"Fans" Cultural Studies In A Network Environment

Fans culture is a brand-new yet ancient word. With the coming of consuming society and consuming culture, the number of fans group increases, social impact gradually gets influential and study on academia deeper. As a culture communication activity, fans culture has been one that undergone inside fans group, which was greatly affected by the booming of Internet media. Social media standardized by the Internet has changed the situation that fans receive information passively and strengthened interactive communication between fans and idols.Based on media technology, this paper talks about medium environment of printing, video and the Internet, then concludes that the establishment of virtual community is the biggest difference among fans in the Internet and the old medium. Meanwhile, fans culture under the Internet circumstance endows its own transmission pattern. Fans online acquire news about their idols through social media platform of Weibo, Baidu forum, QQ bevy, Internet forum and fans website etc. They look for friends who share the same goals, pour out their loneliness and share news of their idols. Fans are converged together by those online activities, which creates chances for fans get together in reality. In daily life, fans carry out consumption practice, make propaganda for idols by seizing every chance, expend on cultural products of idols, and follow whereabouts of idols, which satisfies inner need of close contact between fans and idols.Cultural capital of fans is not an isolated but one constructed by capital, field and register, and habits. Based on these three contexts, the paper analyzes the reproduction process of fans culture, and summarizes that fans culture are endowed with commercialized trait; fans community are easily controlled by commercial interest group; fans cultural products are of symbols and are easily reduplicated; fans culture is diversified; ages of fans community varies; idols fans obsessed with are generalized; the styles and behavior of fans community multiple. Fans culture is interactive---there are interaction and feedback between fans and idols, which is communicated by fans from the public in the past, and fans group is a creative and productive organization.The paper in the end analyzes the impact of fans culture. In the Internet society, fans easily form fans community, the power of which shall not be ignored. For an individual, idols are capable of guiding the formation of correct value, while it also leads to adolescences’mind immaturity; psychologically, the consumption practice of fans satisfies their need of psychology identity. As for the society, fans culture invigorates the culture market, and drives the carrying out of social welfare; simultaneously, it assaults high culture and brings about the homogenization and vulgarization of cultural products.