A research project on preserving fan communities on social media
Hi! My name is Shirley Chan, and I am a PhD student at Lund University in Sweden. My study focuses on information produced by online communities on social media platforms, specifically fandoms and the challenges of capturing community narratives for the future.
What is the project about?
Challenges in preserving digital information arise as content is easy to distribute and edit, containing textual, visual, and moving media. It also characterises social media sites, which leads to difficulties in documenting the original context of the content. Due to the dynamic nature of digital information and social media sites, social and cultural expressions risk becoming inaccessible soon, for example, the cultural practices found in the multiple online fan communities. In recent years, discussions have also been concerning preserving information created on social media, highlighting legal and user-privacy concerns. At the same time, the extensive documentation and storage of user information on social media have received public and research attention. How can social media's user-generated content and user data be understood currently and in the future? What challenges do these types of information bring?
As a previous participant in fan communities, I think fan culture is crucial to document as it shows multiple ways to engage with culture. Still, it highlights the creativity and sense of community arising from being a fan. Therefore, I would like to study Marvel communities on Tumblr and Reddit to see how communities within the same fandom look on different platforms. Furthermore, it can help me identify the challenges of capturing community narratives on different structured social media platforms.
I choose to study communities surrounding the Marvel franchise to do this study. When starting this project, I wanted to learn more about communities I had no previous experience with. Thus, I found the Marvel studios subreddit interesting since much activity and content was produced. My personal connection with the Marvel universe is via the MCU franchise, primarily the movies (the first Marvel movie I saw was GotG!). However, I have been quite selective with what releases to watch until this project. When starting this project back in the fall of 2020, I decided to watch all the marvel movies and series in release order to understand the topics discussed in the Marvel communities. I would say that I got pretty immersed in the Marvel universe after watching all the movies and series released so far (it took a couple of months).
How is material collected?
From June 2021 to May/June 2022, I conducted field observations and 14 interviews with participants of this subreddit, offering great insights into the community's activities and how Reddit is understood and utilised by its users.
The field notes and interview transcripts are safely stored on Lund University's servers and pseudonymised, which entails removing any personal information linked to the participants' physical identities and/or usernames.
How is the project going?
Last year I processed, transcribed, and coded some of the collected material and began writing on the analysis. In May/June of the same year, I wrapped up the field observations, which offered great insights into your community’s activities and how its users understand and utilise Reddit. Currently, I am continuing with the analysis and writing of the thesis, focusing on processing field notes taken during the observations. I might also revisit your community if needed.
Participation is voluntary! You are welcome to message me here on Reddit if you have any questions or want to opt-out of the project entirely - any information connected to you and your activities on Reddit will not be included in the collected material. There is a longer description of my thesis project via my Lund University website if you want to read more: https://www.kultur.lu.se/en/person/ShirleyChan/
Thanks in advance!
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