doing a PhD in a psych-related topic, and they're struggling to reach minimum sample size since it's a longitudinal in-person study. I would imagine that international internet participation on something that looks to be going semi-viral may well go the other direction? Good luck, very interested in seeing the outcomes!

well....

lol. i definitely didn't plan for it to go semi-viral! I expected it to get a *little* bit more attention once OTW pushed it out, but I really didn't think it would get this much traction (I had to log out of this tumblr for a couple days cuz I was getting a little too overwhelmed!)

I'm at several thousand respondents so far (thanks everyone!) and I have some concerns about data quality, but I'm hoping that a multi-step cleaning process will catch most of that. the study will be open until mid-May, so I'm hoping that it starts to gain some traction on platforms outside of tumblr to combat tumblr's absolutely massive response lol. In a dream world I wanted 1K participants, but.... the internet's doing it's thing I guess.

Thank you!

Help a Researcher

Leigh Ingram, a student at the University of Ottawa, in Canada, is completing a Master of Information Studies. The proposed research for their thesis is on information seeking behaviours in the fanfiction community, with a specific focus on how AO3 users search through the archive and use the embedded search functions on the website.

This study has received ethics approval for an anonymous online survey, followed by a few interviews. The survey will remain open for approximately 6-8 weeks depending on the volume of response. Following completion of the research, the intention is to share the anonymous data collected and potentially submit an article to Transformative Works and Cultures for consideration, so any findings will be shared with OTW/AO3. 

Survey takers must be 18 or older to take part. If you would like to learn more about the study you can review its consent form, which contains the researcher's contact information.

addendum to this: I added in a write in option to the political scale question which you can use to write in an additional response!! I was worried about potentially jeopardizing the data here but it looks like that's less of a concern than I was thinking. so hopefully this is a good solution!

Hi!

Just finished your survey and wanted to say that if you do another international survey you might want to consider leaving a field that can be filled in when it comes to political views. The options that were given were based too much on the American political system for me to identify with.

I'm looking forward to see the results of the study, very interesting subject!

Hi! Thank you for this; you’re totally free to skip over any of the questions (including this one) or select the “prefer not to say” option if none of these are things you identify with! There’s a bit more room to tease out nuances around various metrics if you choose to participate in an interview, where the questions will be a little more open. But you’re right in that it’s a bit limiting (to be honest there were a lot of considerations I struggled with how to best account for in a fully international study and this was evidently one that I didn’t catch or do perfectly😅)

unfortunately I don’t think this is something I can change in the survey at this stage, and it’s a limitation of the survey portion of the study on my part But it’s definitely a lesson to take forward in the future! This is my first major study like this so it’s been quite the learning process at every stage.

whoops... I realized that I didn't actually have the links to the study postings on other platforms in the FAQ post pinned to the top of the blog... they're there now!!!! Feel free to share the study around the web outside of tumblr-- i have postings on twitter, bluesky & reddit, but feel free to also share it to folks on other platforms that you're connected to! (especially discord groups, since I don't have ready access to a lot of those)

is there a cut-off date for responses?

Hi! My original plan was to have the survey portion of the study run until at least the end of April, likely through mid-May and close it then. I didn't have a firm end date in mind since my goal was to be flexible based on the amount of responses I was getting.

Since OTW pushed out the study yesterday, the amount of responses I've gotten has been a bit overwhelming though! I'm still tentatively planning to leave it open until at minimum the end of April, but I'll likely keep the survey open until mid-May like I planned (at least that's my thinking for right now. I'm planning on re-evaluating later this week/early next week!)

Hi!

Just finished your survey and wanted to say that if you do another international survey you might want to consider leaving a field that can be filled in when it comes to political views. The options that were given were based too much on the American political system for me to identify with.

I'm looking forward to see the results of the study, very interesting subject!

Hi! Thank you for this; you’re totally free to skip over any of the questions (including this one) or select the “prefer not to say” option if none of these are things you identify with! There’s a bit more room to tease out nuances around various metrics if you choose to participate in an interview, where the questions will be a little more open. But you’re right in that it’s a bit limiting (to be honest there were a lot of considerations I struggled with how to best account for in a fully international study and this was evidently one that I didn’t catch or do perfectly😅)

unfortunately I don’t think this is something I can change in the survey at this stage, and it’s a limitation of the survey portion of the study on my part But it’s definitely a lesson to take forward in the future! This is my first major study like this so it’s been quite the learning process at every stage.

@racethewind10 (and anyone else curious about the behind the scenes of the research process/research ethics) fun fact! this study *does* actually meet IRB/human subjects exemption criteria, but most universities still require you to go through your respective IRB/research compliance offices so they can actually do an initial review to determine whether you meet the exemption criteria and approve the exemption (that way they have a record of your study being exempt and a record of them reviewing it for compliance). And even if you’re exempt, you’re still required to abide by a whole bunch of ethical standards/best practices which is why the consent form has a lot of standardized language on it.🫡

Fans' attitudes toward AI-generated works

Irina Cisternino, a PhD candidate of Stony Brooke University, is writing their research on topics related to technology, art and fandom. You can participate by filling out a survey and additionally, signing up for an interview. The survey is expected to last until at least the end of April, those, who signed up for the interview, will be contacted later. You need to be at least 18 years old to participate in either, be able to understand and speak English and identify as a fan.

After the completion of the research, it will be accessible as the dissertation of the researcher. If you have further questions, you can contact Irina Cisternino at [email protected] or Lu-Ann Kozlowsky at [email protected].