Beyond the Legitimation Paradox: Fanwork, UGC and the Problem of Authorship

In 2017 I published ‘Fanfiction and the Author: How Fanfic Changes Popular Cultural Texts’ which proposed that fanfiction in the digital age legitimates itself paradoxically through reference to and affirmation of the traditional model of Romantic authorship. I established this via a large scale discourse analysis and quantitative study of reception. Now I contend that the new media environment poses some different challenges to the concept of authorship, via postmodern lenses such as fragmentation, flatness of affect, and pastiche especially in visual spaces. This poses series problems to the EU and UK’s present struggle over copyright law, which relies on a conception of authorship which is increasingly outdated in the digital world.