Social Media And The Forming And Transition Of Fanbase

With the rapid development of new media,especially social media,the organizational structure and activity practice of fan groups have changed a lot.So,what is the architecture of the current fan groups ? Is there a certain threshold for the fans ? How do the fan groups realize perfect management and organization functions? What are the impacts of major events on the fan groups? How will fans react in the process? These are all questions that is worth further studying.This paper is based on the two research methods: participatory observation and in-depth interviews.Take the fan groups of the pop idol Lu Han as the research sample,observe his fan groups' daily behaviors,and conduct hard-hitting interviews with 20 fans held different attributes.According to the research,the development of new media,allows fans to break through time and space constraints and quickly realize their connection."The affection of them to Lu Han" becomes an emotional contract to maintain the relationship between fans and fans,and achieve identity in the process of contrast between self and idol or self and other fans.On the basis of this,the two groups,” Lu Han fan bar” and ” Lu Han international fan club “ forms Lu Han fan base.Besides,the communication of information among groups,the planning and execution of activities are mostly made public by social media.The immediacy and pervasiveness of social media information dissemination greatly expanded the scale of Lu Han fan base,but the anonymity of social media also increased the possibility of non-fans entering the group.Therefore,in order to facilitate management,Lu Han fan group also sets the group admittance boundary and group behavior specification.In this paper,we hope that the research on Lu Han fans will reveal the tip of the iceberg of the problem of fan identity,group composition and organization operation and previous academic circle' studies are supplemented by more up-to-date case studies.Thus,it can presents a relatively complete fan world and provides reference for the practical operation of transforming the fan power into the fan economy.