This study explores how Chinese ancient cultural memory is constructed, and specifically how it is reconstructed through Chinese Xianxia TV dramas during the past five years. Ancient Chinese culture has become a hit in Chinese popular culture today, in which Xianxia TV dramas draw the biggest audiences. This study focuses on the ways, namely the transformations between cultural memory as storage memory to cultural memory as living functional memory, in which the Xianxia genre reconstructs the past. Bringing together a ritual view of communication, cultural memory and participatory culture, it applies a cultural approach to communication, which refers to the production and the fandom reception of Xianxia TV drama. Meanwhile, the perspective of culture industry provides a critical dimension to look into this highly commercial genre. This study is based on the analysis of content and representations of the theme song lyrics, posters and the general narratives of six selected Xianxia TV dramas, as well as a virtual ethnography of fan-generated videos and their comments. The findings suggest that, the reconstruction of ancient Chinese cultural memory in Xianxia TV dramas is a complex interplay between the culture industry logics of Xianxia production and the passionate participatory fan culture. The limited representations of the past in the series are absorbed and practiced by the fan audiences. Through fan practices, the fans extend the media text with their passion and knowledge of ancient culture, attaching the cultural memory into their present real-life cultural identity and hence vigorously transforming cultural memory from storage memory into functional memory.  This study speaks to the lack of bottom-up perspectives in the studies of the ancient culture revival trend in China, and it contributes to a deeper scholarly understanding of the Xianxia genre.

Syftet med det här examensprojektet var att undersöka och diskutera hur fanidentiteten konstrueras och uttrycks av medlemmarna av fan communityn prince.org. Syftet med kortfilmsfilmmanuset var att sätta mig i kontext till hur fans framställs i film och TV och ge en mer mänsklig och underhållande bild av analysen.Det teoretiska perspektiv som arbetet utgått från är Cultural Studies där mediepubliken ses som aktiv med förmågan att vara kritisk.För att samla in data användes netnografi som metod, det vill säga etnografiska studier på Internet. Förutom observationer utfördes även intervjuer med sju medlemmar av prince.org. För att hitta en bra struktur för filmmanuset kombinerades Thurlows (2008) åtta punkter med Raskins (1998) fem parametrar.Resultaten av studien visar att fanidentiteten är komplex och att det inte går att ge ett enhetligt svar på frågan vad ett fan är. Även om en del akademiker starkt framhäver fandoms positiva sidor är det ändå problematiskt då även det kan vara stereotyperande och utesluta de fans som inte passar in. Problematiken återfinns även på prince.org där medlemmarna stereotyperar och har olika uppfattning om vad fanidentiteten innebär vilket ibland leder till kraftiga argumentationer. / The purpose of this examproject was to study and discuss how then fan identity was constructed and expressed by the members of the online fan community prince.org. The purpose of the practical work was to create a short film script in order to put my work in relation to how fans are pictured on film and television and to give a more concrete and entertaining picture of my analysis.The theoretical framework for this study was Cultural Studies where the media audience is seen as active and capable of criticism.Netnography, i.e. online ethnography, was the research method chosen for this project. A number of threads were being observed and seven members were interviewed. In order to give the film a good structure Thurlow's (2008) eight point guide was combined with Raskin's (1998) five parameters.The results of my study show that the fan identity is complex and that it is not possible to give one uniform answer to the question of what a fan is. Even if some academics strongly argue for the positive aspects of fandom, it is still problematic since even that is a way of stereotyping and excludes those that do not fit in. This problem is also found at prince.org where members stereotype and have different opinions about what it means to be a fan, something that sometimes leads to big arguments.

This thesis aims to find out how fans perceive the authenticity of the Formula 1 documentary series ‘Drive to Survive’. Research has shown that documentaries are challenged from the audience with regard to draw an authentic representation of events while they seek to nevertheless be entertaining to people. Thus, the thesis tries to examine which themes fans focus on when they rate the authenticity of documentary series and how they express authenticity by investigating comments from a fan forum of Autosport.com.  With regard to the theoretical framework, it seems obvious to illuminate the concept of authenticity. Moreover, it is important to put it in context with documentary theories, fandom concepts and reception theories, since the thesis contains data of fans about the documentary series ‘Drive to Survive’ and focusses on its reception of authenticity, meaning how the fans perceive authenticity. To examine relevant data, Mayring’s (2000) approach of a qualitative content analysis is used.  The main results of the thesis are the determination of four themes of authenticity of a documentary series, namely cinematographic manipulations, behind the scenes footage, participants and imposed judgements. But even if the same themes are generally addressed from fans, the focus of the fans on the themes of authenticity varies. Another result is that fans do not express authenticity with the same words, but the comments contain of patterns content wise related to the themes.  As a conclusion with regard to the research focus of fans’ perception of authenticity the thesis shows that it is related to the individual mind. While the reception theory explains that the individual background influences interpretation of content, the concept of fandom illustrates that fans are able to give content an individual meaning which both has effects on their perception of authenticity. Therefore, it remains a challenge for documentary productions to find the balance between entertainment and authenticity.

With the rise of the Popular Front during the 1930s, the American Left came together under the symbols of the “people” and “America,” and as its ranks swelled with modernity’s disenfranchised, radicals utilized the structures and discourses of modernity in the name of political struggle against exploitive American capitalism and fascism abroad. Science fiction and its devoted fan community were among these structures and discourses. Though both were largely conservative, entwined with American corporate capitalism, one group of fans embraced Communism and hoped to politicize science fiction and its fandom. The Michelists, as they called themselves, worked through the established channels of science fiction and fandom advocating a unique Marxist understanding of science fiction. This report situates them within the Popular Front, particularly its discourses of science and popular culture, and highlights how the particularities of the genre and its fandom shaped their political beliefs and actions. / text

This study examines the role of social media in maintaining interest in classic cinema in today’s media culture. Ethnographic analyses and case studies were performed within a robust classic cinema fan network on the social media blogging site Tumblr. The practices of these bloggers and their online platform are framed against the traditional structure of the curator and museum, indicating that they serve many of the cultural functions attributed to these institutions. This study further demonstrates that these Tumblr networks serve as a resource for young people to discover, share, and create communities relating to classic cinema. Due to the networking capabilities of Tumblr’s youth-oriented platform, these fan activities reach a broad range of individuals, exposing them to scenes and actors from classic cinema, stimulating interest in and acceptance of the cinematic framework of classic films. This content visibility and distribution potentially draws those outside the community into the extant fan network. These communities and practices represent previously unexplored methods by which classic cinema appreciation may develop and thrive within the fast-paced media culture of the 21st century. / text

This thesis explores women’s writing and its place in the formation of female film culture in the British silent cinema era. The project focuses upon women’s literary engagement with silent cinema as generative of a female film culture, looking at materials such as fan letters, fan magazines, popular novels, short story papers, novelizations, critical journals and newspaper criticism. Exploring this diverse range of women’s cinema writing, the thesis seeks to make an original contribution to feminist film historiography. Focusing upon the mediations between different kinds of women’s cinema writing, the thesis poses key questions about how the feminist film historian weights original sources in the reclamation of silent female film culture, relative to the varying degrees of cultural authority with which different women commentated upon, reflected upon, and creatively responded to film culture. The thesis moves away from conceptualization of cinema audiences and reception practices based upon textual readings. Instead, the thesis focuses upon evidence of women’s original accounts of their cinemagoing practices (fan letters) and their critical (newspaper and journal criticism) and creative (fiction writers) responses to cinema’s place in women’s everyday lives. Balancing original archival research with multiple overarching methodological frameworks—drawing upon fan theory, feminist reception theory, audience studies, social history and cultural studies—the thesis is attentive to the diversity of women’s experiences of cinema culture, and the literary conduits through which they channeled these experiences. Shifting the recent focus in feminist silent film historiography away from the reclamation of lost filmmaking female pioneers and towards lost female audiences, the thesis thus constructs a nationally specific account of British women’s silent era cinema culture.

Fandom is, as scholars in relevant areas of Media Studies and Sociology attest, a vibrant aspect of contemporary culture and influential in individuals' expression and construction of their identities. This thesis examines and endeavours to challenge how fandom, defined as "emotionally involved consumption of a given popular narrative or text," is conceived and received in contemporary art. It addresses misconceptions about art by four artists who explicitly express their fan identities in their artwork and examines how a finer understanding of fandom can enrich contemporary art discourse and illuminate the artists' works. Bringing together the fields of art criticism and cultural studies, the thesis explores the impact of contemporary artists' fandom on their depiction of celebrities and the critical reception these artworks have received. The principal artists whose works and fan identities are analysed are: Ryan McGinley (b. Ramsey, New Jersey, 1977-), Elizabeth Peyton (b. Danbury, Connecticut, 1965-), Karen Kilimnik (b. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1955-) and Stella Vine (b. Alnwick, England, 1969). In addition to these, art works by eleven other prominent late twentieth and early twenty-first century artists are presented as revealing contrasts. These artists, the principal artists and their comparisons, all are not only doing something interesting artistically; their work presents different approaches to expansive concerns about the nature and function of fans and celebrity in wider culture. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate how fandom manifests itself in artists' work, whether fan feelings are discernible in their artwork and how admissions of fandom, either through artists' public declarations or evidence in their art, influence critical interpretation of art and colours public perception of the artists themselves.

The thesis aims to explore changes in the production of music fanzines brought about by the advent of new media. Fanzines are defined as nonofficial magazines published independently in compliance with the code of DIY ethics. The theoretical part of this work focuses on the history of fanzine production as well as on concepts of alternative media, which is necessary in order to examine the current state of the aforementioned alternative media sphere. Furthermore, the theoretical part describes fans' behaviour, as they are the most prominent representatives of active audiences. This behaviour is a key to understanding the motivation behind fanzine production as well as the nature of media communication in the cyberspace, where boundaries between producers and consumers of media messages disappear. The main part of this work analyses interviews with ten figures from the Czech community of both pre-internet authors and those of post-internet era, the latter being used to internet communication. Described discursive patterns reveal the existence of two separate worlds: traditional fanzine community and online environment, coexisting in mutual awareness. Yet the former strives to guard its boundaries, protecting its products from the internet, albeit oftentimes entering the virtual space in search for...

This thesis aims to explore how fans use social media to participate in activities relatedto the idol, and what is the level of participation of different fans in the fan group. Thisthesis used qualitative research methods – online observations and semi-structured indepth interviews to collect the empirical data, through focusing on the fan group of KrisWu. The theories of Jenkins and Carpentier are also applied to explore and describe theparticipatory practices of fans. By employing the theory of Jenkin’s participatoryculture to the first part of the analysis, the research results show that for the fans, socialmedia plays an important role in their participation, providing fans with a newenvironment to communicate and organize activities. Fan activities can be categorizedinto three major types: online consumption behaviors, fan text productions, and onlinesupporting activities. By applying the political and critical approach of participation, aswell as Carpentier’s four-level analytical model to the second part of the analysis, thisstudy finds that there are three sub-processes related to online fan communities – themanagement subprocess, the activity organization subprocess, and the subprocess oftext production and distribution. In each fan group, there are four different roles of fans– leaders, creators, supporters, and less active fans. Besides, through analyzing theidentities and decision-making moments, it can be said that although each fan isrelatively equal in the whole participatory process, there are still certain power relationsbetween each role of fans, especially in the process of fan group management.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T14:23:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Caio Assis Capasso.pdf: 1551637 bytes, checksum: c0c126f85ced7a9208f93a493d6d39d8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-12 / This research aims to verify how videogames allow the creation, sharing and collaboration of user-generated content, and the characteristics of fan communities that are created to such objective. For this work we minimally define videogames as digital games that are dependent of a computational support for its realization. Some useful videogames for the better understanding of the activities of creation and alteration of content by players and the manner they happen, particularly the creation of mods: the name commonly used to refer to the practice of alteration of a videogame s characteristics through the manipulation of files and/or processes that are constitute it, resulting in a different experience from the one originally planned by its developer. With this we try to offer clues and pointers towards a deeper understanding of the manners the roles of producer and consumer, author and user, player and fan are transforming with the ascension of new technologies and now (digital) media. With this intent we give special attention to the players turned modders amateur content creators for a specific videogame -, through the online communities engaged in the creation and distribution of this kind of content. Three author groupings are used as theoretical foundation for this research. The first é composed by authors that helps us to think questions regarding participatory culture and the promises of the internet, among them we can cite Howard Rheingold, Sherry Turkle, clary Shirky, Axel Bruns and particularly Mizuko Ito and Henry Jenkins. In the second grouping Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman and Jesper Juul offer the concepts that allow us to take into account the expressive dimensions od videogames. The third grouping, with a special emphasis in the works of Olli Sotamaa, David Nieborg and Julian Kucklich that offers us empirical study cases for us to study the questions related to modding as a productive practice. We attempt to operationalize a theoretical perspective that deal with the expressive potential of videogames and how the interventions characterized as mods are one of the most intriguing ways to subvert the author/user and producer/consumer relationships. We also attempt to suggest similarities and differences between videogames and other media. Other objective is to enrich the debate regarding online participation and the artifacts it produces, trying to think participatory culture and the media convergence in the contemporary consumption and production practices through videogames / Nesse trabalho discutimos videogames, definidos como jogos digitais dependentes de um suporte computacional para sua realização, que nos ajudam a entender melhor as formas que as atividades de criação e alteração de conteúdo por jogadores se dão. Atenção especial é dada à criação de mods : termo comumente utilizado para denominar a alteração de características de um videogame através da manipulação de arquivos e/ou processos que o constituem e que resultam em uma experiência diferente da originalmente pretendida. A intenção dessa pesquisa é verificar como os videogames permitem a criação, troca e colaboração de conteúdo criado por usuários e as características das comunidades de entusiastas que são formadas para tais fins. Os videogames, e o modding em particular, são objeto de estudo valioso num período onde a crescente agência de consumidores sobre objetos midiáticos pode ser percebida tanto como estratégia de libertação quanto de exploração, pois se encontra na interseção entre atividade lúdica e trabalho, produção amadora e indústria. São fornecidos pistas e apontamentos na direção de um entendimento mais profundo das maneiras como os papéis de produtor e consumidor, autor e usuário, jogador e fã vêm se transformando com o desenvolvimento das novas tecnologias e das mídias digitais, a partir de um ponto de vista sociológico e historiográfico. Também damos atenção especial e aos modders jogadores que se tornam criadores amadores de conteúdo para videogames. Utilizamos três grupos de autores na fundamentação teórica. O primeiro é composto por autores que ajudam a pensar questões referentes à cultura participativa e as potencialidades da internet, especialmente Mizuko Ito e Henry Jenkins. No segundo Katie Salen e Eric Zimmerman e Jesper Juul oferecem os conceitos que permitem considerar as dimensões expressivas dos videogames. O terceiro grupo, com ênfase especial a Olli Sotamaa e Julian Kucklich, oferecem os casos práticos utilizados para estudar as questões relativas ao modding enquanto prática produtiva. Nossa intenção é operacionalizar uma perspectiva teórica que trabalhe o potencial expressivo de um videogame e como as intervenções que classificamos como mod são uma das maneiras mais intrigantes de subversão das relações autor/usuário e produtor/consumidor. Pretendemos também apontar semelhanças e diferenças entre videogames e outras mídias e enriquecer o debate a respeito da participação online e dos artefatos que ela produz, e pensar a cultura participativa e a convergência midiática nas práticas de consumo e produção da sociedade contemporânea através dos videogames