Fan Studies Research Articles

Aggradation and reworking of an alluvial fan in response to climate changes on the south bank of Lake Qinghai, NE Tibetan Plateau

Alluvial fans in the piedmont zones of mountains respond most rapidly to tectonic activity, base-level conditions, and climate changes. These allogenic signals are effectively recorded by the external morphology and internal sedimentary characteristics of the fan. Based on field survey interpretation and integrated optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) chronology, we selected a case study of the modern Xiangpi Fan on the south bank of Lake Qinghai, NE Tibetan Plateau, and built a three-stage alluvial fan pattern since Marine isotope stages 3 (MIS3), namely, the debris flow lobe building stage (DFLBS), aeolian building stage (ABS), and streamflow reworking stage (SRS). The climatic indicators, such as the total organic carbon (TOC) flux, precipitation, and sediment particle size flux, are highly correlated with the above stages, indicating that the sedimentary process and changes in fan morphology effectively record orbital climate changes in the Lake Qinghai basin. During the DFLBS, the cold-dry climate accelerated the sediment yield sufficiently, leading to many coarse-grained sediments and low TOC flux being imported into the basin through debris flow processes. During the ABS, the extreme dry-cold climate caused the stagnation of fan development, and aeolian processes dominated the transport of fine sediment. In the SRS, warm-humid conditions led to limited sediment yield and perennial stream power, which promoted the transport of fine-grained material and TOC to the basin by braided–meandering channels. This study provides an excellent case showing how an alluvial fan responds to climate oscillations through changes in sedimentology and geomorphology.

Readings in queer pleasure

This article analyzes the queer pleasures of the 2015 sf movie by the Wachowski sisters, Jupiter Ascending . We find that these pleasures operate on two intertwined levels: the movie’s campy villains and over-the-top aesthetics reflect the themes of queer temporality and reproduction on the textual level, while the straight romance of the protagonist draws on the queer archive of fan fiction. We engage with queer studies and fan studies as critical frameworks that allow us to center affective pleasures of recognizing well-established romantic tropes and character archetypes. Critical debates surrounding Jupiter Ascending point to a larger discussion concerning the space for pleasure within sf texts and sf fan communities, while the movie’s commitment to fan fiction tropes and narrative practices anticipates recent changes in media consumption and production patterns.

A Legal Analysis of Cyber-Enabled Wildlife Offences in India: A Qualitative Case Study of Sea Fans (Gorgonia spp.) on YouTube

With the advent of the Internet, offences against threatened species have transitioned online. Such species are directly or indirectly traded on social media despite being protected under Indian wildlife law. A qualitative case study was undertaken to assess the preparedness of national law and policy in prohibiting such offences. Sixty-three YouTube links on sea fans in the Hindi language were accessed over 8 weeks, and the information generated by both content creators and audiences was gathered and categorized for analysis. The legal provisions were then interpreted and applied to assess the extent to which the parties involved could be held liable. Our investigation shows that of these video links, the content creators directly offered specimens for sale in 15.87% of instances, demonstrated physical possession of wild specimens in 23.81% of these posts, and were involved in both activities in 20.63% of the links, which in our analysis is explicitly prohibited under national law. The remaining 39.68% of video links merely disseminated information on the relevance or usage of species in occult or religious practices, for which no express legal provision currently exists. Certain indirect legal provisions were found to be relevant; however, there were challenges associated with their implementation. Even the liability of a social media company was found to be limited if it can be demonstrated that the company exercised due diligence. Therefore, there is a need to explicitly regulate online content that has the potential to drive an unlawful demand for protected species alongside the imposition of enhanced liability on social media companies. Such measures, coupled with community awareness, can reduce cyber-enabled wildlife offences committed through social media channels.

The ‘religious’ response: experience of celebrity death among fans of John Lennon and Johnny Cash

ABSTRACT This article provides context for the experience of fans with the death of John Lennon and Johnny Cash, framing this response, in some cases, as “religious modes of acting and thinking” (Laderman 2009). This response is more than simply meaningful, as it shares similarity in form and experience with religion. In some cases, fans react ‘religiously’ because they search within the celebrity ways to recognize and define themselves, similar to the process fan studies scholar Cornel Sandvoss (2005) describes as the “extension of the self”. Based on a qualitative study, involving participant observation at memorial events of Lennon and Cash as well as interviews with fans, this article builds the case that popular culture is an important source of data for modern religious experience. Understanding fans as responding ‘religiously’ adds to the conversation on fandom and religion as it questions similarities between the two. I argue that these similarities reveal important characteristics of celebrity fandom and help to address contemporary religiosity.

What We Talk about When We Talk about Fanfiction

Using the popular adoption of “fanfiction” as it applies to eighteenth-century fiction, this essay calls for a closer attention to terminology from the established field of fan studies. By doing so, we may be able to better understand our own period’s relationship to creative output, the commercial print marketplace, and the making of celebrity.

IDEOLOGY AND AFFECT IN POLITICAL POLARIZATION AND FANDOM ONLINE

In recent years, scholarly attention has indicated the increased enmeshment of the political and entertainment media spheres, a change that has happened so gradually that it has not been as remarked upon as it should be. This is perhaps most observable in studies of community dynamics around both $2 and $2 . The backdrop of digital surveillance capitalism, and the specific platform affordances on which these communities exist and interact, exacerbates both. Furthermore, beyond these inverse scenarios whose distinctive boundaries grow blurrier by the day, there is a third domain in the overlap, of the exploitation – or compensation – of fans, fandoms, and fan labor for political and financial gain. This, too, exists in a reactive feedback loop with the always-on conditions of our contemporary digital political economy. As consequence, there are prominent recent streams of work explicating what exactly the fields of fan studies and political sociology can offer each other for researching communities online in such contexts. Responding to both the current landscape and recent exemplary and novel scholarship in the field, our panel presents four papers which each delve into an intersection of identity, community, and their ideological and affective ties. They investigate online affective community practices in reaction to fractured sociopolitical polarization, and contribute to the expanding picture of interdisciplinary frameworks and methodologies available — and increasingly, required — to comprehend the motivations, justifications, and trajectories of community dynamics under such drivers.

“Let’s See If We’ve Been Missing Out!”

Contemporary music analysis podcasts are engaged in an ongoing project of deconstructing pop songs and recoding them as valuable cultural objects. In this article, I understand podcasting as an extension of the popular music press and trace the affective strategies hosts use to elevate and evaluate pop songs new and old. I argue that music podcasts have seen a slow but steady departure from the conventions of critical distance and affectless, disembodied engagement to adopt an embodied, emotive response to the music that moves them. Drawing on theories of feminist affect, fan studies, and reactivity, I read the incorporation of fannish affect and the celebration of male creators’ emotive response to pop music as a continuation of a middlebrow sensibility that informs the popular music press writ large. Popular music analysis podcasts, on their surface, are a project of taking pop music seriously. When we scratch this surface, however, what we find is a mixed bag of tactics that seek to affirm the majority white, majority male creators as uniquely positioned to analyze, evaluate, and respond to music, much of which they are encountering considerably after it has already achieved the success that codes these songs as “popular” in the first place.

Green's Clues, or What's Queer about Clue?

Abstract This essay reckons with the representation of queer sexualities and modes of reading in Jonathan Lynn's Clue (US, 1985). The film, originally a box office flop that has become a cult classic, deploys the character of Mr. Green to concentrate and dispel its queer energies. Although he declares near the start that he is “a homosexual,” Green's sexuality is evacuated from the mystery narrative in a way that no other character's is. Drawing on the insights of queer theory and fan studies from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to Juno Jill Richards, the essay argues that Clue is structured by its anxious, phobic reaction to Green's sexuality; that it both depicts and provokes paranoid queer readings; and that the movie's future depends on the imaginative re-creations and re-queerings of the modern fan culture that has sprung up around it.

Experimental and numerical investigation of the blade tip-related aeroacoustic sound source mechanisms of a ducted low-speed axial flow fan

A combined aerodynamic and aeroacoustic study of a ducted low-speed axial flow fan at various operating points is presented herein, focusing on the blade tip-related noise sources. The investigation includes upstream and downstream phased array microphone measurements and computational fluid dynamic simulations. The downstream acoustic measurements are carried out by using an acoustically transparent duct. The resulting flow fields and noise source maps are evaluated simultaneously. The results show that at higher flow rates, the dominant noise source is the turbulent boundary layer – trailing edge noise. At lower flow rates, the dominating noise sources can be found at the blade tip’s leading edge. These noise sources are found to be tip leakage flow related. Also, downstream microphone array measurements indicate strong noise sources at the blade tip’s trailing edge. These are determined to be a combination of the turbulent boundary layer - trailing edge noise, tip leakage vortex impingement noise, and double-leakage noise.

DEFIANT DEVIANT IMAGES: SCANNING A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE FANART

Fan studies is the scholarly analysis of fans and fandom. The engagement of individuals or groups with a particular text or cultural phenomenon with which they have formed an emotional attachment becomes the focus of study. The object of fandom can be any work of literature, film, music, or other media; an activity such as a sport; or even a famous person. Fans move from being mere consumers of the culture industry to becoming producers in their turn or “prosumers”. They produce stories and songs and art centred around their fan object, which are circulated and critiqued by other fans in the safe space of digital fandoms. In this process fans also become performers. Fan art can be anything from portraits of characters to depiction of meaningful moments in the source text or images of wish fulfilment. A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of five fantasy novels by George R.R. Martin published from 1996 to 2011, which has become a cultural phenomenon and has spawned several fandom sites online. This paper examines the fanart produced by A Song of Ice and Fire fans, which are circulated in tumblr.com, deviantart.com and reddit.com to understand the subversive messages they convey.

Modelling decision-making in the field of green production in a post-industrial society

Modern management processes must solve the complex problem of optimal decision-making and timely and effective forecasting of their results, to select successful combinations of solutions in a particular production area of the new information and innovation society that has replaced the industrial era. Considering the above issues, the modelling process as an effective mechanism for decision-making and risk management deserves special attention. The purpose of the study was to highlight modelling as an effective method of decision-making in green production in a post-industrial society, and to justify the feasibility of its use at different levels of the production process. During the study, theoretical methods were applied, in particular, the study of scientific materials and research results, description and comparison. The results were also generalized and analysed. The article considers main approaches to the strategy of the introduction of modelling of decision-making in the field of green production in the post-industrial society, and provides a detailed definition of its structural elements and priority principles. It is clarified that modelling as a management tool is used in the development of rather complex production and management decisions and is the construction of a model or system of models of the process or phenomenon under study for its study, analysis, and formation of an appropriate fan of alternatives to the result. The main types of modelling according to different classifications are analysed, and the possibilities of applying some of them in the decision-making system in the production plane are investigated. Conclusions on the efficiency and effectiveness of the use of the modern innovation and information economic space in production processes are provided. The expediency of using different approaches to decision-making modelling, depending on some influencing factors, is substantiated. The possibility of solving the industrial multitasking of decision-making by creating models is proved. These research results are of practical importance for improving management processes in the field of green production in a post-industrial society, regardless of ownership, production volumes and scope of activity

‘Every adventure begins with a cup of coffee’: Black rifle coffee company, reactionary fandom, and the tactical body

This article examines the Black Rifle Coffee Company brand, its fans, and its connection to right-wing violence. By incorporating the literature on brand culture and the concepts and tools from fan studies, I show how Black Rifle merchandise develops into wearable symbols of white supremacy and reactionary politics celebrated by a fan culture and integrated into a tactical ensemble. While both Black Rifle’s promotional content and fans’ actions point to how capitalism provides a permission structure for white masculine supremacy, only by combining these approaches do we reveal the tactical body. I argue that the tactical body is a fannish embodiment of white supremacist conspiracy theories and a playful form of political engagement designed to actualize a revenge fantasy of insurrection. While I focus primarily on how Black Rifle fans play out their tactical canon in online and physical spaces, this case study points to a larger trend of tactical brands profiting from white male grievances and political tribalism.

Subject playing with flat images: Transmedia spreadability of anime and manga character images

Anime and manga characters are so ubiquitous in Japan that people see them anywhere, regardless of public or private. The two-dimensional flatness of line drawing allows the character images to straddle the boundaries of the worlds of works and media. The analysis of individual artworks needs to be revised to understand the transmedia spreadability of characters and our living conditions. This paper, thus, overviews the preceding discussions of anime and manga scholars on human-character relations and compares them with the theory of subject formation in film studies, whose realist tendency once emphasized the three-dimensional space and time. While psychoanalysis-influenced theories such as suture and male gaze model after one-point perspective and subordinate two-dimensionality, Thomas Lamarre formulates a de-unified perspective in relation to the multilayered image field of Japanese anime. In conjunction with the orientation of cultural and fan studies to emphasize audience agency, this article discusses the de-unified perspective on flat images which has the potential for understanding the complexity of subject formation through the interplay with two-dimensional images.

Scale-up of the Australian Fans in Training (Aussie-FIT) men’s health behaviour change program: a protocol for a randomised controlled hybrid effectiveness–implementation trial

IntroductionImproving physical activity (PA) and healthy eating is critical for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Behaviour change programmes delivered in sporting clubs can engage men in health...

From the Margins to the Mainstream: Explicating and Validating Queer Readings Among Sexual Minority Youth

ABSTRACT Scholars posit that media texts are polysemic (i.e., open to multiple interpretations) with popular media representing a social institution within Western cultures that spreads dominant societal values, norms, and expectations. Due to their marginalized position within society, sexual minority individuals (i.e., LGBQ+) are frequently underrepresented by mainstream media messages. One way in which marginalized individuals can challenge the dominant, heteronormative discourse is through subversive in which individuals interpret messages against heteronormative ideals (i.e., queer readings). Across two studies, a reliable and valid measure of the uses and gratifications of queer readings was explicated; revealing a four-factor, 20-item scale. Results contribute to the entertainment media and fan studies literatures by providing an understanding of the utility of queer readings in the experiences and development of sexual minority individuals, as well as presents numerous future avenues for inquiry.

Anglo-American Fan Studies and Their Impact on the Development of Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century

The aim of the article is to reveal the main stages of the research of fans in fan studies discourse and analyse the evolution of fan culture development that took place in the 21st century. Results. The article demonstrates that a separate scientific direction is dedicated to the study of fan communities in the Anglo-American academic environment — fan studies, which went through three distinct periods in their development: deviation, resistance (20th century), and mainstream (21st century). In the cultural aspect, the concepts of “fanatic/fanaticism” and “fan/ fandom” are distinguished. It is shown that Anglo-American fan studies define fan culture as an expressive lifestyle of fans of a certain cultural phenomenon or of a bearer of a certain cultural tradition, and in the last two decades, the fan studies direction, where fan culture is connected with fandom, has been intensively developing. It is stated that fandom is a self-organised community built around shared pleasure from a certain product of cultural industries in the digital media environment, and a fan is considered as a person who invests his time, energy, and money in interaction with a media product that is the object of his interests. The scientific novelty consists in determining the methodological status of the concept of “fan culture”, revealing the role of fan communities in the creation of popular culture in the 21st century. Conclusions. Fans began to play an active role in the processes of cultural creation, thanks to their creative work, there was a transition from passive consumption of mass culture products to active production of works of popular culture. Fan culture as a special community and environment of joint creative work among fans of literary works, television series, comics, and computer games, blurs the difference between consumption and production, becoming a vivid phenomenon of popular culture.

Dental injuries in Swiss soccer supporters: A comparative study of regular fans, ultras, and hooligans for public health strategies.

Violence among soccer supporters continues to pose a significant public health concern in many parts of the world. In Switzerland, hooliganism is largely uninvestigated. This study aimed to examine incidents of violence and associated dental injuries among different groups of soccer supporters, as well as assess the impact of intoxicants on their behavior, using survey data from regular fans, ultras, and hooligans in the Swiss Football League. A cross-sectional survey using a standardized questionnaire was conducted among distinct factions of soccer supporters in the Swiss Football League in 2022. A total of 165 participants self-identified as belonging to one of three subgroups: "regular fan," "ultra," or "hooligan." Data were gathered on physical altercations, dental injuries, possession of mouthguards, intoxicant use, and medical assistance. Descriptive statistics, logistic regression models, and significance tests were used for data analysis (α = .05). Hooligans had a higher frequency of dental injuries resulting from fights than ultras and regular fans. Hooligans with 11-20 fights per soccer season had a 9.6 times higher probability of dental trauma than those with 0-5 fights (p = .048). Possession of a mouthguard was associated with a lower risk of dental injuries for hooligans but an increased risk for ultras. Additionally, hooligans were found to differ significantly from other groups in their consumption of amphetamines and cocaine (p < .001). The study found a strong link between physical altercations and dental injuries among soccer supporters. To promote better prevention, there is a necessity for enhanced educational initiatives facilitated by dentists to amplify the dissemination of mouthguards. Furthermore, it is crucial to raise awareness regarding their proper fitting to minimize the occurrence of combat-related dental injuries. Health authorities and other stakeholders should take a comprehensive approach to addressing some of the root causes of violent behavior, which include alcohol abuse and illicit substance consumption.

Identifying lithofacies types by boosting algorithm and resampling technique: a case study of deep-water submarine fans in an oil field in West Africa

The continuous discovery of giant oil and gas fields in deep-water low stand fans has made deep-water submarine fan reservoirs with huge oil and gas potential important targets for oil and gas exploration and development. Nowadays, machine learning algorithm has been proven to be an effective method to classify various rock types from geophysical logging data, but rarely has there been focus on predicting deep-water submarine fans in previous studies. In this paper, we utilized five classical Boosting machine learning algorithms, namely GBDT, XGBoost, LightGBM, CatBoost, and LogitBoost, to identify 14 deep-water submarine fan lithofacies types from 7 wells in a West African oilfield. To address the sample non-balance problem, we employed SMOTE and MAHAKIL oversampling techniques and optimized the hyperparameters of the model using Genetic Algorithm. The experimental results show that the model performance is improved by using oversampling technologies and hyperparameter optimization. The proposed MAHAKIL-GA-GBDT algorithm is the most effective in identifying the lithofacies of deep-water submarine fans, with an accuracy of 0.986. This study provides a new approach for identifying deep-water submarine fan lithofacies and highlights the potential of machine learning algorithms in this field.

Motivations for nostalgia in the Nintendo fandom

Nintendo's presence in games culture is pervasive and influential, with a history of success in the Eastern and Western markets and a fanbase that spans different generations of players. While works about the fandoms of Nintendo-owned franchises exist, less is known about those who are fans of the company itself, without a necessary attachment to a particular intellectual property (IP). The theoretical lenses of game studies, fan studies, retro gaming, and nostalgia help explore the Nintendo fandom to uncover the nostalgic motivations that fans develop and maintain toward the brand and how they are interrelated. Through a narrative analysis of eleven in-depth interviews with self-identified fans of Nintendo, we find that these motivations are sentimental, historical, and personal, as well as hierarchical according to their ease of attainment by those outside of the fandom. Furthermore, retro gaming acts as a Nintendo company strategy that aids the development of these motivations.

Fan studies state of the field 2023

Editorial for TWC No. 40 (September 15, 2023).