American Culture Studies Ph.D. Dissertations

Politics? What Politics? Digital Fandom and Sociopolitical Belief

Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

American Culture Studies

First Advisor

Radhika Gajjala (Committee Chair)

Second Advisor

Andrew Schocket (Committee Member)

Third Advisor

Yanqin Lu (Committee Member)

Abstract

In 2020, people across the world began to live nearly all their lives online thanks to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Social media allowed people in quarantine and isolation to safely interact no matter where in the world they were. For some, however, this way of online existence had been happening for years. Fans of all sorts of media texts and media objects had flocked to digital realms for years as a way of finding others who felt the same way they did. Some fans choose to use their social media platform of choice to put forward a digital fan identity that fore fronted their role as a fan rather than any aspect of their offline identity. This work looks at the ways that specific social media platforms can impact the ways that fan communities form and how these communities can have impact on the sociopolitical views that users are exposed to. Using the sociopolitical touchstone of the Black Lives Matter movement in May and June 2020, this project utilizes a mixed-methods analysis of digital conversations across Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram. In comparing the three platforms it becomes clear that the unique affordances of each platform combine with unique dynamics of each fan group to privilege the voices and beliefs of socially acceptable fans. It also becomes clear that the distinctive affordances of each platform have the ability to shape offline interactions and sociopolitical ideals in different ways. We can see here just a glimpse into how the online can shape the offline in ways that have growing implications for our understanding of the social and political world.

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