| While there has been an influx of research discussing gender and sexuality in fandom, there is a lack of scholarship specifically focusing on race and fandom. As televisual media is becoming increasingly diverse, so are fan spaces. This research used a product of the televisual diversity movement, Sleepy Hollow, to tap into fans' meaning-making experiences and interrogate the racial politics at work. This study used Critical Affinity-Space Sense-Making Methodology, which consists of systematic participant-observation, critical discourse analysis and sense-making interviews to investigate the critical sense-making behaviors of Sleepy Hollow cyberfans. The cyberfans' discussions of Sleepy Hollow provided insight into the convergence of individual, societal and institutional racial politics. Fans from diverse ethnicities brought their experiences, prejudices and ideological lens to the fan experience and discursively created a space for meaning-making in terms of making sense of Sleepy Hollow, as well as contextualizing the fan discussions within larger social discourse. |
