TY - JOUR
T1 - Technology, fandom and community in the second media age
AU - Bury, Rhiannon
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016.
PY - 2017/12/1
Y1 - 2017/12/1
N2 - The virtual or online community was considered by Mark Poster (1995) to be central to what he called the second media age, marked as distinct from the first media age by new modes interactivity and subjectivity afforded by internet technologies. Community is also central to participatory culture, the study of which began at the cusp of the second media age. This paper critically examines the technocultural formation of online community in the context of fandom and its relationship to specific platforms from Usenet to Tumblr. Based on the analysis of interview data collected from participatory fans (n = 33), I argue that not all platforms enable community formation. While the participants had a sense of community as members of listservs, Yahoo groups and LiveJournal, the same was not true of Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, even though they afforded a number of fannish pleasures. These findings raise questions as to the ongoing centrality of online community in the late second media age.
AB - The virtual or online community was considered by Mark Poster (1995) to be central to what he called the second media age, marked as distinct from the first media age by new modes interactivity and subjectivity afforded by internet technologies. Community is also central to participatory culture, the study of which began at the cusp of the second media age. This paper critically examines the technocultural formation of online community in the context of fandom and its relationship to specific platforms from Usenet to Tumblr. Based on the analysis of interview data collected from participatory fans (n = 33), I argue that not all platforms enable community formation. While the participants had a sense of community as members of listservs, Yahoo groups and LiveJournal, the same was not true of Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, even though they afforded a number of fannish pleasures. These findings raise questions as to the ongoing centrality of online community in the late second media age.
KW - community
KW - fandom
KW - internet
KW - participatory culture
KW - social media
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85034607889&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1354856516648084
DO - 10.1177/1354856516648084
M3 - Journal Article
AN - SCOPUS:85034607889
SN - 1354-8565
VL - 23
SP - 627
EP - 642
JO - Convergence
JF - Convergence
IS - 6
ER -