Final Project Draft: Identity and Belonging in Fandoms
In my week 4 write-up, I interviewed one of my friends about his poster of Zayn Malik. We got to talking about our mutual interest in One Direction, which blossomed into a conversation about fandom, community, and identity. For my final project, I intend to further explore the emergence of personal identity and a sense of belonging brought about by participation in fanbases primarily in online spaces while keeping in mind that fandom communities can often extend into offline spaces. I think integrating multimedia in my analysis will work particularly well because of the large-scale existence of fandom communities online and the reach that these groups have. I anticipate that there will be a large amount of information to work with and I will have to be conscious of this as I compile media to be used in my final project.
To make use of multiple forms of media, I intend to use WordPress. This platform will allow me to add in video, photo, audio, and more in an organized, easy-to-follow manner. I will be gathering media mostly from social media sites like Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram, as well as engaging with YouTube and other potential sites for fan interaction. I am hoping to include media from a number of different fan communities, from ones that I have had contact with to ones that I may not have looked into before. I am interested in larger fan bases associated with groups like One Direction and BTS as well as smaller fan bases for less well-known artists because the kinds of communities formed can take on very different shapes. I hope to again be able to draw on my own experiences, including using a small amount of media that I have produced while participating deeply in several fandom communities as archival material. I also want to interview a couple of my friends who I know have experience in fandoms as well to learn more about what role being a fan played in the development of their identities and the kinds of communities they were part of.
I have not yet set up an early version of my WordPress website because I cannot decide what I want the domain name to be, but I have started sorting through some of my own created content. Here is an example of something I produced in the offline world as a result of my participation in an online community:
A picture of a drawing of One Direction lyrics that I traced from a Pinterest image
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This definitely sounds like a topic that will lend itself to a multimedia project!! Looking forward to seeing more of your content.
This sounds like a great project! I think that including your own drawings and artwork is also a really interesting way to go about it. I think that it’s definitely thinking about your own personal history as it relates to the fandom and drawing heavily from your own experiences. It might also be interesting to think about the way that being part of the same fandom as someone else, one of your interviewees, for example, allows you to interact with them in a unique way (shared language, inside jokes, etc.).
Fan communities are a great topic! I definitely think it’d be interesting to ask your interviewees whether they’ve made any fan media themselves, or whether there are any pieces of media that stand out to them in particular. It seems like there’s lots of potential to have the fan-created media you choose be informed by interviews, and vice versa.
I love that you’re working on this! Participation in fandom communities, especially at a young age, can really shape a person’s identity. One suggestion would be to be diligent about making strange some of the things you take for granted such as terminology and shared knowledge. There is a lot to unpack in these things, yet it is so easy to overlook them.
Hi Ife, I am impressed by your presentation of this conversation with your friend, which is very interest-driven and passionate, so bringing some of auto-ethnography maybe a good choice. Looking forward your final project!
Your drawing is a great touch! I would love to see you and your friend (or maybe even a group of 1D fans) do a drawing challenge with each other. Something like playing one of 1D’s albums and making art influenced by the lyrics and/or nostalgia. Or maybe just to one set of lyrics. I would be cool to see how different fans interpret the message and how they choose to personally portray it through art.
I love this! It seems like a really interesting topic, plus it is super interesting that you actually have a history with it yourself! It may be interesting to include some fan art from others, visual or otherwise (do people do fan music or something? I feel like for one direction that makes sense but I don’t know that much…) I can’t wait to see what it looks like!