Home

News & Events

Journal

Magazine

Gallery

A bout

Search

>>

Go

Social Interactions on LiveJournal: Fandom Interactivity by Rachel Chan Suet Kay It is given that on the internet, interactions betw een people previously unknow n to each other in the physical w orld are de-personalised due to the inability of ensuring a face to face meeting at every point of interaction. Also due to the proliferation of identity creation through the mass availability of representative symbols, the image and the reality of the social actor may greatly vary from one another. We can centre on the study of fandom communities on the internet and how their interactions mimic or detract from real life. For analysis, I have focused on a specific number of fandom-based communities hosted on a popular netw orking tool, LiveJournal.

Latest entries A rchived entries Print friendly version

LiveJournal allow s for blogging as w ell as connecting one's blog to another through a netw ork function, w hich further acts as w hat is termed by LiveJournal as a "community". Members of similar interest, w hich can be listed and aggregated by the LiveJournal algorithm, can then meet and interact by crossposting comments on one another's personal blogs. Members of a specific "community" can then also create a mirror "journal" linked to their "community" journal (w hich functions as a new sgroup noticeboard) featuring new ly updated member journals. Thus the interactivity of blogging is intensified - forming a simulacrum of a little "global village", as the LiveJournal tool is accessible to most parts of the w orld. These few communities of fandom w ere chosen because they are easy to analyse - that is, the cultural references w ithin the fandoms specified are easily accessible to the public due to its ubiquity in pop culture. They are respectively tw o fandoms centering around tw o literary icons, and one more on a historical figure w hich has been immortalised on film. Activities of these fandoms largely include fanfiction w riting, fanart, and making fan videos, now that YouTube has become a household tool. Fanfiction is essentially a form of fiction involving favourite characters in any given literary or real universe, in situations created by the authors. Similarly, fanart is the visual companion to it. Fan videos may be made either using these fanart images, or clips from the particular movie that is then edited together using electronic tools such as W indow s Movie Maker. In fandom, as in real life, there are those w ho are active participants in a community as w ell as those w ho are less active. There are also those w ho are demanding of high standards in production of know ledge, and those w ho are not. Hence in fandom, one can easily spot interactions centering around the criticism of peer w riting, such as w hat is termed "bad fiction" or "badfic" w hich are basically fanfiction w ritten in a slipshod manner or those w hich do not meet specified criteria, just as in the w orld of publishing. There may then be communities w ithin a similar fandom w hich houses the said badfic created solely tow ards deconstructing (or rather tearing to shreds) the "badfic" found in the fandom.

converted by Web2PDFConvert.com

W hat is of particular interest in this article is the manner in w hich actors go all out to locate, and then on to tear apart (and quite often too, make fun of) the pieces w hich they term "badfic" seemingly w ithout regard to the response of the author. Perhaps it is an established culture; UseNet groups in the early days of the Internet in the 80s w ere set up to discuss the pros and cons of other Internet applications, w hich w ould have resulted in similar interactions. Perhaps also it is the fact that the interactions of the actors are limited in the sense that they do not speak face-to-face; therefore they do not relate to each other using facial expressions and the display of emotions as one w ould do in the physical w orld. Thereby emotional responses might be hard to gauge, and it is much easier to ignore these. Once the trend has become w idespread, people grow accustomed to overlooking this factor in communication. This echoes a recently published research on emailing and its revolutionising of communication w hich talks about how an email may make or break relationships as w ell as your career. A badly thought out email, once sent out can do negative w onders for one's social circle. A badly w orded email can damage a person's feelings; despite the sender completely overlooking the effects of the choice of w ords. Conversely, in conversation face-to-face, one can alw ays know w hen to stop talking w hen one's listener begins to show signs of discomfiture. As email is so easy and quick to release, coupled w ith the fact that it costs virtually nothing, the protocols normally reserved for a w ell-composed letter sent by air may be omitted by the need for speed. After all, it's nearly a matter of pressing "Delete". The author's responses to postings on the aforementioned deconstruction range from completely ignoring them to questioning the criticism, w hich is relatively rare. How ever, one can safely say that the deconstructors are usually highly educated, w ith significant cultural capital, as evidenced through their w riting skills and method of analysis. The deconstructors may also have their ow n personal blogs/journals, w hich provides an insight into their ow n w riting, w hich are usually of greater literary promise than those being criticised. It is remarkable that such promising talents themselves spend considerable time, even starting up a community journal, literarily deconstructing pieces much inferior to theirs. Rachel Chan Suet Kay is a Sociology graduate of the University of London.

Scan is a project of the Media Department @ Macquarie University, Sydney

converted by Web2PDFConvert.com