This presentation should be used in conjunction with Chapter 8: Media Fandom and Audience Subcultures from the book Media Audiences: Effects, Users, Institutions and Power, by John L. Sullivan (http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/50993_ch_8.pdf) Its purpose is to outline what fans are and to delve into a little bit of their culture, mainly focusing on Science Fiction fans.

1. Fandom and Audience Subcultures
What is a fan and how do they impact the media?

2. What is a ‘fan’?
Think, Pair, Share.

3. The geeky, socially challenged, but
ultimately benign and lovable fan:

4. This notion of the sweet but socially awkward fan
exists alongside a much darker view:

5. Fan Stereotypes
Defining what a fan is…
Short for “fanatic,” the term originally
referred to religious membership “of or
belonging to the temple, a temple
servant, a devotee”.
TASK: Read the section entitled Fan
Stereotypes and give a summary of all
of the negative associations with fans.

6. Audience to Fan
A common scenario of the progression
Audience Views & Interprets Text
• Audiences actively interpret media content by producing meaning out of the
signs and symbols that make up the media text.
Interpretations linked to larger social context
• These interpretations are also closely connected to both the immediate and
larger social contexts of audiences.
Connect with other fans
• The “transaction” between the medium and the audience goes beyond a single
interaction with a television program, movie, or book. You might subsequently
turn on your computer and find a fan website or forum dedicated to the text.
Become involved with ‘fan fiction’
• You may find that some fans enjoyed the narrative so much that they inserted
its characters into their own “fan fiction” writings, which would be posted on
online bulletin boards and websites for other fans to read and discuss.

7. “…our interac-tions with media texts today rarely
have any clear boundaries. The
expansive, malleable nature of the Internet and
the declining cost of computers have allowed
audiences to easily extend their media
experiences beyond the reception of the original
text. Texts can be reinterpreted in many new and
contrary ways: through connections to other
audiences online, creation of new media texts
based upon the source material, and—thanks to
the power of inexpensive computers to achieve
professional-quality video and audio editing—
even alteration of the original media text.”
- John L. Sullivan
Media Audiences: Effects, Users, Institutions and Powers (2013)

9. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Where would these people be on the continuum?

10. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Audience Participation Guide
Task: Take a look at the audience
participation guide for cinema
viewings. What do you think of it?
http://www.rockyhorror.com/particip
ation/

11. “The unique social environment
surrounding Rocky Horror points to
some of the fascinating ways in which
fandom alters and even creates new
cultural experiences out of popular
media texts. These unique interactions
between fans and media place theories
of fandom squarely in the sights of
audience scholars.”

12. Consumers, Enthusiasts, Fans, or Producers?
• Think, Pair, Share:
Where do these people sit on the ‘Continuum of
Fandom’?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akZ1PwSrRPM

13. Task: Start reading and answering…
Media Fandom and Audience Subcultures.pdf

14. The impact of fans…
TASK: Discuss what impact you think fans can have on a
media text. Positive and Negative.

15. Fans Cultures…
“The difference between watching a [television]
series and becoming a fan lies in the intensity of
their emotional and intellectual involvement.”
There are two elements to fan cultures:
Social Aspect
Interpretive Aspect
• Media fans band
together in either
informally or formally
structured groups (e.g.
fan clubs) to share
their mutual interest
with others.
• Fans act as interpreters
and producers of
media content, thus
have a far more
intense viewing
experience than other
consumers of the same
product.

16. Impacts of Social Element
Fan Activism
“The social interaction among fans is
not merely to spur a deeper
appreciation of the original text.
Close-knit communities of fans can
also offer direct challenges… Fans can
be mobilized to press producers and
media corporations for change."

17. Fan Activism
Challenging Institutional Producers
TASK: Find out what the Star Trek
letter writing campaign was and the
impact that it had.
• What was the campaign?
• Who was involved?
• What were the instructions?
• What was the impact of the
campaign?

18. Impacts of Interpretive Element
Adapting own interpretations
Fan internalise these mainstream
cultural materials (films, tv series etc.)
into their own personal lives.
“Media fans are members of
subcultures in the sense that they adopt
their own linguistic codes… and
symbolic forms… the delineate them
from the rest of the population.”

19. TASK: What are the linguistic codes and
symbolic forms of these fans?

20. Impacts of Social and Interpretive Elements
Read ‘Fans and Media Texts:
Protecting Continuity and Canon’
(Pg10 – 11) to answer questions
below:
• How can the social interactions and
interpretation of texts impact on
the production?
• What causes this?