[QUOTE] From Paul Booth and Lori Morimoto from the “Future of Fanworks” chat with fan studies authors, going on right now. Join in!

Well, in my opinion, with the increased visibility of fandom comes two different paths for fans — (1) fans are more open to scrutiny, participate with the scrutiny, and explore fandom more critically; (2) fans “burrow down” into deeper and more hidden areas because fandom is personal and shouldn’t be explored like that. The consequence of this, then, is that, at least as academics, we end up only studying the more visible fandoms

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Paul – very true. This is equally true of transcultural fandoms – we study what’s visible, because we literally cannot see the rest, which runs the risk of skewing our understanding(s) of fandom in certain directions.