Decreasing world suck working paper - mapp - june 25 2013

"Decreasing World Suck": Fan Communities, Mechanisms of Translation, and Participatory Politics Neta Kligler-Vilenchik A C...

2 Executive Summary This report describes the mechanisms of translation through which participatory culture communities ex...

3 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my advisor and mentor, Henry Jenkins. I am very grateful for the opportunity I hav...

4 Table of Contents Executive Summary .......................................................................................

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5 Introduction On February 14, 2013, President Barack Obama participated in a virtual "Fireside Hangout." A"21st century t...

6 drew to a close, Obama urged the Nerdfighters "not to forget to be awesome," referencing the group’s motto. The virtual ...

7 engagement.5 Included in the network of projects associated with YPP, the Media, Activism & Participatory Politics (MAPP...

8 Introducing the groups Nerdfighters The Nerdfighters are an informal group, revolving around the YouTube channel of the ...

9 Fig 2. A local Nerdfighter group The name "Nerdfighter" emerged from one of the Greens’ vlogs; John encountered an arcad...

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10 The pronounced goal of Nerdfighters is to "decrease world suck." When interviewed, John Green explained that, to him, t...

11 Nerdfighters could then vote on which charities should receive the donation. Finally, Nerdfighters decrease World Suck ...

12 their collaboration with the Nerdfighters. HPA’s more recent campaigns include Equality FTW (for the win), raising 95,ドル...

13 The HPA has been examined as a form of fan activism,24 as a manifestation of Connected Learning principles,25 as a cont...

14 Comparison Chart – Harry Potter Alliance and the Nerdfighters The chart below captures some key similarities and differ...

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15 Mechanisms of translation Mechanisms of translation describe the ways that the group members’ cultural investments and ...

16 The diagram begins with "networked individuals." Barry Wellman uses the term networked individualism to describe the wa...

17 more opportunities.34 Such a connection has also been confirmed by some of the quantitative work conducted within the Y...

18 3. Informal discussion – Creating and supporting spaces and opportunities for conversations about current events and po...

19 They may originate from the activist group or from existing popular culture content. At different times, the group may ...

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20 with people on a level like my sister did for some reason. And was just teased, harassed and bullied in school and I th...

21 Fig 4. "What would Dumbledore do?" - one of the HPA’s mottos Twenty year-old Erin, who recently came out as agendered,4...

22 Wizard Rock concerts. In the summer of 2012, those entering a popular L.A. bar to attend a wizard rock concert were gre...

23 What happens to an organization that explicitly roots itself in a certain content world when that content world loses i...

24 These are important questions when considering links between story worlds and engagement. In contrast to the strong lin...

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25 as equals, respecting their intellectual abilities and maturity. At the same time, the VlogBrothers’ content is humorou...

26 'verdictive' (evaluative)."47 Dayan also describes such groups as "identity publics" because of the ways they forge com...

27 Nerdfighters reference a range of examples under "nerdy stuff," including the musical Cats, stop motion lego animation,...

28 There are a lot of younger Nerdfighters. And I think like being young and being a Nerdfighter is common because a lot o...

29 impressively large reach. At the time this report was written, the VlogBrothers’ YouTube channel had over 1.1 million s...

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30 organization to tap specific characters, storylines and themes. Yet, latching onto one content world has its limits. Th...

31 The Politics & Entertainment surveys conducted by the Norman Lear Center at USC Annenberg have found that entertainment...

32 as potential content contributors (as opposed to a centralized and hierarchical model in which content is only produced...

33 editing, to luthiery (making of musical instruments). Moving this creativity to the digital realm expands these young a...

34 YouTube channels can often be identified by their reference of common terms in their titles, such as "nerd", "awesome" ...

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35 Fig 6. "Five Unknown Nerds" – an example of a Nerdfighter collab channel In his discussion of digital media creation in...

36 positive, encouraging reactions to videos is an incentive for further production, whereas criticism, cynicism or meanne...

37 substantial research. At the same time, these videos have the signature Vlogbrother "look and feel," including rapid-fi...

38 videos. When prodded, interviewees provided several explanations. First, talking about political issues in the videos f...

39 butter on my face I’m gonna talk about some of the things you can’t say when you’re in a Catholic school." She starts w...

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40 because it’s not your fault for not paying attention to it because it’s extremely complicated and no one has ever expla...

41 I know that if I talk about it without doing something like putting peanut butter on my face, obviously the same reacti...

42 do not; in contemporary US society, most do not."76 If Nerdfighters see decreasing world suck as a main goal, why are N...

43 affordance became available. One popular podcast, Pottercast, was connected to the fan site The Leaky Cauldron. Potterc...

44 YouTube channel hpalliance in 2011.82 Though the HPA had produced several sporadic videos before to launch campaigns or...

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45 very engaged viewership.83 The vloggers support their viewers’ engagement by ending their vlogs with a question for the...

46 together to do great things. He then sadly observes that this year the conference will be held in Chicago, and he can’t...

47 and was modeled on the "coming out as undocumented" media created by DREAM activists,86 thus enabling networking with t...

48 Reaching beyond the HP community also meant that the nature of the discussion could be much more heated than is customa...

49 arrival to the conference. "I was just amazed at how great people are, but I also thought that they were missing the po...

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50 someone who should be given the same right to dream, and the same opportunity as all of us who received citizenship by ...

51 etiquette"—the extent to which public discussion is deemed appropriate and desirable,96 or to institutional restriction...

52 Nerdfighters mentioned talking to others in the group about their most intimate problems, such as their parents’ divorc...

53 Such concerns explain why a large percentage of young people are disengaged from politics.101 However, the two case stu...

54 Reflecting the notion of participatory politics as "not guided by deference to elites,"102 Nerdfighters express a stron...

55 Fig 10. "I HATE PENNIES!!!!" video – example of digging in the data The HPA also encourages members to investigate and ...

56 particularly by young people,105 becoming the fastest-spreading online video at the time with 112 million views in one ...

57 later, Theo said he felt like Kony2012 had become the "elephant in the room" that had to be addressed at their next HPA...

58 Contrary to the informed citizen model, which requires each individual to know all the necessary information themselves...

59 they encourage civil exchanges, groups characterized by participatory culture practices may also avoid more contentious...

60 anything in there. [...] If Warner Brothers doesn’t want to use Fair Trade chocolate and you don’t agree with that, don’t...

61 Negotiating political statements has been a challenge for HPA’s leadership. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, the HPA cannot enga...

62 Racial and ethnic diversity is a complex issue for both groups. On the one hand, both define themselves as completely i...

63 you’re either supporters or experiencing it, so I went to a meeting and it was basically people talking about their com...

64 Fig 12. "Human Sexuality is Complicated" – Vlogbrother video about gender On his "unfiltered backchannel" on YouTube, H...

65 sex marriage, the HPA released a statement on marriage equality, authored by Andrew Slack and addressed to "fellow memb...

66 Each week’s discussion was devoted to a certain book from the Harry Potter series, sometimes connected to specific them...

67 Fig 13. Sirius Black as prisoner– a metaphor to discuss the death penalty 118 The discussion flowed from the introducto...

68 explicitly civic and political issues do not necessarily translate into conversation topics in Nerdfighters’ social enc...

69 actions (e.g. registering voters in Wizard rock concerts). On the other hand, such content world connections may limit ...

70 has launched their vlog channel. Here, the challenge is often how to translate the non-profit’s civic goals, such as in...

71 Chart – Mechanisms of Translation Facilitating Participatory Politics Outcomes Mechanism of translation Participatory P...

72 resemble groups that come together around shared cultural interests and that engage, sometimes peripherally, with civic...

73 profits—may benefit from learning some of these lessons as we reimagine the connections between cultural participation ...

74 Methodological appendix Media analysis I have been following the groups’ communications online, including primarily, fo...

75 where I met in person many of the Nerdfighters I had interviewed online. I also participated in several monthly meet-up...

76 predominantly white and female. Interviewees were usually contacted through e-mail or, predominantly for younger partic...

77 transcribed. Full transcripts of the interviews were analyzed and coded for both conceptual and emerging themes.

78 Bibliography Bacon-Smith, Camille, Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth (University o...

79 and Cultures 8 (2012). http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/392/252 Hellekson, Karen and K...

80 Kligler-Vilenchik, Neta et al., "Experiencing Fan Activism: Understanding the Power of Fan Activist Organizations throu...

81 Chicago Press, 2006). Schudson, Michael, The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life (New York: The Free Press, ...