From The Masses To Fans

With the development of society and the upgrading of productivity,the present social environment has made us attach importance to the initiative of consumers.Fans,as a kind of crowds with a strong power of consumption began to get into the public consciousness.Fan economy,fan culture and fans clubs have become an essential part of business development.As for China,SNS is expanding,internet technology is developing and commercial funds are increasing and that makes fan economy a hit for everyone.However,behind the craze,there is a lack of mature theories for us,especially in China.So,how to use the increasing growing of fans to make communication more effective? How to manage and communicate with fans and their clubs? It's a problem which needs to be solved as soon as possible.And that's what the author wants to do.Of course,the study on the phenomena of fans has always been there.Throughout its development,the studies are mainly based on mass culture,consumerism or media theories.There are few people to discuss these phenomena from the crowd theory.But it's obvious that fans are a special kind of crowds.Hence author decided to analyze the history of crowd theory and wanted to define the fans and fans club.Author divided the history of crowd theory into three parts: the crowd and mob,the crowd and unconscious and the crowd and rights.Based on that,author summarized the important theoretical perspectives and extracted the definition of fans and fans club.Fans are a group of people who take the same subject(it can be person,works,brands,technology or ideas)as a superego-reflection and have the same internalizing standard.They are enabled from geographic restrictions and class restrictions and so on.They have a prodigious and flexible productivity and spending power.Also,they are emotional and sensitive.Fans club is an organization which own a set of general principles containing the core and the purpose of club,the communication rules,the access and export system and the ritual behavior.This set of principles doesn't have to be written down.Besides,a fans club must have some stable core members and they have a clear specialization of works.According to this,author made a communication model of fans club throughclassifying roles inside/outside the club.At last,author analyzed the communication model of fans club from the relationship between fans,leaders,idols and others.This article is evidently incomplete and it still needs to be perfected.Author just wants to offer a new perspective of study of fans phenomena for academia and remind us to pay attention to the importance of fans clubs with the rapid development of fans.