Research On The Affection Of New Media Fans From The Perspective Of Semiotics

New media,especially Sina Weibo,have become the main gathering place for fans in China.In the past two years,with the popularity of “Idol Raising” programs,such as “Idol Producer” and “Produce 101”,fans have once again become a hot spot for researchers.Fans battle for their idols’ rankings and promote idols in new media,fans actively participate in public welfare undertakings,the fan economy is developing rapidly.At the same time,the chaos phenomena in the “fan circle” has also attracted the attention of government departments.This thesis uses semiotic theories and methods,from the perspective of affective dimension,to study fans in China’s new media.Except for the introduction,the full text has five chapters.The introduction part first sorts out the research status of fan culture at home and abroad.Fan research has experienced three waves in the West.The first stage of western fan research pointed out that there were many misunderstandings about fans in the academic circles in the past.Fans are actually a group with productivity,creativity and thinking ability.The second stage of fan research proved that fandom was not a natural space for cultural autonomy and resistance.There are classes in fandom.The studies in the second stage still focused on issues of power and injustice.The third stage studied the issues of fan consumption and personal affections of fans and so on.Fan research in China has involved fan economy,fans and politics,fan text creation,the relationship between fans and idols,fan affections,fans and media,etc.However,compared with Western fan studies,fan research in China have some problems,such as lack of participating scholars,lack of original theories,and lack of introductions and translations of Western fan studies.After sorting out the current situation of fan research in our country,the introduction part defines new media and analyzes the characteristics of new media.The new media in this thesis mainly refer to media platforms formed by relying on digital technology,including Weibo,Tieba,etc.Digitalization,interactivity,hypertext,virtualization,networking and simulation are the characteristics of new media.After that,this chapter defines fans and fan affection.Fans are those who consume goods because of strong affections for the fascinated text.Fan affection refers to the feelings of happiness,anger,sorrow,desire,and hatred generated by fascinated objects.The first chapter is divided into two sections.The first section uses four master tropes’ evolution theory to explore the change of the object of human worship.The pattern of four master tropes’ evolution stems from renaissance,which has been proved a universal rule of human culture’s development by Vico,White,Burke and so on.This thesis believes that idol worship has experienced four periods corresponding to four master tropes: supernaturalism worship in metaphor period,hero worship in metonymy period,star worship in synecdoche period and social media star worship in irony period.This evolution reflects that idol worship of human beings has been through a process from god to people,meanwhile,the object of worship and the reason of worship in every period is related to people’s living conditions at that time.The second section of this chapter reviews the development of Chinese fan culture.Due to the standardization and centralization of radio and television,in the traditional media era,fans mostly unilaterally accepted the information transmitted by the cultural industry.Fans had fewer opportunities to contact idols.Fans had an attitude of looking up to idols.In the era of new media,star chasing has become an open carnival.Through the new media platform,fans can communicate with idols intimately,and the relationship between fans and idols becomes equal.Fans even directly participate in the production of idols and intervene in the development of idols’ careers.Online fan groups are imagined community formed based on the interest.The second chapter discusses the affection awakening and expressing of fans in new media.The first section of this chapter uses Collins’ interaction ritual chain theory to illustrate the generation of new media fan affection.After Collins absorbed Durkheim and Goffman’s views on interaction ritual,he formed a theoretical framework of interaction ritual chains theory.The purpose of the interaction ritual is to awaken emotion.Collins believes that emotional energy is the core element and result of interaction ritual.People are willing to participate in interaction ritual when they can obtain high emotional energy in the interaction ritual.Interaction rituals are very common in new media fan activities,from fans’ daily battling for their idols rankings,to online fan meetings,to fans gathering to listen to and discuss their idols’ new electronic albums.Fans gain emotional energy in such rituals.Long-lasting high emotional energy can encourage fans to participate in interaction rituals related to idols for a long time,while frequent low emotional energy can cause fans to leave away from their fan team.The second section use Bakhtin’s carnival theory to analyzes the affection expression of new media fans.On the whole,the new media fan culture is filled with a carnival atmosphere.Fan culture in new media fits the basic form of Bakhtin’s folk humorous culture.Carnival activities and rituals in fandom,humorous language works created by fans,and square parole in fandom are the ways for fans to express their affections.Fan culture in new media can reflect the carnival characteristics of the populace,the ritual,the equality,and the subversion.However,the fan circle has class,fans cannot get rid of the influence of the official system,and the existence of non-democratic factors in fan culture makes the new media fan culture show anti-carnival characteristics.The third chapter studies the main types of fan affections in new media,including fan affection,anti-fan affection and affective change.Fans chasing stars are based on fantasies about stars,which involves feelings such as family affection,friendship and love.Fans’ fantasies about stars are narratives.The reasons why fans have fantasies about stars include: gaining pleasure and confronting difficulties,satisfying missing affections,and the guidance of entertainment industry production groups.Fans’ affections towards stars are often fictional.When such fictional affections enter into reality,fans’ real personality may go towards their better potential personality,however the fictional affection may also lead to fans’ irrational behaviors.Anti-fans are those who are opposed and yet in some ways similar to the fans.The second section of this chapter takes the “anti-fan” of Yang Chaoyue during her participating in “Creation 101” as an example to analyze the speech used by“anti-fan” to attack on artists,the “anti-fan” text production,and the reasons for the“anti-fan” affection.“Anti-fans” criticized Yang in aesthetic dimension,moral dimension and rational-realistic dimension proposed by Jonathan Gray,as well as Yang’s fans.Apart from using surface co-texts including pre-text and preceding-text,the text produced by her anti-fans include deep co-texts too.The reasons why anti-fans attack Yang are the distinction need of taste,class and value,emotional catharsis and tease impelled by mental unity of crowds.The third section discusses the changes of fans’ affections towards idols,including the changes in fan affection caused by the collapse of “character design” and the phenomenon of fans’ leaving away from fan team and attacking the idol in turn.“Character design” of a star refers to the specific public image design of the star.In terms of narrative types,“Character design” is a kind of performative narrative,the narrator of which is a “personality frame”.“Character design” is narrated by the star,the star’s works,the star’s agency,the star’s fans and mass media.The collapse of “character design” is the fall-down of the star’ s designed public image,which means the star’s coming back to the factual narrative of the primary segregation from the fictional narrative of the secondary segregation.After idols “Character design” collapse,fans’ affections towards idols will change.Some fans will turn from "fans to non-fans" and turn from “fans to anti-fans”,and extreme fans will even hurt their idols.However,some fans can accept the more authentic image of idols after their idols “Character design” collapse,so the collapse of “Character design” is sometimes the opportunity for stars to renegotiate the public image with their fans and establish an image more in line with the real personality of themselves.Fans’ leaving away from the fan team and attacking the idols in turn is the affective change of fans towards their idols from former love to later dislike,and even attacking and exposing mistakes and misdeeds of their idols.The types of this change are divided into three kinds: can’t tolerate idols’ disqualification,blame for deep love and unreasonable attack.The narrative after fans’ leaving away from the fan team has fixed functions: recalling the history of chasing stars,explaining reasons for leaving and attacking idols.The reasons for this change are the characteristics of social media stars,the fanatical nature of fans,the empowerment of fans by new media.Chapter four discusses the affective economics of fans in new media,including the production of fan affection,the marketing of fan affection and the profit of fan affection.This chapter elaborates the production activities of fans based on their affections towards their idols;the marketing made by fans for idols and the marketing made by brand owners to fans by using fans’ affections;and how culture industry and brand owners get profits from fans’ affections,etc.The first section of this chapter uses Fiske’s fan productivity theory,combined with Xiao Zhan’s “227Incident”,to explore the semiotic productivity,textual productivity and enunciative productivity of fans in new media.In addition,it also discusses the production activities of fans in raising idols,including fans using new media platforms to sell idol-endorsed products and self-produced support goods,pointing out that fans of“growing idols” are mostly “prosumers”.The second section first uses the case of Wang Ju’s fans to analyze how fans promote idols,make idols a symbol,so as to win commercial endorsement opportunities for idols;then uses affective brand communication theory to analyze the affective marketing of brands to fans.The third section discusses the affective consumption of fans,free labor of fans and the alienation of fans’ affections.The consumption and labor of fans are based on their love for idols,but the seemingly pure affections are actually very easy to be manipulated and become tools of capital utilization and exploitation.Chapter five analyzes the strategies of easing fans’ affections from the perspective of media literacy.The first section sorts out the four stages of media literacy education in Europe and America,and discusses the connotation of media literacy education in the new media era.New media literacy is an extension of traditional media literacy,including people’s ability to use new media technology and choose,understand,criticize,produce and exchange information in new media.Its core concept is to cultivate people’s sense of responsibility,moral sense,rationality,civilization and democracy consciousness when using new media.The second section points out the affective misunderstanding of fans in the new media.In the new media,fans have misunderstandings of confusing fiction with reality,cyber violence and immersing in post emotions.The chaos of fan circle is closely related to the misunderstanding of fans’ affection.Therefore,it is necessary to correct the affective misunderstandings of fans.The third section puts forward the strategies for correcting the affective misunderstandings of new media fans from five aspects:school education,government guidance,family cooperation,media self-discipline and star dissuasion.Schools should offer relevant courses in class,and make full use of new media platforms for relevant publicity and education after class.Government should organize the conduct of media literacy education,and provide financial guarantees,legal and institutional support.Parents should create a harmonious and warm family atmosphere for their children,learn knowledge about media literacy together with children.The media should act as a “gatekeeper”,adhere to professional ethics when reporting entertainment news,and help fans distinguish right from wrong;new media platforms such as Sina Weibo should provide fans with a healthy star-chasing environment,and should not acquiesce in or even connive at fans’ data fraud.Idols also need to take responsibility for their fans’ irrational star chasing activities.In addition to dissuading fans timely,stars should also improve their new media literacy,set examples for fans,and pay attention to their self-cultivation when expressing views on new media platforms.