The Construction And Maintenance Of Virtual K-pop Fans Community

This research based on "K-pop fans" as the object, selecting Baidu "shinhwa bar" as a study field, forces on the practice of the fans in cyberspace and its unique fan culture, for exploring the connection of them and the virtual community’s construction and maintenance. This research uses the online participatory observation and detail interview of qualitative research method, firstly through the online participatory observation to explore the practice of K-pop fans in cyberspace, comprehensive understanding of the unique fan culture of this group, using the theory of communication and sociology to dig up the meanings hidden behind the practice; Secondly through the depth interviews of fans to understand the emotion and mental activity of them who are the members of the virtual k-pop fans community, further exploring the K-pop fans how to construct and maintain their own virtual community.Through this study we find that, in cyberspace, K-pop fans’ activity is the way of pursuit of identity, and in those process k-pop fans has produced a "sense of community" gradually, then completing the construction of virtual community. And I analyze the influencing factors of the virtual community to maintain from two aspects:idol and fans group.Ⅰ find that the emotion of fans will change over time, the worship emotion for idol of fans will turn into the love for family, this will affect their emotion for virtual community; And in terms of fan group, I use "play theory of mass communication" and "collective memory theory" to analyze the k-pop fans how to maintain the virtual community stability and activity.