Looking to Fandom in a Time of Change

Looking to Fandom
in a Time of Change
Shannon Sauro
Malmö University
@shansauro l ssauro.info l shannon.sauro@mah.se

“I hereby suspend entry
into the United States,
as immigrants and
nonimmigrants, of such
persons for 90 days
from the date of this
order ...”
Executive Order No. 13,769 (2017)

“…we, language educators and applied
linguists …need to “double-down” on our
commitment to cultural openness. We need to
facilitate a broadening (not narrowing) of our
world view, and technology-enhanced
language learning can play a crucial role in
this endeavor, as language is at the heart of
communication, understanding, empathy, and
ultimately a peaceful existence”.
(Oskoz & Smith, 2017, p. ii)

Investigating L2 text-based &
voice chat performance of
EFL Syrian Learners
Shahlah Adi

Parisa Mehran
Designing and Developing a Blended
Course: Best Practices for Japanese
Learners
&
Learning by Design: Bringing
Poster Carousels to Life Through
Augmented Reality in a Blended
English Course
(with Mehrasa Alizadeh, Ichiro Koguichi,
Haruo Takemura)
End of Conference Reflections on Virtually
Connecting (CMC SIG Workshop)
Saturday 11:00-12:00
Building 67 Room 1027

J.K. Rowling
@jkrowling
20 years ago today a world
that I had lived in alone
was suddenly open to
others. It's been
wonderful. Thank you.
#HarryPotter20
12:27 PM – Jun 26, 2017
Art: Fox Estacado

“’cultural
acupuncture,’
mapping fictional
content worlds
onto real-world
concerns.”
(Slack as explained in
Jenkins, 2012, para. 1.9)

“A fan is a person
with a relatively deep
positive emotional
conviction about
someone or
something famous...”
(Duffet, 2013, p. 18)
Photo credit: Sake Jager

“…online fandoms, have
made use of
networked technologies not
only to engage with each
other, but also to influence
the artistic, legal, and
political conversations
around the media or
individuals
they are fans of.”
(Sauro, 2017, p. 132)

Learning
Activism
Challenging
Privacy

“What is needed for the
beginning of the twenty-first
century is a recognition of the
complexity of language
learning: that it is sometimes
play and sometimes for real,
sometimes form-focused and
sometimes meaning-focused,
sometimes fiction and
sometimes fact.”
(Cook, 1997, p. 231)
Art: pennswoods

How a fan and L2
learner of English
developed a new textual
identity through regular
correspondence in
English around the
design of a fan website
for a Japanese pop
singer.
(Lam, 2000)

The advanced
leadership and
academic literacy skill
development of a 13-
year-old engaged in
debate and moderating
discussions in online
forums and fan sites.
(Curwood, 2013)
Art: pennswoods

The development and
use of intercultural and
L2 language skills of a
Spanish manga fan who
engaged in amateur
translations (scanlation)
of Japanese manga from
English into Spanish in
an online fan community.
(Valero-Porras & Cassany, 2015)
Figure 2
(Valero-Porras & Cassany, 2015, p. 11)

Case studies of ESL
learners’ use of fanfiction
in anime fandoms to
transition from novice
writer in English to
successful writer, and the
bilingual fanfiction writing
practices of Finnish fans of
American TV shows to
index multilingualism and
global citizenship.
(e.g. Black, 2006; Lepännen et al,
2009)

The Blogging Hobbit: A
collaborative story of a
missing moment from The
Hobbit:
• Story outline and map
• Collaborative roleplay
fanfiction - each group
member to write from
the perspective of one
character from the
novel
• Reflective paper
(Sauro & Sundmark, 2016)

“this writing activity has
influenced my language
skills…. During this project I
have been able to expand
my repertoar [sic] of English
words which are not so
commonly used in everyday
English anymore.”
(Sauro & Sundmark, 2016, p. 420 )

“I felt it unfair to work
with The Hobbit on such a
project since a big part
was to connect with a
character from the book
and write from that
perspective. To choose a
book with absolutely no
women at all made me not
wanting to take neither
Tolkien nor this
assignment to heart.”
(Student Reflection,
Cohort 2014)

Sequence of subtasks
Cognitive complexity
Target form(s)
Degree of interaction
Modality of interaction
Authenticity
Common Task Concerns

“Fanfiction is a story
written by a person in
the fandom because
breaking into the
creator’s office and
telling them that
everything that they did
is wrong and rewriting it
is considered ´rude´ and
´illegal´”
(Fan definition reported in Klink,
2017)
Art: mudblood428 & lizardspots

“…restorying can also
characterize the complex
ways that contemporary
young people narrate the
word and the world... In
other words, as young
readers imagine themselves
into stories, they reimagine
the very stories themselves,
as people of all ages
collectively reimagine time,
place, perspective, mode,
metanarrative, and identity
through retold stories...”
(Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016, p. 323) Figure 1. Forms of Restorying
(Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016, p. 319)

“Racebent characters have
long been making
appearances on sites like
Tumblr, but they’ve been
picking up heat recently.
One of the most popular
and frequent, at least on
my dash?
Hermione Granger as a
woman of color, most
often black.”
What a “Racebent” Hermione
Granger Really Represents
(Bennett, 2015)
Art: mariannewiththesteadyhands
(in Bennett, Feb 1, 2015)

“…if you want to make a
human being into a
monster, deny them, at
the cultural level, any
reflection of themselves.
And growing up, I felt
like a monster in some
ways. I didn't see myself
reflected at all. “
What a “Racebent” Hermione
Granger Really Represents
(Bennett, 2015)

“The teacher is of course
an artist, but being an
artist does not mean that
he or she can make the
profile, can shape the
students. What the
educator does in
teaching is to make it
possible for the students
to become themselves.”
Freire, in We Make the Road by
Walking: Conversations on
Education and Social Change
(Horton & Freire , 1990, p.179)
Art: mudblood428

“A challenge is an organized
activity in which participants
agree to perform or produce
fan activities or fanworks
according to some pre-
determined criteria.“
• Gift exchanges
Secret Santa, ficathon
• Prompt-based
Fests, games, battles
• Other
Big Bangs, charity drives
(“Challenge”, n.d.)

A Study in Sherlock:
Collaborative mystery
writing with a challenge
1. Retell a Sherlock
Holmes mystery or
tell an original
mystery but in an
alternate universe.
2. Tell an original
Sherlock Holmes
mystery in the
original context.

“See here” Sherlock said pointing to
the small screen, “I have had a
google alert set up for these certain
phrases ever since I took a small
interest in the Ms. Al-Farsi-case,
relating to racial violence in the
Malmö area.…”
“Islamophobiacs who fear everyone
and everything they can’t buy at
Ullared” scoffed John. “Yes, well, not
quite” replied Sherlock. “The people
behind the avatars on this particular
site is not your average, uneducated
riffraff pointing fingers at anyone
who doesn’t share their love of
meatballs.”
A Study in Brown
(Cohort 2016) Study in Graffiti
(Cohort 2016)

They (the Uganda people) seem
savages but they know that the laws
of nature should not be offended.
Hopefully they do not keep the
sentenced ones in dormitories.
Stanislaw Pieta (Polish MP)

“Jag tror att de flesta med judiskt ursprung som blivit
svenskar lämnar sin judiska identitet. Men gör de inte
det behöver inte det vara ett problem. Man måste skilja
på medborgarskap och nationstillhörighet. De kan
fortfarande vara svenska medborgare och leva i Sverige.
Samer och judar har levt i Sverige under lång tid.”
I think most people of Jewish origin who became Swedes
leave their Jewish identity. But if they do not, that does not
have to be a problem. You must distinguish citizenship and
nationality. They can still be Swedish citizens and live in
Sweden. Sami and Jews have lived in Sweden for a long
time.
Björn Söder (Second Deputy Speaker, Swedish Riksdag)
Dagens Nyheter, 14 December 2014

“For many of us, this crisis — this looming violent, white
supremacist, misogynistic, ableist, homophobic,
transphobic administration, and all this hatred our
neighbors have elected — is the darkest we’ve ever
faced…. It is understandable that references to fictional
stories amid all this very real horror might seem glib or
profane..... Still, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of
what stories are, and what they’re for. Stories do not
come from thin air; they come from what we’ve seen,
what we’ve believed, what we’ve lived through. Stories
are not how we escape the world, but how we make
sense of it — how we navigate it, how we survive it, and
how we archive our survival.”
Wizard Rock in the Age of Trump
(Morales, Nov. 28, 2016)

“The Ministry is determined to
root out such usurpers of magical
power, and to this end has issued
an invitation to every so-called
Muggle-born to present
themselves for interview by the
newly appointed Muggle-born
Registration Commission.”
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
(Rowling, 2007, p. 209)

We’re changing the
world by making activism
accessible through the
power of story. Since
2005, we’ve engaged
millions of fans through
our work for equality,
human rights, and
literacy.
The Harry Potter Alliance
Art: mudblood428

“The HPA, founded in 2005, has conducted 25 social
justice campaigns and boasts 120,000 members. In a
single campaign to end the genocide in Darfur, the HPA
donated more than $10,000, helped collect 7,500
petition signatures, mailed postcards to President
Obama, and increased total phone calls made to 1-800-
GENOCIDE by more than 50 percent. During an auction
to raise money to help respond to the 2010 earthquake
in Haiti, the HPA donated more than $123,000 to the
nonprofit organization Partners for Health. The HPA
donated more than 55,000 books to nonprofits in the
Mississippi Delta and a youth village in Rwanda.”
(Hinck, 2012, para 1.1)

• The Blogging Hobbit
• A Study in Sherlock
• Harry Potter and
…What is the
challenge we face
today?
Art: mudblood428

“[I]ndividuals are increasingly required to disclose
much more personal information over the Internet
in order to participate in social, administrative and
commercial affairs, with ever more limited scope
for opting out….. ‘Digital breadcrumbs’ are
dropped every minute and combined to classify
individuals in real time to create multiple and at
times contradictory profiles. These profiles can be
circulated in microseconds without individuals'
knowledge, and used as the basis for important
decisions affecting them.”
(European Data Protection Supervisor, 2015, pp. 12-13)

• 1999 LiveJournal (LJ) founded by
Brad Fitzpatrick (USA)
• 2000-2001 Fandom finds LJ
• 2002 Fan communities,
challenges, fests
• 2000s Primary blogging platform
in Russia
• 2005 Sold to Six Apart
• 2005 Memories, tags and
archiving options
• Mid-2000s Promoting posts
(“LiveJournal”, n.d.)
Art: mudblood428

• 2007 Sold to SUP (Russian
ownership; Servers in USA)
• 2007 Six Apart deletes certain
fan journals due to threats from
religious group
• 2008 Founding of Archive of Our
Own (Ao3)
• 2008-2014 Fandom dispersal
• 2016 Servers move to Russia
• 2017 New TOS mandating
compliance with Russian law
(“LiveJournal”, n.d.)
Art: mudblood428

“The Archive of Our Own emerged as an archontic
struggle in the face of corporate media's wish to
capitalize on its undercommons….The politics of this
archive are explicitly concerned with legitimizing
"transformative" uses under US law, clarifying the
uncertain legal place of fan works for the sake of their
makers' legal safety. The OTW wishes to halt its archival
subculture's reliance on the incidental and unreliable
archiving of most online information, which can so
easily disappear or be appropriated, and provide a
"deposit library" for fan works.”
(Lothian, 2011, para 2.1)

“As you may already know, ORCiD is a freely available digital
identifier service that directly links a researcher to their work,
ensuring an individual and their publication/research activities
can be easily distinguished and identified by anyone anywhere
in the world.
To facilitate this initiative, we will be requiring all users of the
journal’s ScholarOne Manuscripts peer-review system to add
their ORCiD ID to their account information over the next few
weeks in anticipation of the initiative’s launch in June. This
includes everyone; all editors, authors, co-authors, reviewers,
and anyone else with an account on the ScholarOne site.”
Excerpt from an Automatic Email for a Journal
24 May 2017

Acknowledgements
Art and Images:
Fox Estacado of The Art of Fox Estacado: Fine Fan Art and Geekery
(artbyfox.storenvy.com). All rights reserved and used in this presentation with
permission.
Mudblood428 of Potter on Paper
(http://www.mudblood428.com). All rights reserved and used in this presentation with
permission.
Pennswoods
All rights reserved and used in this presentation with permission.
Sake Jager
Photo contribution. All rights reserved and used in this presentation with permission.
A special thank you to:
Shahla Adi and Parisa Mehran for sharing their experiences, images, and research.
Francis M. Hult, Lorrie Kim, Robert O’Dowd, and Breffni O’Rourke for feedback and input
on components of or prior versions of this talk.
Sirkka Ivakko and Gosia Kurek for texts and translations.

References
Bennett, A. (2015, February 1). What A "Racebent" Hermione Granger really represents. Buzzfeed. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeed.com/
alannabennett/what-a-racebent-hermione-granger-really-represen-d2yp?utm_term=.whRP7G78P#.ooKogjg4o
Black, R.W. (2006). Language, culture, and identity in online fanfiction. E-learning, 3, 180–184.
“Challenge”. (n.d.). Retrieved August 17, 2017 from Fanlore Wiki: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Challenge
Cook, G. (1997). Language play, language learning. ELT Journal, 51(3), 224-231.
Curwood, J.S. (2013). Fan fiction, remix culture, and The Potter Games. In V.E. Frankel (Ed.), Teaching with Harry Potter (pp. 81-92). Jefferson, NC:
McFarland.
Duffett, M. (2013). Understanding fandom: An introduction to the study of media fan culture. New York/London: Bloomsbury.
Exec. Order No. 13,769, 3 C.F.R. 8977 (2017).
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https://edps.europa.eu/sites/
edp/files/publication/15-09-11_data_ethics_en.pdf
Horton, M., & Freire, P. ( 1990). We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Hinck, A. (2012). Theorizing a public engagement keystone: Seeing fandom's integral connection to civic engagement through the case of the Harry
Potter Alliance. Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 10. 10.3983/twc.2012.0311
Jenkins, H. (2012). “Cultural acupuncture”: Fan activism and the Harry Potter Alliance. Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 10. doi 10.3983/twc.
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Lepännen, S., Pitkänen-Huhta, A., Piirainen-Marsch, A., Nikula, T., & Peuronen, S. (2009). Young people’s translocal new media uses: A
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“LiveJournal”. (n.d.). Retrieved August 21, 2017 from Fanlore Wiki: https://fanlore.org/wiki/LiveJournal
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Valero-Porras, M.-J., & Cassany, Y. (2015). Multimodality and language learning in a scanlation community. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences
212, 9-15.
Presentation available at https://www.slideshare.net/Shansauro

Looking to Fandom in a Time of Change

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