Abstract

To study media fandom is, as its core, to study the relationship between people and media: what people do with media, how they consume it, the role it plays in their lives. Studies of fans, particularly early ones, documented a relationship between fans and their media that was unusually close and symbiotic, blurring and troubling boundaries between consumption and production. This close relationship to media, once novel, has become commonplace in our current media landscape. In this chapter we argue that an understanding of fan studies and fannish behaviour can help shed light on our current relationship to and with media. Ultimately we contend that fan studies pave the way for a nuanced understanding of media as a crucial survival mechanism in the twenty-first century.