Jenkins' book analyzes recent publications on fan communities and their evolution online. It expands on his seminal work "Textual Poachers" and includes interviews where he discusses changing approaches to fan studies over time. The book also reprints some of Jenkins' influential early works that helped establish the field and demonstrate how fans actively make meaning from media in communal settings.
Jenkins' book analyzes recent publications on fan communities and their evolution online. It expands on his seminal work "Textual Poachers" and includes interviews where he discusses changing approaches to fan studies over time. The book also reprints some of Jenkins' influential early works that helped establish the field and demonstrate how fans actively make meaning from media in communal settings.
Jenkins' book analyzes recent publications on fan communities and their evolution online. It expands on his seminal work "Textual Poachers" and includes interviews where he discusses changing approaches to fan studies over time. The book also reprints some of Jenkins' influential early works that helped establish the field and demonstrate how fans actively make meaning from media in communal settings.
the Age of the Internet Michaela D. E. Meyer & Megan H. L. Tucker Jenkins, III, H. (2006). Fans, bloggers, and gamers: Exploring participatory culture. New York: New York University Press. 279 pp. ISBN 0-8147-4285-8. US$21.00. Hellekson, K., & Busse, K. (2006). Fan fiction and fan communities in the age of the internet . Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. 290 pp. ISBN 0-7864-2640-3. US$35.00. Bury, R. (2005). Cyberspaces of their own: Female fandoms online (Digital Formations; v. 25). New York: Peter Lang. 242 pp. ISBN: 0-8204-7118-6. US$29.95. The appearance of Henry Jenkins influential book Textual Poachers (1992) ushered in a new era of audience research in media studies. Jenkins text positioned fans as active consumers of media products, constructing their own cultures and subcultures from popular culture. By challenging the mentality that fans are merely cultural dupes, Jenkins opened the door for a generation of scholars to study fans and fan practices as legitimate scholarship. Now, 15 years later, significant changes in the study of fans and fan communities continue to emerge. Over the past decade, communication scholarship has applied Jenkins work in a variety of fan contexts. Scholars took to analyzing fan communities surrounding popular television series (Bird, 1999; Meyer, 2005; Scodari, 2003; Scodari & Felder, 2000; Wakefield, 2001) and fan cultures surrounding successful film franchises (Jindra, 1994; Shefrin, 2004). Fan research has expanded our understanding of the interrelationships between humans and media*in particular, crediting agency to those who engage with media on a day-to-day personal basis. The recent publication of three new books on fan culture offers insight into how fan culture is impacted by gender and sexuality, and interrogates the ways fan cultures are changing as a result of the Internet. Michaela D. E. Meyer is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Christopher Newport University. Megan H. L. Tucker is an undergraduate student at Christopher Newport University. The review was the result of an independent study project in Fall of 2006. Correspondence to: Michaela D. E. Meyer, 24 Commonwealth Hall, Department of Communication Studies, Newport News, VA 23606, USA. Email: mmyer@cnu.edu ISSN 1535-8593 (online) # 2007 National Communication Association DOI: 10.1080/15358590701211357 The Review of Communication Vol. 7, No. 1, January 2007, pp. 103116 Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers Jenkins expands on his original arguments from Textual Poachers in his new book Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture (Jenkins, 2006b). This text is a concentrated look at participatory culture, and includes a collection of academic excerpts relevant to fan culture as well as new material from Jenkins. Section 1, Inside Fandom, opens with the transcript of an interview between Henry Jenkins and Matt Hills, a founding editor of Intensities and the author of Fan Cultures (2002), a book that includes a close reading of Textual Poachers. During the interview, Jenkins and Hills discuss the evolution of fan studies in terms of three methodological moments: the ethnographic outsider approach, the ethnographic insider approach, and the aca-fen approach (pp. 1112). Jenkins locates the beginning of fan studies in the ethnographic outsider approach, since the first generation of scholars to study fandom wrote from a disconnected point of view in impersonal or apologetic language. He then associates himself with the second approach, the ethnographic insider approach, as a scholar trying to alter the perception of fandom based on insider knowledge of specific fan communities. The most recent approach to fan studies Jenkins characterizes as aca-fen or people who are both academics and fans, for whom those identities are not problematic to mix and combine, and who are able to write in a more open way about their experience of fandom with the obligation of defensiveness, without the need to defend the community (p. 12). In addition to these changes in subject position and methodology, Jenkins and Hills debate the association of fandom with religious experience. What Jenkins finds problematic about the religion metaphor is that fandom is not an exclusive relationship: fans are nomadic and can share multiple texts, unlike the commitment of religion (one cannot be Muslim and Jewish simultaneously, but one can be a fan of two different television programs simultaneously). Jenkins elaborates on the history of religion in fan studies by defining the origin of the word fan as from fanaticus, which refers to false and excessive worship (p. 17). He argues that if scholars accept this notion of literal belief (religious), they imply that fans are unable to separate fiction from reality; thus, this metaphor dismisses fan studies as less credible than other types of ethnographic research. Hills and Jenkins continue the debate by engaging the often tumultuous relationship between fandom and the academy. Jenkins posits that academia embraces the use of fan studies as a means to chronicle audience response to particular narratives, and then utilizes this response to inform media producers about the nature of the audience; however, scholars are far more suspicious when an author asserts that maybe there are things that academics could learn from fan interpretive practices (p. 33). The tension between academics as learned and fans as uneducated continues in fan studies today. As the debate plays out, Jenkins characterizes Textual Poachers as provisional and tentative, saying: [T]his was the work of some guy one year out of grad school; yeah, it opened up the field and asked some important questions, but it wasnt set in stone (pp. 3536). He encourages scholars not to accept the text at face value, but rather to grow and change with fans. 104 M. D. E. Meyer & M. H. L. Tucker The end of the interview sets up the rest of this section, which includes three essays Jenkins feels establish historical moments in fan studies, and includes Jenkins commentary about the importance of this work in retrospect. Chapter 2 offers a reprint of Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching (Jenkins, 1988). Jenkins notes that although the textual poaching metaphor has been widely adopted by scholars of fan studies, it is the metaphor of the moral economy in the work that most intrigues him at this moment in fan studies (p. 38). Chapter 3 offers a reprint of Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking (Green, Jenkins, & Jenkins, 1998), a dialogue between Jenkins and two other fans of slash fiction, a form of fan fiction writing that re-writes media narratives by pairing same- sex characters together in sexual and romantic relationships. Jenkins notes that this chapter illustrates the struggle he faced trying to integrate his own personal experience as a fan into scholarly writing; the use of the dialogue helped unlock that potential. Chapter 4 offers a reprint of Out of the Closet and into the Universe: Queers and Star Trek (Jenkins, 1995), which Jenkins describes as his first attempt at intervention analysis intended to capture issues of voice within fan communities. According to Jenkins, intervention analyses seek not only to describe and explain existing dispositions of knowledge, but also to change them (p. 92). He observes: [T]he relationship between readers, institutions, and texts is not fixed but fluid. That relationship changes over time, constantly shifting in relation to the ever-changing balance of power between these competing forces (p. 112). Section 2*Going Digital *includes Jenkins work related to the emergence of fan communities on the Internet. Chapter 5 offers Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid? (Jenkins, 1995), an exploration of an online discussion group of the television show Twin Peaks. Jenkins observes that the series drew a large number of male fans who utilized the group to discuss moments of character interaction as clues that might help resolve plot questions and describes them as fascinated with solving the mystery in the series (pp. 125126). He contrasts this evidence with his prior observations of female fans who tend to use program materials as a basis for gossip and justification for drawing on personal experiences to support their interpretations (p. 126). Chapter 6 offers Interactive Audiences? The Collective Intelligence of Media Fans (Jenkins, 2002b). He explains this work as his attempt to move fan studies away from the theoretical framing of Michael de Certeau (1984) because he is frustrated that despite a growing number of younger scholars writing about fans, many still operate primarily in relation to the paradigms from the late 1980s and early 1990s (p. 134). Jenkins borrows the concepts of collective intelligence and cosmopedia from Pierre Levy and applies this to media fandoms by engaging the complex changes in fan communities following the introduction of computers and the Internet. Jenkins discussion of cosmopedia segues into Chapter 7, Pop Cosmopolitanism: Mapping Cultural Flows in an Age of Media Convergence (Jenkins, 2004). He explains the inclusion of this essay as his recognition that globalization has profoundly altered the nature of American popular culture (p. 153). This essay suggests that current fan scholars must utilize a global framework in order to reflect Fan Communities 105 the complexities of popular culture, and describes two forces of media convergence: corporate convergence and grassroots convergence. Jenkins believes that these two forces create global convergence or the multidirectional flow of cultural goods around the world (p. 155). The rest of the chapter provides examples of popular culture in global contexts, such as the popularity of anime in America. The section concludes with three short pieces all previously published in Technology Review. Chapter 8, Love Online (Jenkins, 2002c), discusses the world of online dating via the experiences of Jenkins son; Chapter 9, Blog This! (Jenkins, 2002a), identifies blogging as a new grassroots opportunity to gain significant visibility in media; and Chapter 10, A Safety Net (Jenkins, 2001), focuses on the speed with which media covered the attacks of September 11, 2001. In Section 3, Columbine and Beyond, Jenkins explores the supposed inter- relationship between media culture and youth violence. Chapter 11, Professor Jenkins Goes to Washington, provides his impressions of and reactions to testifying to the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee about youth and media violence. Chapter 12, Coming Up Next!: Ambushed on Donahue describes Jenkins reactions to being caught off-guard on public television. Under the guise of appearing to discuss video game culture, Jenkins describes being ambushed by the producers, guests, and host of the show, despite trying to find middle ground in the debate. Chapter 13, The War Between Effects and Meanings: Rethinking the Video Game Violence Debate, outlines educational models underlying arguments for the use of computers and video games to teach science and history, as well as arguments that these technologies do not teach children to kill. Chapter 14, The Chinese Columbine: How One Tragedy Ignited the Chinese Government: Simmering Fears of Youth Culture and the Internet, chronicles how the burning of a Beijing Internet cafe and the shootings at Columbine produced similar media discourses, yet differed in terms of framing. Jenkins observes that the American response to Columbine tended to blame media influences for the shooters actions, while Chinese discourses explained the arsonists motivation in terms of dramatic and rapid social change. The final chapter*Chapter 15, The Monsters Next Door: A FatherSon Dialogue about Buffy, Moral Panic, and Generational Differences *is the first co-authored work between Jenkins and his son, Henry G. Jenkins IV. The essay is presented as a dialogue interrogating the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a contemporary allegory of adolescent life. The dialogue highlights the polysemic nature of the Buffy narrative, which in part contributed to the shows loyal fan base. In the episode Band Candy, the adults in Sunnydale eat cursed candy and begin acting like adolescents; Jenkins III claims the episode suggests that adults may actually desire the freedom and license they would deny their children. Teachers want to cut classes. Mothers want to make out and drink Kahlua with their boyfriends (p. 235). Jenkins IV disagrees with his fathers interpretation: [W]hen the adults revert back into teenagers, they dont actually become mirrors of their children. They become mirrors of the way they see their children (p. 235). He goes on to explain that Buffys mothers behavior in the episode reflects her perceptions of her daughters behavior; she does not become a caricature of her daughter. These moments of 106 M. D. E. Meyer & M. H. L. Tucker polysemy in the essay offer an insight into generational differences in television viewing and subject positioning. Fan Fictions and Fan Communities Jenkins call for new theories of and methods to examine fan cultures is answered, in part, by the next two books. Editors Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse delve into the world of fan fiction through a series of essays dedicated to new theoretical approaches to fan communities and fan fiction on the Internet. The 12 essays in the text cover many topics spanning the fan fiction spectrum, including sexuality, relationships, genre types, narratives, and technology. Hellekson and Busse introduce the text as Work in Progress by sharing online social experiences that ultimately shaped their text. The Work in Progress metaphor emphasizes the evolution and continual cycle involved in writing. In fact, discussing fan fiction communities as spaces where Work in Progress is acceptable ultimately challenges academic objectification of fan practices. In accordance with Bourdieu (1992), who argues that academia prefers muddled, cloudy, works reconstituted in their finished state (p. 219), Hellekson and Busses text confronts the tension between the objective and subjective in written experience. The Introduction provides a concrete and extensive academic literature review of scholarly work on fan fiction and fan practices. Hellekson and Busse introduce readers to specific terminology used by fan communities online and limit the scope of the text to online fandoms: [T]echnological tools affect not only dissemination and reception, but also production, interaction, and even demographics. The history of fan fiction makes clear that technology is complicit in the generation of fan texts (p. 13). The collection of essays presented operates from what the editors define as autoethnography, which they appropriate in a manner different from the commonly assumed meaning in communication studies, where it is taken to be an extension of ethnographic methodology. Although the essays are not autoethno- graphic in this sense, the editors frame them as such to draw attention to subject positions that are multiple and permit us to treat the academic and fannish parts as equally important (p. 24). They conclude the Introduction with an extensive bibliography of critical scholarly work on fan fiction and include Francesca Coppas (2006) brief history of media fandom. Coppas discussion of fandom from pre-1950s to today provides a concise and cogent overview for readers unfamiliar with the history of fan fiction. After this, the book is divided into four sections with three individual essays in each section. Part 1, Different Approaches: Fan Fiction in Context, seeks to address the production, dissemination, and consumption of fan fiction by exploring what constitutes fan fiction and analyzing the context in which it originated (p. 26). This section contains articles written by Abigail Derecho, Catherine Driscoll, and Elizabeth Woledge. Derechos article, Archontic Literature: A Definition, a History, and Several Theories of Fan Fiction, resituates fan fiction as an artistic practice rather than as a cultural phenomenon. Derecho calls the literature she studies archontic, or Fan Communities 107 expanding and never completely closed (p. 61). The author asserts that fan fiction is a constant cycle of artistic practice: [T]here is a constant state of flux, of shifting and chaotic relation, between new versions of stories and the originary texts: the fics written about a particular source text ensure the text is never solidified, calcified, or at rest (p. 7677). Similarly, Driscolls article, One True Pairing: The Romance of Pornography and the Pornography of Romance, discusses how fan fiction ultimately connects the genres of romance and pornography. She suggests that fan fiction is often represented as immature because of its undiscriminating and excessive investment in popular culture (p. 85). However, it can also be represented as a substitute for sexual relationships, both sexual and romantic, thus making it amateur porn (p. 85). Ultimately, she examines the gendered dichotomy of romance and pornography as genres, claiming: [T]he inseparability of sex and gender in practice is one of the things that romance genres make obsessively visible, and one of the ways in which romance itself is pornographic (p. 94). Woledges chapter expands the exploration of genre into slash fiction, relating it to romance as well as mainstream equivalents (p. 97). She defines intimatopia as a particular fantasy world in fan fiction which produces stories committed to exploring intimacy between protagonists. She contrasts her work to Driscolls prior chapter by arguing that intimatopia connects both sex and intimacy, unlike romance novels and pornography which separate them (p. 99). By making this distinction, she classifies intimatopia as particular kinds of fan fiction using Star Trek, The Sentinel , and Highlander as examples (p. 103), ultimately arguing that intimatopic works should be categorized as their own genre. Part 2, Characters, Style, Text: Fan Fiction as Literature, shifts the discussion to textual analysis of fan fiction, and treats fan fiction texts as works of literature. Each chapter focuses on some aspect of intertextuality within fan fiction. This section contains contributions from Mafalda Stasi, Deborah Kaplan, and Ika Willis. Stasis article analyzes slash, asserting that slash cannot be read and analyzed on its own, but must be read in connection to the source of the fiction (e.g., the show, novel, or characters). By exploring intertextuality and the slash canon, she claims that authors and readers have a thorough knowledge of the initial setting and characters of a text (p. 120). Stasi finds that slash uses complex references and symbolism, which places the writing within contemporary postmodern textuality (p. 129). Likewise, Kaplans article Construction of Fan Fiction Character Through Narrative focuses on the ways in which fan fiction writers develop characters within their texts, given that these characters are already complex creations complete with physical descriptions, histories, personalities, and rich fan interpretations (p. 135). She conducts case studies of X-Files, Star Trek: Voyager, and Highlander fan fiction texts, observing that narrative techniques in these works produce an interpretation of character both wholly within its own text and in dialogue with the extratextual knowledge of the source text and the fanon accessible to the reader (p. 151). Finally, Willis analyzes her own fan fiction about Harry Potter for emotional, political, and intellectual investments. Willis argues that while Harry is portrayed 108 M. D. E. Meyer & M. H. L. Tucker exclusively as heterosexual in the text, the writing of the series provides for homoerotic desire between Harry and several male characters, including the potions teacher Snape. By examining some of her own work, Willis highlights the delicate negotiation needed between personal interest in providing an alternative queer world and the heterosexual intention of the text. In particular, Willis notes that queer writers run the risk of seeming to speak from a position of authority, of attempting to prove [their] reading of a text, rather than attempting simply to circulate it as one among many readings, taking pleasure in multiplicity itself (pp. 167168). Part 3, Readers and Writers: Fan Fiction and Community, focuses on the interaction between writers and readers, emphasizing the importance of reception and production. This section contains contributions from Angelina Karpovich, Eden Lackner, Barbara Lynn Lucas, Robin Anne Reid, and editor Kristina Busse. Karpovichs article introduces the concept of beta readers and studies beta reading*the practice of releasing a story to a selected (and trusted) fellow writer or other member of the fan fiction community before making it available to the general readership (p. 172). As somewhat akin to peer reviewers in academic publishing, beta readers hold significant power potentially to shape the resulting story, and beta readers are generally acknowledged for their contributions to revisions (p. 177). Karpovich argues that the appearance of beta reading seems to be a result of the Internet medium because it responds to the acceptance of a huge, ever-growing number of new and diverse members in fan communities; part of becoming a fully fledged member of the community involves learning about and participating in the community practice of beta reading (p. 186). The next two chapters explore different aspects of sexuality in fandoms. Lackner, Lucas, and Reid focus on Lord of the Rings slash fiction and readers responses to it on LiveJournal (www.livejournal.com). The authors situate their essay in queer theory, challenging the way slash fan fiction has been characterized as a product of straight women writing about gay men. Instead, they ask how differences among women in fandom can be read within the complex matrix of queer theory (p. 189), and claim that characterizing slash writers as straight women is problematic because the construction of those fans (even if it was once accurate) may not apply to later generations (p. 191). By resituating the practice of writing slash fiction as queer, the authors challenge the heterosexual/homosexual binary implicit in contemporary definitions of slash fiction. Busses chapter builds on this argument by examining real person slash (RPS) on LiveJournal as a site for online performative identity and discusses fannish displays of affection, mock queerness, and concerns about the political implications of such behavior (p. 207). Unlike slash fiction about characters from media, RPS co-opts a celebrity identity and attempts to write a story from their lived reality. Busse offers an example of RPS about the members of the popular boy band + NSYNC to illustrate how RPS communities negotiate rules and regulations about fan writing*concerns that are not present for writers focusing on mediated texts. Finally, Part 4, Medium and Message: Fan Fiction and Beyond, veers away from textual analysis and genre, turning its attention to the more performative aspects of Fan Communities 109 fandom, particularly how authors control creative license in fan fiction. This section contains essays by Francesca Coppa, Louisa Ellen Stein, and Robert Jones. Coppas chapter, Writing Bodies in Space: Media Fan Fiction as Theatrical Performance, argues that fan fiction develops in response to dramatic, not literary, modes of storytelling and therefore can be seen to fulfill performative rather than literary criteria (p. 225). By utilizing the lens of performance studies, she interrogates three aspects of fan fiction: (1) Why does fan fiction seem to focus on bodies? (2) Why does fan fiction seem so repetitious? and (3) Why is fan fiction produced within the context of media fandom? (p. 230). Ultimately, Coppa connects fan fiction to theatre, claiming that fandom is community theatre in a mass media world; fandom is what happened to the culture of amateur dramatics (p. 242). The last two articles of the text focus on new media channels used in the contemporary production, distribution, and reception of fan fiction. In This Dratted Thing: Fannish Storytelling Through New Media, Stein links three areas of thought relating to online fandoms: (1) the point of interaction between a user and a computer at the level of the software; (2) genre theory; and (3) the conceptualization of the active fan (p. 246). Thus, Stein explains that online diary/journal based networks such as LiveJournal utilize a particular software platform that make them ideal for fan fiction, including as they do the ability to create threaded comments, real-time interaction, and the process of friending which restricts access to certain information. Although this type of structure is similar to online role-playing games, the author characterizes fan fiction communities as a process of storytelling interactive fiction (p. 251). She utilizes case studies of Harry Potter and The Sims as examples of these interactive processes. Finally, Joness chapter, From Shooting Monsters to Shooting Movies: Machinima and the Transformative Play of Video Game Fan Culture, examines 3D gaming environments and how players manipulate the video game medium. He examines machinima or animated filmmaking within a real-time 3D environment (p. 262). In essence, fans hack the video game in order to obtain images to produce their own animated films. Machinima grew out of the first-person shooter (FPS) video game genre, which is male-dominated; thus, Jones argues that this particular type of fan practice is a potential masculine corollary to fiction which is seen as predominantly feminine. He ultimately suggests that this type of transformative play has become a defining quality of the modern video game which offers both the opportunity and the invitation to drastically change the medium (p. 277). Female Fandoms Online While Hellekson and Busses text offers a variety of insights into media fandoms, Rhiannon Burys work Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online (2005) offers an in-depth, insightful discussion of how women construct and participate in online fan communities. The Introduction to the text discusses the formation of women-centered cyberspaces, as well as theories of online gender performance, community making, and the production of space. The author claims that as a distinct 110 M. D. E. Meyer & M. H. L. Tucker subculture of a burgeoning online media fandom, women-only and women-centered fandoms are ripe for scholarly investigation (p. 3). Utilizing ethnographic methods, she analyzes two female-based online communities dedicated to the television shows The X-Files and Due South. Bury operates as a participant observer invested in the knowledge production of these communities: Although steps can be taken to (re)negotiate the researcher/researched binary, it is important to acknowledge that it can never be erased (p. 30). Bury organizes the text into five chapters; the first two chapters provide ethnographic overviews of the online communities studied, while the second two examine the use of language online, leaving the final chapter to interrogate some of the theoretical connections her research demonstrates. In Chapter 1, Feminine Pleasures, Masculine Texts: Reading The X-Files on the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade, the author examines how the interplay of normative feminine and feminist discourse appears in the collective sense-making of primary and secondary texts (p. 34). The David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade Research Project (DDEBRP) involved a one-year collection of data from 19 active members of a listserv designated as a women-only space that discussed the actor David Duchovny as well as his popular television character, Mulder, on The X-Files. Bury analyzes forum posts through Jenkins lens of the active fan. In particular, Bury categorizes her work as an extension of Jenkins, claiming that Jenkins observations about gendered fan practices stops short of explaining why boys and girls would be offered different narratives in the first place (p. 42). As a result, Bury claims that many fan scholars focus on pairings of texts and fans that coalesce along cultural gender norms (e.g., Radways 1984 work on women who read romance novels) rather than diverge. Thus, she frames her discussion of The X-Files as stories for boys appropriated by a group of educated women. Participants discussed the notion of romantic fantasy and lust, exhibiting a closer connection to lust and desire for the main character (David Duchovny) than to the notion of romantic love between Mulder and his partner, Scully. While Bury read Scullys role in the series as second fiddle to Mulder, the participants of the group made it clear that Scully was Mulders equal by stressing the feminine aspects of the quest in terms of shared emotional investments (p. 44). The participants discourse surrounding Mulder placed a strong value on his performance of feminine qualities and expressed disapproval of more normative masculine behaviors even when they were justified under the circumstances of the series. The conversations that participants engaged in extended beyond The X-Files, suggesting a blurring of expectations for Mulder as a television character and for Duchovny himself, who Bury claims is representative of the new man (p. 37). Fans acted both as critics of the television series and as promoters of Duchovny as an actor/person, illustrating that women involved in the community solidified identity through their discussions. In Chapter 2, When Fraser Met RayK: Reading, Writing and Discussing Slash Fiction, Bury explores another female fan site focused less on gender identity and more on sexuality. The Militant RayK Separatists listserv was devoted to the series Due South, originally produced by Canadian-based Alliance Atlantis in conjunction with CBS. When CBS cancelled the series, production continued in Canada, but one Fan Communities 111 of the main characters, Ray Vecchio, was replaced with Ray Kowalski. The listserv grew from the separation of the RayK fans from those who preferred RayV. The MRKS list participated in the creation of slash fiction, utilizing the main characters from the Canadian series. Examples of Due South slash are woven throughout the chapter, followed by participant responses to the genre of slash fiction. Bury is no longer convinced that slash is merely a response to problematic gender relations, noting that several participants identified feminist motivations for writing slash (e.g., There are no pre-existing sexual politics or power issues they make the relation- ship as they go. Thats exciting; p. 77). Thus, Bury opts to employ queer theory in reading her participants responses, illustrating that members of the community were open to queer identities and subject positions, but did not necessarily identify themselves with queer politics. In addition, Bury chronicles her participants experiences of being outed as slash readers/writers. Despite the genres focus on sex between men, Bury argues that part of the womens pleasure in reading these texts resulted from a well crafted story or sex scene. As many of the women who participated in the forum were well educated, Bury claims, If slash is a highly nonnormative practice in terms of sexuality, a concern for quality is highly normative in terms of class (p. 99), and that the women tended to uphold community standards based on bourgeois aesthetics (p. 105). Burys observations about the role of class in the participation of listserv members causes her to shift focus in Chapters 3 and 4 to particular communicative strategies women use in these online communities. Chapter 3, The Write Stuff: Language Use and Humor On (the) Line, discusses the use of language by members of online communities. Bury gives a short history of the development of proper language usage spanning from the 1500s to today, and borrows Pierre Bourdieus (1977) concept of linguistic capital as a form of cultural capital, which underscores how language determines social status and class identity (p. 109). Bury is able to demonstrate that some online participants value the use of proper language within their communities, and utilize linguistic capital in order to mark those who may be undesirable for the community. She engages a subtopic called From Hybridity to Verbal Hygiene, which illustrates how women in these communities would often utilize language constructions that mimic oral speech patterns in their online text (e.g., uh-huh, hey, yeah, you know), as well as slang and colloquialisms (e.g., cool, that really sucks). They also utilize text symbols, or glyphs, which are more commonly called emoticons (p. 111). The use of emoticons, which tend to be typed physical gestures (e.g., the smiley face :)) or shortened oral speech (e.g., lol for laughing out loud, or IMHO for in my humble opinion), is commonplace in online communities and chat forums. Bury asserts that these occurrences should not be confused with a lack of attention to accurate and effective language use, oral or written (p. 112). While most banter in forums contributes to group bonding, some posters with less extroversion could feel insignificant because of their inability to post often or cleverly enough. Therefore, forum discussions frequently focus on a specific investment in cultural and linguistic capital [that] might seem excessive, obsessive even, but it is perfectly understandable. 112 M. D. E. Meyer & M. H. L. Tucker In performing normative class identities, members are able to write off any deficit in cultural capital created by their investments in popular media fandom (p. 130). Thus, the insistence on proper language is part and parcel of the investment in a form of what cultural theorist may consider low culture in an attempt to elevate actions to high culture status (see Gans, 1999). In Chapter 4, Nice Girls Dont Flame: Politeness Strategies On (the) Line, Bury explores how etiquette online, or netiquette, becomes an important practice between listserv members. Building on the sociological observation that girls and women carefully link their utterances to the previous speakers contribution and develop each others topics, asking questions rather for conversational maintenance than for information or challenge (Gal, 1989), Bury explores how these socially constructed cues play out in online communities. She explains that in accordance with the history of politeness, online communities regulate politeness by monitoring flamers, or individuals who express anger through insults after a specific comment or conversation. Theoretically speaking, it is easier to flame online than in face-to- face interaction because individuals are safely tucked away behind the computer screen and cloaked in anonymity. Bury examines the communicative strategies her participants used to flame and how others responded to flaming. In both groups, Bury found: Typical of all-female face-to-face interaction, members of the DDEBRP and MRKS did not flame, and for the most part limited swearing; worked to avoid, minimize or mitigate disagreement; and supported others turns (p. 135). Bury observes that members of the lists monitored their language by regulating swearing (in accordance with the investment in linguistic capital from Chapter 3), provided numerous qualifiers when proposing what might be perceived as a controversial opinion (use of IMHO and Just my 2 cents), and negotiated conflict by focusing on support for members of the group rather than argumentation. Finally, in Chapter 5, Cyberspace as Virtual Heterotopia, Bury connects her data to theoretical discussions of social and spatial relationships. Working from Michel Foucaults (1980) claims that disruption of the public/private binary allows for the establishment of historical knowledge, Bury sees her study as contributing historical sources for glimmers of the alternative orderings and in-between spaces created by women (p. 167). Discussing womens progress from private to public spheres, Bury observes that womens progress was not simply due to entering the workforce, but attributed to the fact that they worked collectively and had access to other non-domestic spaces (p. 171, emphasis in original). Bury notes that many of her participants accessed the forums through computers in their places of employment, and that typically they read and wrote posts during work time, citing relational and family obligations as reasons for fewer posts on weekends. Bury also cites the importance of the cultural origin of media texts, noting that the U.S. series The X-Files differed dramatically from Due South at all stages of production and reception. Thus, fan communities can appropriate cultural codes and constructs from the culture of origin of the text and reproduce these communicative codes in online interactions and fiction. Bury concludes the text with thoughts on fan communities as a whole and the definition of fan, noting that the category itself is best understood as strategic, not Fan Communities 113 essential. To this end, it continues to serve a vital function to distinguish those who have a more intense emotional investment in a text than that of the casual reader (p. 208). Moreover, Bury makes the case that poststructuralist theory allows researchers to explore virtual identity, community, and space. She illustrates that there is a distinct difference between real life identity and online identity, and that while both real life and Internet communities require interaction with others, the context and situations differ (p. 211). Bury concludes with suggestions for future research, encouraging scholars and students to pursue further cyberculture and Internet studies. Conclusion All three texts reviewed above offer important insights for the field of communication studies. Although each text can stand on its own, each contributes to our larger understanding of the evolution and history of fan scholarship. Jenkins text is a nice introduction to the history and body of his work, but could be difficult to understand for those who have not yet read Textual Poachers. In addition, Jenkins observations in the latter half of the text coincide with his other recent text, Convergence Culture (Jenkins, 2006a). Scholars thinking about using Jenkins text should consider reading or assigning all three of his books to appreciate the depth and scope of his changes in the scholarly interrogation of fan communities. Hellekson and Busses text is most appropriately used to illustrate the benefits that numerous lenses can bring to a particular topic in fan studies (fan fiction in their case). As written, the collection probably appeals more to literary theorists and critics, although the observations on performance and identity are easily transferable to a communication setting. Burys text is an in-depth study that builds on early fan research and methods. Her observations about the strategic use of language and face management are directly related to a variety of communication courses, particularly gender, intercultural communication, and rhetoric. The text serves as a solid example of online ethnography, although additional readings in theory and method would be needed to direct students specifically toward this type of project. Collectively, these texts question the assumptions made by communication scholars over the past few decades*assumptions about divisions between the quality and type of communication employed in face-to-face vs. computer mediated interactions, assumptions that fan behaviors are an attempt to resist hegemonic control in the media industry, gendered assumptions about communicative strategies and motivations, and assumptions about the role that sexuality plays in fan communities. Each text illustrates that new and innovative methods will be required to study fans and fandom in the wake of the Internet. In a tangible sense, we have moved beyond simple theoretical explanations of email lists and discussion forums as places of anonymity and safety. If anything, we are entering an age where the Internet brings visibility, not anonymity. Current trends in social networking websites, including the popular Facebook and MySpace, show that fans are no longer seeking to remain anonymous. MySpace serves as a means of exposure for new musical artists 114 M. D. E. Meyer & M. H. L. Tucker without the financial capital to run their own label; Facebook offers college students a way to link their real life friends and classmates in a virtual environment. The participants in Burys study illustrate this visibility, using similar communication strategies to those that would be employed in face-to-face interactions. As scholars seek to develop more integrated theoretical approaches to media and reception, the metaphor of textual poaching needs to shift as well. While some fans certainly do position their acts as sites of resistance, others simply express a deep affection or desire for particular media texts. All three texts highlight some aspect of play in fandom*those who describe themselves as fans are also in the process of playing with and adapting the medium to suit their interests, as evidenced by the authors in Hellekson and Busses text. More work must be done from a qualitative perspective that addresses how fans utilize, participate in, and enjoy their respective fandoms. Fan research is still marginalized in favor of more quantitative measures of effects, and scholars studying fandom are often told to get a life, paralleling the famous Saturday Night Live sketch about Star Trek fans. All three of these texts illustrate that fan communities are complex, socially constructed systems*their participants have real lives, and fandom is a part of those lives. References Bird, S. E. (1999). Chatting on Cynthias porch: Creating community in an email fan group. The Southern Communication Journal , 65, 4966. Bourdieu, P. (1977). The economics of linguistic exchanges. 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(Routledge Focus - Disruptions - Studies in Digital Journalism) Steen Steensen, Oscar Westlund - What Is Digital Journalism Studies - Routledge - Taylor & Francis Group (2020)