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.

I can't keep this blog running by myself, so I’d love to have people to help me around!

What do you have to do as a moderator?

You have to search for new posts related to fandom and Fan Studies and read them to evaluate their content (we have a compilation of places to help to do this task);

You have to select posts and then tag them according to the topic the posts are about (we have a guide explaining how the tag system works);

Ideally you should know how to queue posts, but it’s not a requirement. If you’re willing to learn, that is more than enough.

You have the freedom to choose how your schedule as a moderator of @studiesof-fandom will work! We only need to have content posted a few days every week to keep this blog running and updated.

If you’re interested, please send an inbox to @studiesof-fandom!

I ask for my followers to reblog this post to spread the word!

I recently made a couple of videos about an interesting group project in my Online Fandom class a few years ago, so I thought I would share here, too!  

TL;DR A group of students who knew nothing about fanfiction before this class really wanted to study sports fandom, so they did a study about sports RPF. Their research question was: What factors contribute to which athletes are most commonly written about?  In case you don’t want to watch the video, answer below the cut...

(1) They compared metadata from AO3 to sports stats - winning teams, individual performance, etc. - as well as net worth of players. What they found was... none of those things seemed to matter. (But one of the other students in the class said, “Well did you measure hotness?”)

(2) In the second half of the class I distributed a survey here (some of you might have taken it, this was in 2018!) based on questions that the student groups composed. They had a multiple choice question about which factors people cared about when writing and reading sports RPF and the two most popular answers were “physical attractiveness” and “personality.” But they also analyzed open answers, and the two other common themes were friendships or rivalries with other players, and the writer/reader feeling a personal connection to that player.

This ended up being one of my favorite projects in the class because it sparked a really interesting discussions about methods and measurement and knowing the right questions to ask and how to ask them!

Also! I mentioned a scrape of AO3 data in the video. FYI this was only metadata, and it was also de-identified - basically just numerical data (date posted, word counts, hits, number of comments, etc.) and tags like fandom and characters. No story names, authors, etc. If you’re interested in thinking through research ethics for using fandom data, I co-authored a paper about that!

(Also I just realized that despite filming these videos two weeks apart I am wearing the same shirt, haha!)

R.I.P lord byron, if you were alive today your DMs would've been fucking insane

Sources/Notes: Shelley & his Circle vol. 7 (my photos), Flirting with fame: Byron's anonymous female fans by Corin Throsby, Fangirl(s): Lord Byron edition by Cailey Hall, Lord Byron and Scandalous Celebrity by Clara Tuite, long lock of hair is probably the one mentioned in Byron's Romantic Adventures in Spain by Richard Cardwell, Clairmont Correspondence by Marion Stocking.

Five Things Mel Stanfill Said

In Five Things, Mel Stanfill discusses helping broader academia and fans recognize fandom as an area of study via our academic journal TWC. Read more at https://otw.news/rul

Hat jemand von Euch Lust sich wissenschaftlich mit Fanfiction & deren aneignenden Potential zu beschäftigen, u.a. konkret mit Schoethe?

An diesem Workshop der Goethe-Uni Frankfurt zur akademischen Arbeit mit Fanfiction könnt ihr auch über Zoom teilnehmen! Ich gebe den Zugangslink bei Interesse weiter und würde mich freuen <3

Today, we're *thrilled* to publish our first article in quite some time: Maria Temming digs deep into the world of whump. On hurt/comfort and fictional characters in pain, featuring quotes from a wide variety of whumpers on what the subgenre—and the community around it—means to them. 

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.

Quick question

I did some more academic reading about fandom and ...

Bonus points if you comment (or tag) where you heard the word "hoyay" and in which contexts you're using it.

Let's Learn About Mental Illness and Fandom!

ETA: This survey has now closed. Thank you for so many more responses than I expected! I will announce as soon as the data is available to others to use and as I make my own discoveries in working with it.

Thank you so much everyone for your responses to my fanfiction and mental illness survey. As of posting we have 108 responses which is fantastic and very much enough for my own thesis, but I don't just want this data to be for me - I want it to be available to other fan studies researchers to work with and build upon.

This is the work I spoke about when I was on the @fansplaining podcast just a few months ago, and something that we just don't have in the fan stats community - our only related information is on whump, which whilst useful isn't by any means the same thing.

So if you'd like to help us learn more about how we read, write and interact with fanfiction about mental illness, please take the survey & share this post!

The survey will take you just 5-15 minutes, and will help to gather groundbreaking insights for fan studies. You’ll be asked about yourself, about how you read, write and find fanfiction about mental illness, and what interacting with this kind of fanfic has been like for you.

Full data on the study, including consent, privacy and GDPR information, can be found on the survey page.

Submissions will remain open until the 25th June 2023. Thank you so much!

These excerpts are from Damien Hagen’s “Regeneration and trans possibility in Doctor Who,” which was published in the most recent issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, OTW’s open access journal. It’s free to read… here (click the button that says HTML)!

Here’s what the editors of the issue had to say: 

“Damien Hagen focuses on Doctor Who fandom and the way in which the Doctor's regenerative capacity provides the means for queer and trans fans to explore trans possibilities and gender euphoria. Long before the Doctor's ability to change genders became canon in Doctor Who in 2018 with Jodie Whittaker's Doctor, trans fans have been drawn to the series for its emphasis on changeability, malleability, and bodily fluidity. Through an autoethnographic lens, Hagen argues that Doctor Who can be read as a trans media object—one that is not necessarily explicitly transgender but instead opens up gendered possibilities in which trans fans can imagine otherwise. Hagen further draws on other trans fans' queer and trans readings of a variety of canonical moments in Doctor Who to argue that the ephemerality and liminality of the series can be particularly pleasurable and gender affirming for trans and nonbinary fans who are undertaking their own processes of regeneration. While the series might never have been intended as a trans narrative, Hagen argues that through fannish interpretations and queer readings, it has the potential to provide a mechanism for survival, self-love, and gender euphoria.”

In the plainest terms, Hagen discusses his own/other trans fans’ experiences with Doctor Who as a tool to understand and love their transness. Themes of the show that trans people may relate to include:

Emphasis on change as a good thing (and lifesaving).

Carrying previous selves into the future, loving previous bodies and selves.

The specific experience of ‘creating’ a new body (the Doctor’s ability to regenerate), acceptance of/excitement about those bodies from oneself/others.

Doctor Who, Hagen argues, is a “trans media object,” or a piece of media that may not have explicitly trans characters but allows viewers to see transness reflected in other ways. For instance, when the Doctor and other characters accept their new body, it can feel affirming to a trans viewer who is also navigating the experience of a changing body. Hagen writes, “The regenerations weren't about gender, but my nascent transness felt them as such.” 

Do you have a similar experience with Doctor Who? Or are there other media you have felt similarly about?

-Lianne

[ID: Screenshot of a tumblr post from @doubledecks with a quote from an unknown source, which reads:

"While many people think fanfiction is about inserting sex into texts (like Tolkien's) where it doesn't belong, Brancher sees it differently: "I was desperate to read about sex that included great friendship; I was repurposing Tolkien's text in order to do that. It wasn't that friendship needed to be sexualized, it was that erotica needed to be ... friendship-ized." Many fanfiction writers write about sex in conjunction with beloved texts and characters not because they think those texts are incomplete, but because they're looking for stories where sex is profound and meaningful. This is part of what makes fan fiction different from pornography: unlike pornography, fanfic features characters we already care deeply about, and who tend to already have longstanding and complex relationships with each other. It's a genre of sexual subjectification: the very opposite of objectification. It's benefits with friendship." End ID]

does anybody know where this quote is from? i found it in my camera roll and i think its an absolutely brilliant way of looking at queer readings of sam/frodo as well as slash fiction in general. i think its from an essay or article or something and i want to read the whole thing. if anyone knows where its from pls lmk!

edit: it’s been found! it’s from “The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age” by Francesca Coppa!

It deeply saddens me that the writers on Community do not know that fan studies (the academic study of fandom) is a field, not only because Community itself has been the subject of several great analyses (along with Inspector Spacetime), but because it is so clearly Abed’s calling. The entire field is a beautiful mash up of sociology, film, and media studies. Abed’s happy ending would absolutely involve him (and obviously Troy) finding this academic space and being taken so seriously by all these nerds. They’d get to talk about conventions and movies and filmmaking and the dreamatorium and tropes and be extremely successful video essayists/ podcast hosts. I could so see their ending being Troy hyping up Abed to give his first conference talk and all the professors going wild over him and asking dozens of follow up questions and having deep conversations.

Also they’d be the undefeated champs at the night pop culture time trivia games.

Supernatural (2005) through the lens of narratology, recent roundup

Wikipedia: Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. [...] Cognitive narratology is a more recent development that allows for a broader understanding of narrative. Rather than focus on the structure of the story, cognitive narratology asks "how humans make sense of stories" and "how humans use stories as sense-making instruments".

Supernatural is a very attractive media franchise for narratologists. There are quite a few papers that include narratological analysis of Supernatural and related phenomena, such as narrative perception in fandom. Here are some from the past decade. I'll continuously update this if I find more.

Favard, F. (2018). Angels, demons and whatever comes next: the storyworld dynamics of Supenatural. Series - International Journal of TV Serial Narratives, 4(2), 19–26. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2421-454X/8164 (full text, pdf button hidden towards the bottom of the page)

Herbig, Art; and Herrmann, Andrew F.. 2016. Polymediated Narrative: The Case of the Supernatural Episode "Fan Fiction". International Journal of Communication. Vol.10 1-18. http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/4397 ISSN: 1932-8036 (full text, pdf)

García, A. (2016). A Storytelling Machine: The Complexity and Revolution of Narrative Television. Between, 6(11). https://doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/2081 (full text, pdf button hidden towards the bottom of the page)

Wilcox, R. V., Abbott, S., & Howard, D. L. (2018). A tribute to David Lavery: Television canon, television creativity. Critical Studies in Television, 13(4), 455–469. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749602018799246 (restricted, webpage)

Theological narrative

Nosachev, Pavel. 2020. "Theology of Supernatural" Religions 11, no. 12: 650. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11120650 (full text, webpage)

Fandom narrative

Boni, Marta, and Valentina Re. “The Monster at the End of This Book.” Essay. In World Building: Transmedia, Fans, Industries, 321–42. Amsterdam, North Holland: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. (full text, pdf)

Rouse, Lauren. 2021. "Fan Fiction Comments and Their Relationship to Classroom Learning." In "Fan Studies Pedagogies," edited by Paul J. Booth and Regina Yung Lee, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 35. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2021.1911. (full text, webpage) @transformativeworksandcultures

The response form is now closed! Please do not reblog this post! Thank you to all who signal-boosted!

I have been running an independent archive for over sixteen years now. During that time, I've watched the Silmarillion Writers' Guild go from one archive of many in a crowded field to one of the only independent archives that remains active. Furthermore, the options available to build your own archive have dwindled, leaving fans who want a greater variety of archive choices without much of one.

Last year, I started thinking about how to support the rekindling of independent archives and drafted a tutorial for how to build an archive in Drupal (the platform the SWG uses) that I plan to record this summer. However, this is not the only approach. The recent attention drawn to various issues with the OTW/AO3 has only hastened the importance of fans having the option again of building their own archives.

It's my first day of summer break. I have two months to tackle what I can of this issue, so to get a handle on where people are on the subject and where it's best to focus my energy, I've put together a survey on independent archives.

If you create or read/view fanworks, I want to hear from you! You do not need to have interest in independent archives. Responses are anonymous, and the survey will remain open through 7 July 2023.

You can take the independent archives survey here.

Signal boosts and reblogs are much appreciated so that I can hear from as broad a group of participants as possible.

Going forward, I will be tagging updates related to this work #independent archives.

Five Things with Tanya D. Zuk

In Five Things, Tanya D. Zuk discusses the constant emails and the importance of not being behind a paywall in her role as an assistant editor for Transformative Works and Cultures. Read more at https://otw.news/4c0aef