2025/07/16 by E. T. Hartman · 2 voices
Social Sciences · #Asian Culture and Media Studies #Digital Games and Media #Media, Gender, and Advertising
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/08884552.2025.2517151
openalex publication_date 2025/07/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
What does it mean to be in community? As the times change and we become more collectively digital, or Cyborg as Haraway might put it, it is important to fully understand how people relate online and take those relationships into the real world. Fandom, or the fanatic domain, as defined by a theory of Story Anthropology is a productive collective based in joy around a story, event, or ideal. Fandom forms itself first online and then in physical spaces, as influencers generate and reproduce fan custom and countercultures into something both ideological and material. Studying fandom holistically as a form of kinship is integral to grasping shifts in human social relations, specifically by incorporating black and queer concepts of kinship into the mainstream. This study provides potentially radical ways in which to empower community organizations through joy, creating even more engaged and sustainable mutual aid networks. This framework seeks to connect these communities based in joy, to communities based in social action; this is so Fandom can become an agent for forging sustainable mutual aid and social cohesion across a breadth of special interests, both popular and political.