There is a dramatic shift in the ways that audiences are interacting with television content. Traditionally, television was thought to be a mass communications medium. Sending messages through the television was seen to be direct and received by a passive audience.
With the emergence of technologies such as the Internet and Mobile Phones, audiences are fragmenting across different platforms. As a result, we are seeing an evolution of the traditional mass audience. Particularly, the separation of the audience across these multi-media platforms is building focussed areas of interest. Groups of television viewers are coming together to share and connect with the television content. Audiences are forming niche markets and subcultures as a result of their emotional connection to certain texts. As such, passionate fans of television series or genres are evolving. These fans are active viewers of television content, producers and manipulators of the text’s meaning (Jenkins 1992).
Television fandom refers to a group of fans that share the same feelings towards a series or genre, they create fan fiction, fan art and involve themselves in a social network based on shared interests of a text (Rohrs 2013). Television fans are perceived and often stereotyped as loyal, obsessive, dependent and intense in regards to their relationship with a text. A fandom brings the text into the outside world and into the lives of its fans. Many negative connotations surrounding fandoms occur as a result of their obsessive nature towards a text. Drawing upon Henry Jenkin’s notion of fandom in Textual Poachers (1992), Jonathan Gray demonstrates that fandom extends beyond the act of being a ‘mere fan’ of something, it is more of ‘a communal effort to form interpretive communities’ (2007).
Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek (1966) is an integral example of a fandom text. The series developed a large fan base, known as ‘trekkies’, that formed a camaraderie and subculture surrounding the series (Harris 2014). Jenkins and Camille Bacon-Smith (1992) described the notion of fan interaction with a text as ‘fan production’ which refers to the ways in which fans create their own media texts, reinterpreting and adapting on a series in outside world – much like how the fan’s interacted with the Star Trek series (Sullivan 2012). ‘Trekkies’ created fan fiction, art and videos with their own interpretations of the series. In Melbourne, the initial driving force of the Star Trek fandom was initiated by Aussiecon at the 1975 World Science Fiction Convention. Diane Marchant, the co-founder of the international U.S Welcommittee held a Star Trek programme where episodes and the blooper reel were shown to an audience. As such, this event united Star Trek fans and provided them with the opportunity to network (National Library of Australia (n.d.)).
These websites demonstrate Star Trek fandom through fan fiction and fan art:
There is a sense of emotion, passion and connection that fans feel when they become involved in a particular television series (Rohrs 2013). David Benioff and D.B Weiss’ Game of Thrones (2011) is a television series that has a produced a profound international fan base. Games of Thrones is an American drama series based on fantasy characters that were adapted from George R.R. Martin’s novel, A Song of Ice and Fire. The violent series is played out in the ‘Seven Kingdoms of Westeros’ and follows the complex relationships between noble families as they fight for the ‘Iron Throne’. An online fandom is prevalent for this series. Fans have come together on media platforms such as Facebook, Deviantart, Twitter, YouTube, Blogging websites and Comic Con to share their interests and interpret the text in their own ways.
The following videos show how fans have manipulated and become producers of a text. They have used YouTube and edited together a Game Of Thrones season or character’s growth into a short clip accompanied by music that they believe suits the mood.
Through rethinking the traditional mass audience and recognising it as fragmented across different platforms we see the ways in which fan bases can be formed. With emerging technologies such as the Internet the audience and fans are forming niche markets, becoming more active in their roles as consumers. Essentially, online platforms are further creating new ways for television fans to interact, network and socialise with each other. It is through these new ways that fandoms can be formed.
References:
Bacon-Smith, C 1992, Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Gray, J 2007, Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, NYU Press, New York
Jenkins, H 1992, Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture, Routledge, New York.
National Library of Australia (n.d.), Star Trek Fandom in Australia, viewed 21 October 2015, <http://www.nla.gov.au/collect/startrek.html>
Rohrs, JK 2013, Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans and Followers, RMIT University, viewed 10 October 2015, <http://reader.eblib.com.au.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/(S(ozxuedckdihcpclg3x3bzju5))/Reader.aspx?p=1547075&o=116&u=EsIQrT7WB2w8jvtab23BKg%3d%3d&t=1445491652&h=CA8FD203A0955C3D1797EAABDB309514E5ED0B28&s=21970056&ut=337&pg=1&r=img&c=-1&pat=n&cms=-1&sd=1>
Sullivan, JL 2012, Media Audiences: Effects, Users, Institutions and Power, Sage Publications, viewed 2 October 2015, <http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/50993_ch_8.pdf>