Playing Together: Taking A Ritual View Of Communication On Television Fan Culture In Network Society

Fan studies have just been paid attention to by scholars of communication in China recently. This article reviewed the history of television fan studies and figured out its deficiency through three models of media and culture studies: the fan scholars trapped in the discourse structures which constructed by themselves, their works focused on the'byproducts'of fandom, and neglected the fan activities'meaning in everyday life. So the fans as some types of audiences in the fan study paradigms existed without explanations of its cultural meanings in fans'everyday life. This research took a ritual view of communication, analyzed the fan activities in'Baidu Post'on internet and explained five ritual communication types (constitutive communication, self-representative communication, expressive communication, regulative communication and invocative communication) of television fans in network society. This research described the cultural meaning of fans ritual communication as everyday life which was neglected by the former fan studies.