Geraghty, L 2015, Popular Media Cultures: Fans, Audiences & Paratexts, Portsmouth, UK. pp. 206-226
The chapter explores the “Harry Potter Alliance” as a case study in which it explores how Harry Potter has influenced a generation of young people to be social and political activists. It also explores how the Harry Potter franchise has taught a generation of young people the key values of life through the themes of the book, themes like friendship, family, media interpretation and human rights. It details certain events that have happened where author J.K Rowling empowers an entire generation of youths with the knowledge taught through this franchise. The chapter also touched on the history of fan activism, where it was very passive at first but now with the ‘Harry Potter Alliance’ (HPA) fans are changing to be more active. The overall theme of the chapter was exploring how the Harry Potter has influenced a generation into being activists.
The chapter uses many embedded quotes and references to many sources, ranging from articles to books and it uses other movies as examples generally well. The films it references include Doctor Who, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and references how they are similar to Harry Potter in influencing people to be activists. The chapter also briefly uses stats to back up their credibility of the HPA in how they have become activists.
This chapter can be quite helpful in a case study, in which we can talk about this certain case in how a film/book franchise has influenced a generational audience to be activists. Discussing the change between what an audience would generally do to what the HPA do, from being passive viewers into social and political activists helping in many different countries with statistics and reference articles to back it up.
