Abstract

In the contemporary age in which old and new media systems, technologies and cultures are converging together, long-established but also long-underground media fan cultures are coming to greater mainstream prominence. Media fans are people who engage deeply with particular media, be they a television show, sports team, video game franchise or even the works of a classic author (Coppa 2006; Gray, Sandvoss & Harrington 2007; Duffett 2013). While people can certainly be fannish on their own, ‘groups of individuals constitute a fandom through interest-driven affiliations, forming a sense of collective or subcultural identity around shared tastes’ (Brough & Shresthova 2011: para. 2.1; Jenkins 1992). Organized fandoms nurtured grassroots practices of media production and theoretical critique which have proved impressively resilient in their queer, feminist and anti-commercial practices despite their transition out of subcultural safety in obscurity and into viral popularity, the halls of academia and even mainstream publication.