This November, we continue to await your submissions to our Fandom Friendships zine. We also introduce our first collaboration event with Fanlore: the Fandom Friendships Challenge! From November 11th to 24th, join us and Fanlore in adding to content to
How early soap opera fans used letters to engage with creators and build community
Internet fan studies foregrounds the immersion of activities such as shipping and community building into a spaceless and timeless virtual life, as well as the importance of social media in closing the gulf between fan and creator. My work here
On hierarchies in online danmei fan communities in China
Many scholars see the BL community as a queer space that has the potential to subvert existing expectations about gender or sexuality (Stanley 2008; Wood 2006) and the capitalist system itself (Donovan 2008). In the case of China, the BL
The Yogscast are a group of online Let’s Players who produce YouTube videos in which they play video games, joke with one another, and sometimes engage in long-form storytelling. Some members of the Yogs have been friends for a decade,
Tumblrpocalypse Special, Part 10
Today’s scholarly reaction to the Tumblrpocalypse comes from Fanhackers’ very own elmyra, originally posted in a short Twitter thread. Just a (non-exhaustive) list of things that Tumblr gave birth to, or nurtured, that we’re going to lose. “Further thoughts on
Tumblrpocalypse Special, Part 5
We continue with our countdown to the Tumblrpocalypse, today with Elise Vist, PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo. Tumblr’s recent “no female-presenting nipples” rule, which bans NSFW content from its platform, is yet another sign that it is no
Tumblrpocalypse Special, Part 1
As the Tumblrpocalypse unfolds, we have asked fan studies scholars and Tumblr researchers for their reactions to Tumblr banning adult content and the consequences this is likely to have. Some are scholarly and analytical, some are deeply personal. We’ll be
Participatory fans on Tumblr adopt specialized fandom tags, which are unlikely to be used by Tumblr members who do not identify with a particular fandom or subsection of fandom. Such tags are not merely composed of the name the fandom
The tension between the private act of journaling and the public sharing of journal entries via a social network architecture makes LiveJournal a site of performance (Kendall 2007; Lindemann 2005). Busse (2006) observes that women sharing fan fiction with one
The two things I think Tumblr really changed are, I think before Tumblr the primary language of fandom was text-based, and it was very much fic and filk—very text-oriented. I think Tumblr changed it so that the culture of memes