Identity Construction Of The British Sitcoms Fandom In The Online Community In China

In recent years, British sitcoms featuring localization style, well-made, cold humor,strong cultural atmosphere has found a new road and became popular among youngpeople in china under the situation that American sitcoms and Korean soaps had alreadyswept our country. The fans of British sitcoms refers to those fascinated with the subjectof "British sitcoms", they put their whole heart into a particular British sitcom or allBritish sitcoms and the characters. By investigating everyday cultural practices andcommunication activities of fans, the paper summarizes the reasons for the behavior ofthe fans and the formation of British sitcoms fandom. Popularity of British sitcoms,common interests and media technologies are the foundation and the requirement to bea fan community. After in-depth study about the reading characteristics of these fans, wefind the essence of identity construction is symbolic consumption. Through consumingBritish sitcoms as a kind of image, the fans of the British sitcoms in china are toaccomplish identifications with their lifestyle and values, and so they can separatedifferent fan communities.Online communities become platform where British sitcoms fandom constructidentity. In the online community, fans met like-minded people, they discussed,interpreted and commented on a common favorite star or sitcom, and then composed acommunity. Meanwhile, they also established a self-contained code of conduct,promotion mechanisms and power accumulation rule, established fan base level ofidentity and role of the division. Online community provides the space to productinformation, the platform to exchange experience, the way to expand relationships andthe site to place a sense of belonging for fans, and then makes sure the fans obtainsatisfaction and affirmation in the interaction, which in turn provides them with thepossibility of constructing identity. In this online community space, the fans of British sitcoms completed constructionof self-identity and group identity. Self-identity need to be constructed on foundationsupon self-reflection and interaction with others.British sitcoms fandom active in theonline community to share information, express opinions, create cultural products andorganize online and offline activities, which provides a pathway to construct theirself-identity. Through these practices, the fan community achieve unity of self-imageand evaluation by others, thus achieving self-identity construct.The process ofconstructing group identity is intertwined with identity confirmation and comparison ofthe differences. To confirm that "us", fans in the online community gathered the powerof the collective to construct a unified community culture, and carved out theboundaries of identity in order to establish a sense of belonging to the community groupmembers; In order to better distinguish between "us" and "them", British sitcomsfandom would usually seek the differences in the comparison.