This research is based on twelve months conducting virtual ethnography within a fan community. This thesis looks at the fans' online and offline performances, showing how young people 'grow up' with new media. Focusing on the internationally popular American sitcom, Friends, this research examines how fans discuss the show on the Friendscafe website, and how they relate the show to their everyday lives. I explore what it means to be become an adult within a sitcom and a web-fan-community. As I worked on this project for nearly four years, I too have 'grown' with the young fans and with the show. I have observed how the young fans developed in maturity - similar to the characters' own trajectories in the show. Next I introduce the idea of exploring identities between online and offline spaces which I call the fan-spiral. I trace the movement of fans between online and offline arenas. I explore how fans perform online and then offline and return to the forum to talk about the real experiences they encounter in their everyday lives. This discovery contributes significantly to the studies of fan culture as it stresses that the Internet has changed the way we look at fandom.

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Drawing upon a significant weight of empirical data, collected in the field, this thesis proposes a set of four spectrums of investment engaged in by cult media fans: the spectrum of financial investment; the spectrum of what is here termed 'participatory investment'; the spectrum of investment in the idea of textual authenticity; and the spectrum of multiple investments. The spectrum model allows the individual members of the research sample to be located within specific regions of each spectrum and correlations to be drawn between the distinct spectrums, in order for any patterns which emerge to be examined. The thesis also reviews a number of relevant theoretical concerns such as fan studies, ethnography and social psychology.

See front file / Communication Science / MA (COMMUNICATION)

See front file / Communication Science / MA (COMMUNICATION)