Research On Changes Of Fan Culture And Consumption Intention In Social Media Environment

The research on fan culture has always been the focus of scholars,and has produced fruitful academic achievements.But,with the rapid evolution of media technology,Social media has reshaped the connection between communication and interpersonal relationship,and fan culture also presents new characteristics with the change of fan subjects from the post-80 s to the Z generation.First of all,social media connects each isolated individual horizontally into a huge communication network,not only expands the number of fan groups,and also gradually evolves into an organizational structure with clear hierarchy;Secondly,the two-way interaction of social media also makes the para-social interaction between fan members and idols become realistic,which deepens the emotional involvement of fans.At the same time,the "absent-field" communication between fan members tends to be normalized,breaking through the time distance.Communication gives each member a sense of belonging to the group,and strengthens the identity consciousness and emotional identity as a member of the community;Furthermore,the fast iterative star-making industry accelerates the production cycle of texts,and the grand text system gradually declines,showing a rapidly growing fragmented and discontinuous text pattern.The public meaning space created by texts gradually shrinks,and symbol consumption becomes more naked and direct.Therefore,the study of fan culture is facing new problems:What are the distinctive features of fan culture in social media context compared with the mass era?Through empirical research,this paper constructs a theoretical model consisting of media use motivation,media figure attraction,para-social interaction,virtual community sense and consumption intention,in order to explore the cultural characteristics of fans in the current social media context.The purpose is to further study the influence of factors such as cognition and behavior on consumption willingness of fans in the process of media use.In this paper,the media figures who are formed as idols are taken as a whole,and their fan groups are selected as the research objects,and the data collection is completed by means of questionnaire survey.With reference to the scale with high reliability and validity in previous studies,we designed the questionnaire topic,and distributed the questionnaire and collected data through the online platform Credamo and We Chat.A total of 422 valid questionnaires were collected,and the data were tested for reliability and validity,descriptive statistics and path analysis by using data analysis software SPSS(version 25.0)to explore the correlation of various variables.Based on the results of data analysis,it is found that media use motivation,para-social interaction and virtual community all have significant positive effects on consumption willingness;At the same time,there is a significant positive relationship between the two variables of media use motivation and virtual community sense and para-social interaction;As for the attraction of media figures,there is a significant positive correlation between the social attraction and the willingness to consume,but the relationship between the physical attraction and the willingness to consume is not significant.It can be seen that generation Z has become the main force of production and consumption in the current fan culture.Social media meets the increasing media needs of users in a diversified way,becomes an effective tool for daily life,and strengthens its influence on users' attitudes and behaviors.Communication has evolved into the key word of fan culture.Whether with fans and stars or within fan groups,it will strengthen members' recognition of group identification and their emotional investment in idols,and further influence their attitudes and behaviors.There are still some shortcomings in this paper: In the study,formative idols are regarded as an overall category of media characters,but in reality,there are subdivided categories in formative idols,but the differences have not been fully considered.In addition,the study did not involve the demographic differences within the fan group.The study of fan culture in the future can be extended from two aspects: First,make a comparative study of fan groups who have developed idols under different training modes to explore whether they have obvious differences in communication behavior,assistance methods and symbolic discourse system;Secondly,it studies the demography within the fan group,considering the influence of gender,education level,region,marital status and other factors on the individual attitude and behavioral tendency of fans.