Abstract
Fans are singular productive consumers. One of their typical practices is the production of fanvideos. An increasingly common trend in fanvideos is the creation of memes, a phenomenon of the modern internet related to ironic humor. This study aimed to analyze how fans, based on media texts, related to successful popular culture franchises. For this purpose, we performed an interpretive content analysis of fanvideos based on popular culture franchises posted on YouTube. Results demonstrate that meme fanvideos are made for play with and through the franchises, play dirty tricks, and criticize the politics. It happens by a variety of types of performances and techniques that dialogue both with the fictional universes and with different spheres of social life, often revealing an attitude of social criticism. Nevertheless, this interface makes room for a reproduction of prejudiced practices that target stigmatized identities. This process illustrates the intensive use of information and communication technologies and the ubiquity of the media, as well as the political tensions increasingly present in ordinary social life. These outcomes show how productive consumer behavior collapses with other social spheres when the meaning of products and brands is appropriated and re-signified through skilled creative consumer practices.
Highlights
The impact of technological transformations strongly permeates the contemporary cultures (Lévy, 2007)
This can be verified in popular culture, which industry is increasingly attempting to get closer to its consumers (Kizgin, Jamal, & Richard, 2018; Peñaloza, 1994). Part of these industries’ consumers are fans that commonly engage with the consumed products (Hills, 2013). This practice was enhanced by technological advancement and by the media convergence, which provided the foundation for a participatory culture, whose members, based on common interests, produce collectively (Guschwan, 2012; Jenkins, 2006)
In our findings we found out how such a posture reveals a wide threshold that include everything from childish jokes to veiled prejudices that hide within the humor. Amongst this variety of positions, we conclude that the content appropriation of successful popular culture franchises for memetic production broadens the resonance of such media texts both in terms of their own fictional universes and on their possibility to dialogue with the social world
Summary
The impact of technological transformations strongly permeates the contemporary cultures (Lévy, 2007). Presents the social positioning of parodies and is aligned to participatory cultures’ developments, since individuals naturalize their lives using technologies (Jenkins, 2009; Wiggins & Bowers, 2014) In this sense, we agree with Morreale (2013) about the importance of the memetic production on fanvideos by fans of popular culture, posted online on YouTube. Much of the fanvideos production occurs through the elaboration of parodies (Morreale, 2013), especially those that are produced to be massively shared on social networks Called memes, it is one of the most recent and relevant ways to generate irony — a peculiar kind of humor — through online platforms (Mina, 2019; Phillips, 2019). The meme genre presents an overlap, via active participation, of the practices of fans who wish to reframe the media texts they consume (Shifman, 2012)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
