SALON: Adolescent Fans and Material Culture
Despite their relevance, adolescent fan communities have been a neglected topic in academic studies. However, the Internet and mobile devices, the fact of living in a multiplatform society, define and configure these communities. The question is how they relate to those mediated by analog instruments. To what extent do the traits characterizing the Western youth world of today beget new ways of being a fan? We look for an interdisciplinary and transcultural conversation about fan practices, and their ties to multimodal discourses, material tools, affect, or relationships with cultural industries. To open the discussion, the following issues will be introduced:
- How do contexts mediated by digital technology transform discourses mediating relationships in adolescent fan communities? The use of discourse within fan communities may be approached considering that fans are text nomads or pirates. We will focus on how fans are producers and interpreters of multimodal texts, mediated by material tools, going further of writing and oral symbolic tools.
- Why technology is transforming adolescent fan communities? Social networks are inseparable from the technology supporting them These social networks, the online audiences, are perhaps the starting point for constructing a community Technology transforms the space and time of human interactions that can be observed on many different levels.
- Who are the participants in adolescent fans communities and what are the role of cultural industries to design them? Fan communities may be explored emphasizing the social agents who take part in a multiplatform society, both the fans and the companies which bring together popular culture.
- What are the appropriate methods to approach these communities, mediated by digital tools?We will explore how the analysis supported by big data broadens the knowledge of these communities and to what extent they are compatible or complementary to other methodological approaches.
Participants: Pilar Lacasa (University of Alcalá), Clarice Greco (Paulista University), Matt Griffin (University of Iowa), Namita Gupta, Enoe Lopes Pontes (Universidade Federal da Bahia), Iris Barrajón Lara (University of Alcalá), Araceli Parres (University of Alcalá), Julián de la Fuente Prieto (University of Alcalá), Alba García Vega (University of Alcalá) (moderator: Lori Morimoto)
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