Changing Relations Between Fan Cultures and Industry: The Legitimation Paradox

The explosion of digital media and user generated content means that media industries have more direct contact with fan cultures than ever before. Fans' critique, discussion and transformative adaptations of media texts are now highly visible to media authors and owners. It is now largely accepted that attempting to quash fan-made media via copyright is ineffective and often damaging to brands. Instead, media companies have engaged with fan cultures in a variety of ways. Relations between fan cultures and producers are thus changing rapidly, as are concepts of authorship and ownership of popular texts. Utilizing principles of discourse analysis which can be adapted and combined with quantitative methods for application to sites such as LiveJournal, YouTube and Tumblr I demonstrate the ways that fans are claiming access to the concept of authorship, even as their practices can paradoxically inform the dominant industry discourse; analyze some strategies of engagement from the media industries concerned; and offer some evidence-based suggestions for best practice in engaging with the increasingly profitable and visible active fan audience.