The Construction Of Fans' Identity

As an important part of popular culture,fan culture has been concerned by many scholars,and the construction of fans' identity is one of the key issues of fan culture.However,previous studies mainly focus on the offline fandom,few of them touches the online fandom.Nowadays,the ease access to Internet,together with the rapid growth of new media platform,makes it possible for fans to have various forms of activities online.Compared with the traditional fandom,the fandom under the background of new media is endowed with the power of producing and spreading symbols by the Internet.They can use texts produced by cultural industries to construct and perform their own identity through the Internet.Using the spectacle/performance paradigm as the framework and taking the Chinese online fandom of Marvel's superhero films as an example,this essay studies the fans' identity construction.Typical cases of fans' consumption,production and interaction activities are analyzed with relevant theories,so as to find out how the fans construct and perform their identity and the varieties of identities they construct and perform through the online fan activities.According to spectacle/performance paradigm,nowadays people's life is penetrated by media spectacles,and at the same time,people are creating spectacles.Everyone is both an audience and a performer.In this context,firstly,this essay analyzes the consumption activities of Marvel's fans with the symbolic consumption theory.It shows the process of fans' identity construction and performance through symbolic consumption.Secondly,through the case analysis of the representative fan-made works in the online fandom of Marvel,this paper reveals the process of fans' construction and performance of personalized self-identity through symbol production on the internet.As “excessive readers”,fans usually have their own interpretations of the symbolic meanings of the text,which are often based on their own experience and values.In order to construct and perform personalized self-identity,some fans reconstruct the original text and produce their own symbolic meanings through various fan productions.Finally,from the perspective of symbolic interactionism,this essay analyzes the online interactions of Marvel's fans,and finds that in addition to consumption and production,the symbolic interaction of fans in online fandom is also an important way for them to build and perform their identity.Through interactions like comments and clicking the ‘like' button,on the one hand,the fans can offer other fans references;on the other hand,they also perform themselves.While interacting with others,the “I” and “Me” can also interact with each other to build their self-identity.At the same time,the interactions within fandom can provide a sense of belonging for the fans and offer them the group identity.In general,through the research on the online fandom of Marvel,we can find that the fans in the context of new media can construct and perform their identity through symbolic consumption,production and interaction.Based on the spectacle / performance paradigm and symbolic interactionism,this study makes an in-depth analysis of the fans' identity construction and performance in cyberspace.It enriches the research on fan culture in the context of new media,and provides a new perspective for the study of fan culture and popular culture.