Prosumer activism: The case of Britney Spears’ Brazilian fandom

Abstract

The key argument of this article is that fan communities create, in their own way, a kind of prosumer media activism. Through a netnographic approach, I analyze aspects of fan labor and value creation, self-organization and entrepreneurship, agency and exploitation in an online discussion forum about the American singer Britney Spears in Brazil. Based on this case study on social networking, I develop the argument that it is possible to see digital fandom as a stage for a commodified cyberactivism, in which some social actors in the role of prosumers, on the one hand, exercise their freedom and find, more than gratification, ways to project themselves individually in society. But, on the other hand, they are subject to exploitative relationships, such as unpaid work, to promote the personality whose concrete relationship with their lives often does not go beyond media practices.