Fandoms

College sports coaches and administrators can use open letters to repair images and weather crises, especially during losing seasons. Our rhetorical analysis uses Benoit’s typology of image repair to reveal three primary strategies attempted during losing seasons: evading responsibility, reducing offensiveness, and corrective action. We take note of how open letters distributed via electronic media channels widen the audience of such letters, but also, complicate issues of timing and of targeted audience analysis. We offer five implications for scholars and practitioners, including the importance of audience analysis, the value of corrective action, the ineffectiveness of attacking accusers, and the unique value of transcendence in sport communication image repair rhetoric.

The aim of this study then is to move beyond politically oriented discussion forums by also examining the  communicative practices of participants within fan-based forums. The focus is on how participants talk politics in online informal discussion forums. By informal discussion forums, I am referring to those forums that are not bound to any formal predetermined agendas such as e-consultations or e-juries, but rather to forums who’s primary purpose is to simply provide a communicative space for talk, e.g. fan-based discussion forums, news media message boards, and Usenet newsgroups. By political talk, I am referring to everyday, informal, political conversation carried out freely between participants in these online spaces, which is often spontaneous and lacks any purpose outside the purpose of talk for talk sake, representing the practical communicative form of what Habermas (1984, p. 327) calls communicative action. It is through this type of everyday political talk whereby citizens achieve mutual understanding about the self and each other, and it represents the fundamental ingredient of the public sphere.

The purpose of this study first is a normative one; it is to examine the democratic quality of this fundamental ingredient, of the communicative practices of participants within online discussions forums in light of a set of normative conditions of the public sphere. It is also to move beyond a formal notion of deliberation (beyond rationality via argumentation) by providing a more accurate account of how the political emerges in online discussions (particularly within nonpolitically oriented forums), how people actually talk politics in those discussions, and finally, how alternative communicative forms such as humor, emotional comments, and acknowledgements interact and influence the more ‘traditional’ elements of deliberation (e.g. rational-critical debate and reciprocity). Consequently, I present the following three research questions, which are central to this study:

To what extent do the communicative practices of online political discussions satisfy the normative conditions of the process of deliberation of the public sphere?

What role, if any, do expressives (humor, emotional comments, and acknowledgements) play within online political discussions and in relation to the normative conditions of deliberation?

How does political talk emerge in nonpolitically oriented discussion forums?

Together, the answers to these questions present a more comprehensive account of online political talk. They seek not only to offer insight into the quality of such talk, but also to provide a better understanding of its expressive and affective nature. Moreover, they seek to improve our understanding of how political talk occurs outside the realm of politically oriented discussion forums, and how it emerges in such communicative spaces. Therefore, in order to answer these questions and provide this insight, I examine and compare political talk within three online discussion forums of the Guardian, Big Brother, and Wife Swap. A comparative study design with normative, descriptive, and explorative characteristics was utilized. A content analysis with both qualitative and quantitative features was employed as the primary instrument for examination. Additional textual and network analyses were carried out to provide more depth to the investigation.

Talking politics online is not bound to spaces dedicated to politics, particularly the everyday political talk crucial to the public sphere. The aim of this article is to move beyond such spaces by examining political talk within a space dedicated to popular culture. The purpose is to see whether a reality TV discussion forum provides both the communicative space, content, and style for politics that both extends the public sphere while moving beyond a conventional notion. The central question is whether it fulfils the requirements of rationality and deliberation. The analysis also moves beyond a formal notion by investigating how expressive speech acts interact and influence the more traditional elements of deliberation. The findings indicate that nearly a quarter of the postings from the Big Brother sample were engaged in political talk, which was often deliberative in nature. It was a communicative space where the use of expressives both facilitated and impeded such talk.

A growing trend is the participation in online fandom communities through the support of the blogging platform Tumblr. We investigated Tumblr fandom users’ motivations behind participating in fandoms, and how they interacted within the Tumblr community. Our results show that fandom users feel their Tumblr experience is ‘always-on’ where they participate at nearly any point in the day. They have also adopted a unique set of jargon and use of animated GIFs to match their desired fandom activities. Overall, our results show that Tumblr fandom users present a unique culture, much different from other social networking sites.

Hoy existen múltiples estudios que abordan el análisis de las culturas participativas y, más específicamente, el espectador fan de películas o series de televisión. Henry Jenkins, huyendo del estereotipo de brainless consumers y social misfits que dedican su vida a cultivar un “conocimiento inútil”, marca un punto de inflexión al plantear un perfil de fan que se corresponde con personas cultas. Desde este momento, los fan studies están viviendo su época dorada con diferentes investigadores o aca-fans que estudian y analizan el fenómeno en sus diferentes países de origen. El objetivo general de esta investigación es realizar una radiografía, estudio y descripción del espectador fan español en relación con sus competencias digitales. Además, se persiguen dos objetivos secundarios: realizar una comparativa entre espectadores fan y espectadores no fan de acuerdo con sus competencias digitales y analizar el grado de correlación existente entre el nivel de competencias digitales del espectador fan y el número de series y películas del que se considera fan. Para abordar estos objetivos, se administró un cuestionario en línea elaborado ad hoc, en el que participaron 1003 consumidores de ficción audiovisual, cuyos datos se analizaron utilizando una metodología cuantitativa. Los análisis descriptivos y comparativos nos permitieron concluir que, en primer lugar, la práctica que dominan los espectadores fans es la búsqueda de información. En segundo lugar, que el espectador fan tiene mayores competencias digitales que el espectador no fan. Y, por último, que el nivel de competencias en los ítems de interacción y edición de contenidos en los fans es directamente proporcional al número de productos de los que el espectador se considera fan.

Talking politics online is not exclusively reserved for those spaces dedicated to politics, particularly the everyday political talk crucial to the public sphere. However, past net-based public sphere research has focused mostly on political spaces thereby neglecting an array of other genres. The aim of this article is to move beyond politically oriented communicative spaces by investigating political talk within the British reality TV discussion forum Wife Swap. The purpose is to see whether a forum dedicated to reality TV provides the communicative space, content, and style for politics that extends the public sphere. The central question is whether it fulfils the requirements of rationality and ‘decent’ deliberation. Moreover, the analysis moved beyond a formal notion by investigating how expressives influence the more traditional elements of deliberation. The findings revealed that Wife Swap participants engaged in political talk that was often deliberative. Moreover, it was a space where the use of expressives played a key role in enhancing such talk.

In this article, called Ministerical Fannibals: the power of the fandom
it will be analyzed how the fandom has become in recent years an essential role. While this is not something new or belonging exclusively to the field of seriality, as well Henry Jenkins (2006) explained in Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture, it is true that has evolved to become one of the key elements of the serial food chain. His contributions and especially their involvement have decided on several occasions the continuation of a series or the defenestration of a character, and perhaps most importantly, have led to the generation of
surrounding and alternative narrative universes. This paper aims to deep into the behavior of fandom and its consequences through the study of different samples and examples of actions taken (transmedia or not) in relation to different series produced specially in United States in the last 15 years. And although various serial fandom will be analyzed in different ways, the focus will be specially on two recent quite different cases: the fannibals –fandom of Hannibal (NBC, 2012- 2015)– and the ministéricos, fandom of the TV series El ministerio del tiempo (La 1, 2015-), for being two very different series and therefore two fandoms also very different, but the two of them are very active. The first, an American series of three seasons whose cancellation has awakened an increasing cohort of followers; and the second, a Spanish series that was initially planned for one season and, die to its success, its second season is already on the air for 2016. The main objective is to establish the high influence of these groups in the series of the third age of television, whether in reference to the constructive elements of the series, in their characters or with respect to the scope of transmedia, where perhaps there has been more the evolution of the footprint of this group in the world of fiction in recent years.

Este artículo se propone analizar qué implica ser fan a partir del caso del «fandom» de Harry Potter en Argenti-na. Para ello, se indagarán las representaciones, actividades y vínculos de los fans. Se recurrió a una metodología antropológica centrada en el trabajo de campo etnográfico clásico y virtual, complementado por análisis de fuen-tes. Sostengo que ser fan implica determinadas formas de hacer, pensar y sentir en torno a un objeto de interés. Del mismo modo, formar parte de un «fandom» conlleva la construcción de identidades compartidas y colectivas

Obscure Object of Cuddle. On Controversial Portraits of Furry Fandom in Popular Culture

My article is an attempt to interpret media-generated stereotype of furries by exploring some influential and at the same time biased cultural representations of the fandom. Instead of looking for ultimately true furry identity, I pose some questions about contemporary culture which seems to have a mysterious interest in showing furries in a particular way. All this fleeting yet intense fascination comes neither from furries’ nature nor authors’ inner selves, but is a consequence of lack which constitutes a symbolic order. It is also a reason why we find it so difficult to look at furries objectively and why they are forced to hide themselves behind the discourse of authenticity.

Por meio da compreensão do ativismo de fãs como uma forma de resistência cotidiana cultural, econômica e criativa, o objetivo deste trabalho é entender como e em que momento o consumo dos fãs-gamers transforma-se em uma participação política e cívica, a partir de uma triangulação metodológica, com destaque para o uso de inspirações etnográficas. Enquanto suporte empírico, apresenta-se um mapeamento sobre algumas práticas do ativismo de fã-gamers no antigo fórum oficial do jogo online League of Legend (LoL) no Brasil. Assim, propõe-se uma tipologia das práticas de resistência cotidiana na comunidade de LoL, baseada em quatro modos distintos. Os resultados desta abordagem indicam que a diversidade do universo das produções digitais e práticas de parte dos fãs de LoL, ressignificam as compreensões sobre resistência e questionam a dualidade existente entre a cidadania e o consumo da cultura pop, agindo como catalizadores que (re)interpretam e excedem os limites do fandom.