The Cultural Reproduction And Consumption Of Fandom

Fans have not constantly been passive consumers of mass media,for they also playing the role of producers by interpreting and recreating original works.With the iterative development of new media technology,fan producer community has expanded immensely and fan production as well as consumption not only presents individual aesthetic tastes,but also offers opportunities for fans to communicate and interact,facilitating fan identity construction and community formation.Therefore,the study of fan production in this paper is to examine people's media practice and people in the media practice from a cultural perspective.Virtual ethnography is adopted in this study,including online participation,text analysis and in-depth interviews,to study the fan-generated content on Bilibili website,specifically to analyze fans' cultural production and consumption,as well as consequential differentiation,interaction and identity construction of fans.First of all,the paper identifies four motivations and the bricolage strategy adopted by fan producers in generating the content,as well as the mediation between female fan producers' resistance against mainstream cultural ideology and conformity to it when expressing emotional desires.The second part is,guided by Cultural Capital theory,concerned with stratification of fan communities,in which fan producers are recognized with prestige and attain the idolized position through eminence of fan cultural literacy,conversion of free labor into recognition,empowerment of website mechanism,and endorsement of the culture industry.The final part focuses on the interaction and identity construction of fan communities in the cultural consumption.Fan-generated content provides fan consumers with a virtual place for communication,in which fans construct identities by enforcing line of demarcation among communities and secure emotional connections in negotiating community norms by "strengthening us" and "alienating others".To sum up,fan reproduction,based on consuming and disintegrating original works,facilitates community formation and identification of fans.This research is not only conducive to broaden theoretical perspective in fan culture study in terms of fan-generated content,idolized fans and distinction within fan communities,but also provides inspiration for analyzing user-generated content and management of virtual communities.