Denna uppsats studerar fotbollssupportrarna i deras roll som konsumenter men framförallt som producenter – som värdeskapare. Syftet är att kartlägga och ana­ly­sera deras kommunikativa praktiker för att på så sätt ta reda på i vilken omfattning de producerar värde för sina fotbollsklubbar. Utgångspunkten är att supportrarnas identitetssökande supporterskap i kombination med projicering har stor betydelse för hur starka de band blir som knyts med fotbolls­klubben. Projiceringen syftar till att få bilden av klubben att passa in i den egna livsstilen. Emellanåt uppstår situationer då det är svårt att upprätt­hålla denna bild, exempel­vis då supportrarna för­väntas arbeta ideellt i elitfotbollsklubbar som allt­mer framstår som det de egent­ligen är; vinstdrivande företag.   Forskningen har hittills bara ställvis beaktat supportrarna som värdeskapare för klubbarna och fotbollen. En central del i uppsatsen är därför att undersöka hur supportrarna skapar dessa värden och om klubbarnas strävan efter en mer köpstark publik leder till motsättningar mellan dessa och den traditionella publiken. Motsättning aktualiseras av att elitklubbarna anser att nya och ända­måls­enliga arenor har en avgörande betydelse för den ekonomiska utveck­lingen.   Fallstudien Kalmar FF visar att klubben, med hjälp av en ny arena, strävar efter att attrahera nya publiker med större köpkraft och betalningsvilja än tidigare. Detta bekräftas tydligt, inte minst genom närvaro av sponsorloger, men en förmodad frånvaro av ståplatser. Om dessa har det uppstått en såväl konkret som symbolisk kamp mellan klubben å ena sidan och supportrarna å den andra. För supportrarna är ståplatserna en viktig del av identiteten och traditionen, för klubben förknippas ståplatser med det gamla och mindre lönsamma.   Ur ett perspektiv är klubbens ståndpunkt ekonomiskt rationell, med fler sittplatser kan man sannolikt locka ny publik som kan betala mer. Ur ett annat perspektiv är den mindre rationell; man riskerar nämligen att förlora supportrar och deras många värdeskapande praktiker, bl.a. den karnevaliska närvaro som tycks utgöra en förutsättning för människor att vilja se fotboll på plats och via medierna.   Analysen visar på en delvis ny dimension av supporterskapet, den värde­ska­pande, och visar därigenom hur vardagens konkreta handlingar är för­bundna med fotbollens ekonomi och det sportindustriella komplexet i stort. / This thesis is studying football supporters in their role as consumers but foremost as producers - as creators of value. The aim is to identify and analyse their communicative practices in order to see in what extent they produce value for football clubs. The point of departure is that the fandom based search for identity combined with projection has a great importance for how strong their ties to the football club will be. The purpose of projection is to make the club fit into the supporters lifestyle. Occasionally situations arise when it is difficult to maintain this image, such as when supporters is expected to work unpaid in the elite soccer clubs that more and more appears as what they really are, profit-driven companies. Research has so far just occasionally considered supporters as value creators for the football clubs. A key part of this thesis is therefore to examine how fans create these values, and whether the football clubs desire for an audience with great purchasing power, leads to tensions between them and the traditional audience. The contradiction is on the agenda because the elite clubs believe that new and comfor­table arenas are crucial for their economic development. The case study shows that the football club Kalmar FF, with the help of a new arena, is striving to attract new audiences with greater purchasing power than the traditional audience. This is clearly confirmed, especially by the presence of sponsor facilities, but with an assumed lack of terraces. This has generated a both practical and symbolic struggle between the club on the one hand and supporters on the other. For the supporters the terraces are an important part of identity and tradition because they are associated with the old and less profitable. From one perspective, the clubs position is economically rational; with more seating football clubs are probably able to attract new audiences who can pay more. From another perspective, the less rational, it runs the risk of losing fans and their many value-adding practices, including the carnival presence that seems to be a prerequisite for the audiences desire to watch football, both on the ground and through the media. The analysis reveals a partly new dimension of fandom, the value-adding, and thereby shows how substantial everyday acting is bound to football economy and the sport industrial complex in general. / En folkrörelse i medieekonomin: svensk elitfotboll och tv-pengarna.

In 2007, Radiohead released a downloadable album, In Rainbows, allowing consumers to pay what they thought the album was worth. The band responded to a moment of change in the music industry. Since then, other bands, like Nine Inch Nails and Coldplay, have made similar moves. Radiohead's capability to release an album and let the fans decide its worth relied on the image they built, which foregrounded their commodification. The historic move redefined the boundaries between art and commodity, a well know tension in popular music studies. The thesis focuses on popular music as communication in the changing industry. Using Radiohead’s album as a case study, it looks at the changing boundaries in the tension between art and commodity. The thesis examines Radiohead's performance, its mediation by the press, and what the album’s distribution method meant to the fans.

Although sport fandom is often stereotypically associated with negative behaviors such as poor interpersonal skills and aggressiveness, theorists have suggested that, because sport fandom provides such a social and fun atmosphere, fandom may actually be related to psychological health. ... Research for the current study looked to expand prior research as the correlation between Team Identification and several factors, including psychological well-being, collective self-esteem, and community identification. ....

Sätten att titta på TV-serier har utökats de senaste åren i och med Internets allt mer centrala rolli vår mediekonsumtion. Sverige har gått ifrån att vara ett land med en enda public service-kanaltill ett med ett stort utbud av kommersiella TV-kanaler med syfte att locka tittare och annonsörer.I vår studie har vi undersökt aspekter av TV-serier som ligger utanför själva texten. GerardGenette (1997) var den som myntade uttrycket paratext som består av de två delarna peritextoch epitext. Dock är det Jonathan Gray (2010) som pratar om paratexter i relation till TV-serier,medan Genette (1997) endast beskriver paratexter i samband med litteratur. Eftersom det finnsså många olika TV-serier och TV-kanaler är det viktigt för en ny TV-serie att sticka ut blandmängden, samt att skapa en bild av vilken typ av TV-serie den är innan den faktiskt börjat sändas.Vi har använt oss av tre olika metoder för att kunna besvara våra två frågeställningar som rörvilka epitexter TV-kanaler använder sig av och hurvida det finns ett intresse hos tittare att kunnaengagera sig vidare i en TV-serie. Vår första metod utgjordes av en kvantitativ innehållsanalys avtio svenska TV-serier på fem olika svenska TV-kanaler, där vi främst riktade in oss på epitextersom kan hittas online. Därefter skapade vi en kvantitativ enkätundersökning där 79 respondentersom tittar på TV-serier deltog. Den sista metoden var en kvalitativ innehållsanalys på fyrapopulära svenska TV-seriers officiella webbplatser.Vårt resultat tyder på att det finns ett starkt intresse hos TV-tittare att följa en TV-serie på andrasätt än endast på utsatt tid på TV:n, och även att det finns en vilja att diskutera TV-serier, medsläkt och med vänner, likväl som med främlingar på Internet. Webbplatser för de olika TV-serierna erbjuder besökare möjligheter till både diskussion och vidare läsning om exempelvisavsnitt eller karaktärer. På så sätt skapas ett engagemang som gynnar båda parter. / Ways of watching TV series have increased over the years by way of the ever expanding part theInternet plays in our media consumption. Sweden has gone from being a country with a singlepublic service channel to one with a wide range of commercial TV channels with the purposeto attract viewers and advertisers. In our study we have examined aspects of TV series that existbeyond the text itself. Gerard Genette (1997) was the one who coined the expression paratextwhich consists of two parts; peritext and epitext. Though Jonathan Gray (2010) is the one whowrote about paratexts in relation to TV series, whereas Genette (1997) only describes them interms of literature. Because there are so many different TV series and television channels it isimportant for a new series to stand out from the rest, while also making it easy for potentialviewers to determine the show’s genre even before it has started airing. We have used threedifferent methods to be able to answer our two main questions about what different epitexts TVchannels use and whether there is an interest among viewers to be able to engage themselvesfurther in a TV series. Our first method consisted of a quantitative content analysis of tenSwedish TV series from five different Swedish television channels, where we mainly looked atepitexts found online. After this we made a quantitative survey in which 79 people who watchTV series took part. Our last method used was a qualitative content analysis of the officialwebsites of four popular, Swedish TV series.The result of our study shows a strong interest among viewers to follow a television seriesbeyond its regular broadcasting on television, and also that there is a will to discuss TV series,among family and friends, as well as with strangers found online. Websites of the different TVseries give visitors possibilities for discussion and further reading about, for example, episodesand characters from the show. In this way an involvement that benefits both parties is created.

This thesis looks at electronic dance music (EDM) celebrity and fandom through the eyes of four producers on Twitter. Twitter was initially designed as a conversation platform, loosely based on the idea of instant-messaging but emerged in its current form as a micro-blog social network in 2009. EDM artists count on the website to promote their music, engage with fans, discover new songs, and contact each other. More specifically, Twitter is an extension of a celebrity’s private life, as most celebrities access Twitter from their cellphones and personal computers, cutting out gatekeepers from controlling their image. Four power player producers in EDM are used as case studies for analysis of the intimacy and reach Twitter provides. Chosen because of their visibility, style, and recognition, Deadmau5, Diplo, Skrillex, and Tiësto represent different EDM subgenres, run their own record labels, have dedicated fans, and are accessible through social media. All use Twitter to announce shows, interact with fans, promote contests and merchandise, and share stories and pictures of their personal lives with their fan followers. Tweets are a direct line for fans to communicate with these celebrities through the reply, retweet (RT), and mention functions on Twitter. Fan tweets to and from these EDM celebrities are also examined by looking at celebrity-fan encounters in the cyber world and the real world, aftereffects of celebrity RTs, and engagement with said celebrities. The internet is the lifeline for this subculture as it changed the way EDM is shared, promoted, and packaged. Twitter and other social media sites give producers the exposure they never experienced with traditional media and allow fans to participate in a global subculture. To sum up, this is a study on how Twitter influenced EDM and personalized the relationship between producers and fans. / text

This dissertation is a study of cultural memory, exploring how superhero comic books, and their readers and creators, look back on and make sense of the past, as well as how they use that past in the creation of community and stories today. It is my contention that the superhero comics that exist as part of a long-standing "universe," particularly those published by DC and Marvel, are inextricably linked to a sense of cultural memory which defines both the organization of their fans and the history of their stories, and that cultural memory in comics takes the twinned forms of fandom and continuity. Comic book fandom, from its very inception, has been based around memories of past stories and recollections about favorite moments, creators, characters, etc. Because of this, as many of those fans have gone on to become creators themselves, the stories they have crafted reflect that continual obsession with the histories -- loosely termed "continuity" by creators, fans, and comic book scholars -- of these fictional universes. Often, this obsession translates into an engagement with actual events from the past. In many of these cases, as with much art and ephemera that is immersed in cultural memory, these fans-turned-creators combine their interest in looking at the history of the fictional universe with a working out of actual traumatic events. My case studies focus on superhero comic books that respond to such events, particularly World War II, the Vietnam War, and 9/11. / text

The academic study of comic books - especially superhero comic books - has predominantly focused on the analysis of these books as texts, as teaching and learning resources, or on children as comic book readers. Very little has been written about adult superhero comic fans and their responses to superhero comics. This thesis explores how adult comic book readers in New Zealand engage with superhero comics. Individual interviews and group conversations, both online and face-to-face, provide insights into their responses to the comics and the characters as well as the relationships among fans. Analysis of fans’ talk about superhero comics includes their reflections on how masculinities are represented in these comics and the complex ways in which they identify with superheroes, including their alter egos. The thesis examines how superhero comic book readers present themselves in their interactions with other readers. Comics ‘geekdom’, fans’ interactions with one another and their negotiation of gendered norms of masculinity are discussed. The contrast between the fan body and the superhero body is an important theme. Readers’ discursive constitution and management of superheroes’ bodies, and their engagement with representations of superheroes are related to analyses of multiplicity in individual identities and current theories of audience reception and identification.

This essay examines Lionsgate’s viral marketing campaign for The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012) and the marketing teams’ use of new marketing techniques and the online fan base. The essay also asks the question to what extent the fans’ participation in Lionsgate’s marketing campaign can be called fan labor. The study is based on a film industrial perspective and academic literature that deals with film marketing, the film industry, fandom and digital labor. The material used for the analysis of The Hunger Games marketing campaign is collected from newspaper articles and news interviews with Lionsgate’s marketing personnel. The study shows that although Lionsgate used many new marketing strategies associated with viral marketing, it is problematic to depict these strategies as a wholesale movement from older marketing techniques. It points to the importance of a nuanced understanding of how producers and consumers operate in the digital age with a holistic view on film marketing practices. The study also shows that Lionsgate’s use of the online fan base correspond with many characteristics of fan labor on the internet. It is, however, problematic to establish that this necessarily means that the fans’ contributions to the marketing campaign were exploited or that it demands compensations. The essay argues that the popularity of viral marketing among film studios and their use of fans and fan created content for promotional purposes calls for further investigations.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This research aims to point which would the place that fandoms could occupy inside the production process managed by culture industries inside the convergence culture context. So, we chose the Brittish TV Show “Doctor Who” as a starting point because it has a lot of features of the convergence culture presented by the authors we used and also because of its longevity and adaptability during all these 50 years on air. Then, we bring up the concept of convergence culture based on Aquino (2012) who proposes a theoretical triad ir order to comprehend this issue: technology, society and culture. So, we add the economic feature to her statement through an approach that values the “Theoretical Interdisciplinarity” (KLEIN, 2010) intending to include a general overview. Only after that we come up with a generic model that includes fans and, at last, we chose two of the biggest Brazilian fandoms to instace this model. A content analys based on the entire production of both groups in Twitter during November 2013 was made. This was the period when the Doctor Who 50-year anniversary was emphasized by BBC and it was inside Twitter that Brazilian fans respondend to that when they got mobilized for the annyversary especial showing at the movies. So, through a combination of content analysis (BARDIN, 1995) and interviews with the fandom leaders, we could find that the generic model could be applicable in both specific cases and thet the cultural industries players hás been proposing new strategies that, at the same time, pitch in with the maintenance of a productive cicle managed by them but also opens to fandom a role as an intermediary instance capable of guide the consumption of the other audiences. / Esta pesquisa tem a intenção de situar o lugar que os fandoms podem ocupar dentro do processo de produção coordenado pelas indústrias culturais no contexto da cultura da convergência. Para isto, escolhemos a série britânica "Doctor Who" como ponto de partida, pois, dada sua adaptabilidade ao longo dos mais de 50 anos do ar, ela tem se adaptado com muita eficácia ao contexto da cultura da convergência. O segundo passo foi levantar o conceito de convergência a partir da proposta de Aquino (2012) que aborda a temática a partir de um tripé teórico: tecnologia, sociedade e cultura. A partir desse ponto, o que propomos é adicionar o aspecto da economia à ideia da autora através de uma abordagem que preza pela “interdiscipliniridade teórica” (KLEIN, 2010) na tentativa de compreender a questão de uma forma mais geral e só então é que propomos o nosso modelo. Por último então escolhemos os dois maiores fandoms brasileiros da série para ilustrar esse modelo através de uma análise de conteúdo dos seus perfis no Twitter. Foi possível perceber também que em novembro de 2013 a BBC intensificou a divulgação de material promocional em relação ao aniversário de 50 anos, sobretudo relacionado ao especial a ser exibido no cinema e, com isso, a mobilização dos fãs acompanhou o mesmo movimento, por isso este foi o período escolhido para ser detalhado. Definidos os parâmetros, utilizamos uma aliança entre análise de conteúdo (BARDIN, 1995) e entrevistas com os administradores dos grupos a fim de constatar a aplicabilidade do modelo proposto para nesses casos em específico e que os players das indústrias culturais têm proposto novas estratégias que, ao mesmo tempo contribuem para a manutenção de um ciclo produtivo comandado por eles, abre espaço para a inserção dos fandoms como uma espécie de instância intermediária capaz de guiar o consumo das audiências.

Berättelsen om Harry Potter har lästs av miljontals människor världen över. Bokseriens sociala och kulturella genomslag har haft stor påverkan på generationen som föddes under 1990-talet. Böckernas popularitet var tilltalade för många, men vissa läsare blev mer engagerade än andra och började engagera sig i fan-grupper och använde sig av internet för att kunna diskutera Harry Potter med andra fans. I den här uppsatsen undersöks det hur det kan vara att vara ett Harry Potter-fan och vad det har för betydelse för en individ. För att kunna gå in på djupet kring fenomenet ligger fokus på fandomet kring Harry Potter. Med fandom menas den typ av subkultur fans agerar inom. Syftet med studien är att genom kvalitativa intervjuer, bildanalyser och observationer, kunna förstå och kartlägga hur fandomet kring Harry Potter är uppbyggt, samt den inverkan det har på människorna inom det. För att ta reda på det analyserades resultaten med hjälp av deltagande kultur, Social Identity Theory och habitus. Resultatet vittnade om ett aktivt fandom med dedikerade medlemmar, fyllt av gemenskap med delad passion och nostalgi till barndomen.