Political Fandom And Political Participation In The Digital Age

Since Moon Jae-in was inducted as President of South Korea after series of nationwide protests to impeach the Former President Park Geun-hye,supporters of Moon have shown unprecedented ways to express their loyalty to the president.This political behavior,mainly observed in the digital space,goes beyond traditional ways of political support and stretches to unqualified advocacy for the president.This demeanor is on par with fandom.Their allegiance is shown in what is known as fan practices,which is not necessarily strategically promoted by the politician,but,rather,voluntarily and creatively driven by the fans or citizens.This study identifies this new political behavior as politician fandom in reference to the five attributes of fandom devised by Jenkins(1992)and investigates the factors to its rise.Then,it further analyzes the news articles shared in the target community through the lens of networked framing.Much as acknowledging the side effects of political fandom in this age of post-truth,this article throws light on its optimistic prospect on participatory and deliberative democracy.