Fan Media Research Articles

From Fan Blogs to Fruits Basket: Documenting the Resources of Anime and Manga Studies LibGuides

Anime and manga have seen exponential growth in market value, and popularity, over the last decade. This boom of popularity for anime has been matched in recent years by an increased interest from fans in anime and manga studies. This project seeks to document the contents of anime studies research guides, with the goal of seeing what specific resources, popular media, and fan media like blogs, are listed within these guides and recommended to fans seeking to explore this budding area of scholarship.

Copyright Disclaimers in Fan Media: Cultural Practice and Legal Relevance

Disclaimers are used in diverse contexts of popular culture and for a wide range of purposes. With digitisation in general and the rise of participatory fan culture in particular, copyright disclaimers have become a familiar and common means of communication. In this paper, we define them as paratextual media of cooperation. The practice of disclaiming seeks to establish mutually accepted conditions for publishing works that owe their existence to different stakeholders. Embedded in empirical legal studies, our paper is based on our own empirical research and a thorough legal assessment of findings through the lens of German copyright law. Our qualitative study on disclaimers in fan fiction highlights a distinction between “vertical” forms of disclaimer usage addressing the copyright holders and creators of a reference work, and “horizontal” forms directed to either the potential readers or other fan fiction authors. While in general fan-made disclaimers are of no significant relevance from the perspective of German law, a closer look reveals a stronger impact in cases where creators and copyright holders publicly articulate attitudes towards fan production and/or set specific conditions. Beyond the law, as a practice, disclaiming is part of the nexus of informal rules and community ethics which guide users’ actions.

Alcohol-related player behavioral transgressions: Incidences, fan media responses, and a harm-reduction alternative

This article examines fan social media responses to media-reported, alcohol-related player behavioral transgressions that occurred in Australia’s two largest professional sporting leagues, the National Rugby League (NRL) and the Australian Football League (AFL), over a 33-month period. Using netnography and content analysis, the study aimed to better understand the ways in which sport fans employed social media to voice their perceptions about alcohol-related player transgressions. The article reports on parochial fans’ commentaries about alcohol-related transgressions and uses these data to inform options for harm-reduction strategies associated with alcohol-related transgressions in sport. Sport fans expressed dissatisfaction when they observed disparity in policy responses from clubs and leagues. At the same time, the data show that fan responses reflect a desire for parity and protection more than punishment, with the former more relevant to game, club, and league reputation than the latter. We suggest that a harm-reduction policy offers one mechanism for managing reputation through a focus on parity and protection. We argue that the introduction of a harm-reduction approach would offer a more effective policy for managing player alcohol-related transgressions than the current ‘ad hoc’ approach.