Alum Andrea Horbinski Publishes on 90s Female Media Fans in Internet Histories
Andrea Horbinski recently published “Talking by letter: the hidden history of female media fans on the 1990s internet” in Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture and Society.
From her piece:
Men and women have a long history of experiencing fandom and participating in fannish activities differently. While it would take a book to fully discuss the dimensions of and reasons for these differences, broadly speaking women’s fandom is more likely to focus on interpretation of characters and emotional dynamics, and more likely to produce such transformative works as fan fiction. Returning to Sandvoss’ definition of fandom, we might productively qualify and modernise it by noting that if fandom constitutes regular, affective consumption of media objects or texts, in female-oriented fandom those texts are just as if not more likely to be fan-produced media objects and texts as officially produced, “first order” media. Such “second order” media objects (to adapt Japanese terminology), because they are fan created, may cater to the character-centric focus of female-oriented fandom more directly.
This article draws on the interviews Horbinski and her co-investigators led for her Fan Fiction and Internet Memory oral history project back in 2012, which was led by BCNM faculty Abigail De Kosnik.
Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture and Society is an international, interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal that looks at Internet and digital cultures research. The journal accepts cultural, social, political and technological perspectives on the aforementioned subject areas.
Read Horbinski's entire article here.