“Characteristics”:Construction And Management Of Fan Identity On Weibo

As one of the representative cultural characteristics of contemporary Chinese Internet,fan culture occupies an important position in contemporary youth subculture practice.As the most popular platform for fans to follow the stars,Weibo’s openness and functional settings provide a broad place for fans to express themselves and interact with each other.In Weibo’s fan culture practice,fandom is a typical cultural phenomenon,and fans’ “characteristics” is an important identification feature for fans of fandom.It occupies an important position in fans’ self-expression,community communication and conflict confrontation.The academic community pays little attention to it,and there is no research on the theme of fans’ “characteristics”.On the basis of literature review,this article defines fans’ “characteristics” as the unique identity and attribution of individual fans in the fandom.Among them,complexity is a typical feature of fans’ “characteristics” that is different from previous fan identity,that is,there will be multiple fans’ “characteristics” on individual fans.At the same time,combining the relevant theories and research,the construction and management of fans’ “characteristics” are refined into three situations: self-management,community management,and conflict management.This article selects the relevant fans of the idol Cai Xukun,who was popular in the Internet talent variety show Idol Producer in 2018,as the research object,and uses the crawler tools to collect the discussion about fans’ “characteristics” on Weibo,Weibo fan community’s rules and other materials.Then this article uses discourse analysis methods to explore the expression forms,types,divisions and criteria of fans’ “characteristics”,the self-construction and management of fans’ “characteristics”,the construction and management of fans’ “characteristics” in the community,and the fans’ “characteristics” changes and management strategies in conflict.The study found that fans will use “XX characteristics”,“XX fans” and unique words to indicate their “characteristics”.In different contexts,the ways they show the types and methods of “characteristics” are different,and there are differences in compatibility between different “characteristics” of fans.As a result,this article adds the compatibility dimension to the classification criteria of fans’ “characteristics” and re-divides them.Individual fans often obtain the “characteristics” of the fans through emotional projection,and build saliency levels by selecting conscious or unconscious “characteristics”,thereby establishing their own complete “characteristics” of fans.Fans’ “characteristics” are reflected through social behavior,and some fans will also consciously manage their own Weibo content,and at the same time will review the“characteristics” of their friends.This kind of censorship exists not only in dating activities,but also in the fan community.The fan community will have “characteristics” restrictions on individual fans,and will conduct admission and long-term continuous review.Individual fans have also made the review of“characteristics” in the community universal and routine,so that community members pay more attention to the management and maintenance of their “characteristics”.In the context of conflict,some fans’ “characteristics” will be strengthened,some fans’ “characteristics”will be weakened or even eliminated,and some fans will realize their own “characteristics”transformation.For different conflict situations,fans will have different management strategies,such as “hidden”,“expelled”,“warning”,“abuse fans and solid fans”,“touch porcelain” and “seeking common ground while reserving differences”.