Merlin Fandom Paper
Doing research for my paper looking at the Merlin fandom on LiveJournal.
This is what the paper is going to be about:
ABSTRACT: The growth and availability of the Internet worldwide has made it possible for fan culture to carve out a unique niche online. This paper intends to explore online fan culture using the Merlin fandom on LiveJournal, a women-centered cyberspace, as a case example. Specifically, by employing ethnographic methods from an “acafan” perspective, this research will detail the scope of the fandom presence, the diversity and commonalities of participants, the range of fan activities, the patterns of interaction and communication, as well as explore the ways in which participants construct fan identity and a sense of community to form a unique subculture. This preliminary investigation is aimed to expand the notion of media convergence by considering the ways fans engage with multiple forms of media within the fandom community, and to assist in the development of a large-scale interactive survey in an effort to refine the methodologies used to study online fan culture
