7 Civic Fandom

While the last chapter highlighted active audiences engaged in political fandom, this chapter builds upon that focus and illuminates the varied ways that, through their affective attachments, members of fan communities “perform” citizenship. This chapter will clarify how popular fandom can be politicized, whereas the last chapter, to put it crudely, clarified how political fandom is popular(ized). The fluidity between the previous chapter and this one is obvious (in fact, they are so intertwined that these two different areas of focus are often confusingly labeled the same thing):

As Ashley Hinck (2019, 6) reminds us, the fandoms cultivated by comics, movies, books, and so on can lead to “public engagement that emerges from [and blends with] a commitment to a fan-object.” Hinck refers to this type of investment as fan-based citizenship, but we could just as easily flip the subject and predicate, as Hannah Mueller (2022) does, and call it the politics of fandom. (Packer, 2023, para.1.3)

While I will reference both Hinck (2019) and Mueller (2022) later, at this point I want to merely emphasize that political fandom and civic fandom are related concepts, not different types of fandom as much as different focuses.  Kozinets and Jenkins provide a very useful distinction: “the political is about struggle over power and resources. The civic is about what connects us together as members of a shared community and a healthy democracy” (2022, p. 269). To be clear, political fandom is a much more widely-used label than civic fandom^[1], but I find it useful to (maybe artificially) enforce a distinction to cleave off the explicitly and institutionally political and to generate a specific focus on the popular-culture content that is “traditionally” associated with fandom. So, where to start? First, consider what happens when one “googles” ‘civic fandom’. I got the following result when I searched for images (you know, looking for fun memes etc. to enliven this material):

Yes, apparently the Honda Civic has cultivated a surprisingly healthy fandom (especially from having been featured in movies, video games, and toys). But that’s not what we mean when we refer to civics! Civic fandom references audiences who are fans of popular culture and who leverage that interest/affection to become participants in civic culture. Before we understand how civic fandom is a particular version of such civic participation, we should first emphasize what we mean by ‘civic.’ “Our high school teachers did real damage to our concept of the civic by making civics sound like governmentality when, in fact, the civic refers to the sets of agreements, the social contract we have with each other as citizens” (Kozinets and Jenkins, 2022, pp. 268-9).

True, many (at least Ontario) high-school students understand civics through the lens of a course titled “civics and careers,” but what does “civic” actually entail? With an etymological link to ‘city’ and ‘citizen,’ “the term civic carries the implication of engagement in public life—a cornerstone of democracy.” It “always has an affective and imaginative dimension” and inherently “supports community connections toward shared goals.” The term also implies the pursuit of a common or public good (Jenkins et al., 2020, pp. 6-7). Peter Dahlgren (2002) outlined six basic parameters of civic culture (social values, affinity, knowledge, practices, identities, and discussion): Civic values are democratic values (substantive values such as equality, liberty, justice, solidarity, and procedural ones, like openness, reciprocity, discussion, responsibility/accountability, and tolerance). Civic affinity is the idea of a social connection (but not necessarily a sense of ‘community’) the creates a minimal trust or sense of membership between members of the culture (the idea that “we’re all in this together”). Civic knowledge has to do with ways of knowing and communicating that tie people together in a common project. Civic practices are crucial – these are the forms of talk and engagement that recur that are somewhat routinized that help constitute civic identities. Voting is a formal practice, but informal practices (like tailgate parties, or public forums) also help create traditions and collective experiences that create a shared sense of belonging. Finally civic discussion is perhaps the most important aspect of civic culture as it is the medium for the practices, which creates the identities, which promote values.

Such discussion increasingly takes place via social media and digital media. And that is the reason why we spend so much time talking about civic engagement in a course about audiences in a media and communication department (rather than a political science course). Our participatory condition means the increased public visibility of fans and their role as actors in the public sphere occurs concurrently with the rise of participatory online culture (Mueller, 2022, p. 3). And, “in an increasingly networked and decentralized world, fandom provides a way to study how one can create new, effective methods of civic engagement that adapt to this new digital world” (Lynch, 2021, p. 3). This withering of public spaces in the physical world and the naturalization of digital spaces where people meet and build community only increased with the onset of the global coronavirus pandemic (Lynch, 2021, p. 4).

What I term “civic fandom” here is what Ashley Hinck (2019) terms fan-based citizenship, the amalgamation of popular culture and politics in participatory culture in which “popular culture serves as a guiding framework for civic action” (p. 95), action where “a political argument [is] authorized and justified by a fictional story and a commitment to that fan identity” (p. 8)^[2]. Fandom doesn’t have to be focused on politics to be political. Or, as Petersen puts it, “Fanization, then, is not a process that is tied exclusively to transformations in the culture of political communication, but rather is linked more broadly to cultural domains in which fan play has come to play a part” (2022, p. 95). This goes beyond traditional fan activism (usually an active audience mobilizing itself to call for changes regarding their shared object of affection, often with the goal of influencing production decisions, casting choices, etc.) While fan activism can be understood as any “intentional actions by fans, or the use of fanlike strategies, to provoke change” (Brough and Shresthova, 2012, para. 2.2), studies that focus on civic fandom “primarily focus on how the fan object, and a fan’s affective investment in that object, can be activated to support a political cause” (Barnes, 2022, 51).  That is to say, civic fandom focuses on fans-as-citizens, not citizens-as-fans^[3]. The activism of K-pop fans, intervening in American politics is a well-known example^[4], but more recently we can see this kind of activism directed less at the arena view and more of the process view of politics, calling for greater sustainability in the practices of the K-pop industry and its stars^[5]. Civic fandom uses fandom as a tool for civic engagement, but also political intervention (political in both the arena and process sense of the word). Civic fandom is the means by which “fan-based civic appeals invite fans to see themselves as citizens and public subjects, as public beings with a stake in public life . . . fandom offers a particular path through which individuals can come to see themselves as connected to citizenship, civic engagement, and social movement activism” (Hinck, 2019, p. 165). 

Civic fandom mobilizes “informal, cultural engagement (or cultural citizenship),” engaging with “symbolic goods, that is, of information and images, of culture itself” more than entering into formal relations with the state (Brough and Shresthova, 2012, para. 3.2, 3.3). It takes shape in the civic practices of fan audience-publics who, emboldened and empowered by their popular culture knowledge, engage in civic discussions in the hope of disrupting the status-quo and bringing about change (especially in the realm of democratic participation) fuelled by civic values. As a platform for cultural citizenship, it is meant to “encourage reflection on what might make the world a better place for most of us” (Hermes, 2020, p. 315)^[6]. Whereas political fandom tends to fall back upon division, struggles over power, and anti-fan aggregations, civic fandom emphasizes how “the civic is the voice of the citizen, it is unifying” (Kozinets and Jenkins, 2022, p. 277). 

Civic fandom depends upon a sense of civic-ness but this itself depends on an act of imagination. This does not mean escaping into a world of imaginary stories. It means entering into a “process of civic rebuilding through speculative imagination:”

Before we can build a better world, we need to imagine what a better world looks like. Each of us has to imagine ourselves as a civic agent. We have to imagine our space within a community. We have to imagine the process of social change. We have to feel some degree of empathy and solidarity with people whose experiences and perspectives are different than our own. And for those who are most oppressed, we need to imagine freedom, dignity, participation, even before we directly experience it. (Kozinets and Jenkins, 2022, p. 270)

With fandom as a gateway into particpatory culture, audiences are acquiring knowledge and skills, becoming social and political agents of change, finding their own voices, and raising them in defence of community values. Such fandom is, in fact, a type of participatory politics, defined as, “interactive, peer-based acts through which individuals and groups seek to exert both voice and influence on issues of public concern” Cohen and Kahne, 2012, p. vi). Civic fandom, then, can take shape in various forms of participatory politics, such as:

Sharing of information through social media; engaging in online conversations through digital forums, blogs, and podcasts; creating original content in the form of online videos or Photoshpped memes to comment on a current issue; using Twitter and other microblogging tools to rally a community towards collective action; building databases in order to investigate an ongoing concern (Jenkins, Ito, and boyd, 2016, pp. 155-6).

Not all of these will be equally productive or emancipatory. Some of these are forms of DIY citizenship or DIWO (Do-it-with-others) activism with the sharing of visions, resources, and agency in a playful, “silly citizenship” mode (see Hartley, 2010). Nonetheless, “the new styles of participatory politics tap into what young people already know as fans, consumers, and participants within social networks and deploy this popular cultural capital as the starting point for political action” (Jenkins, Ito, and boyd, 2016, pp. 157). Fandom, whether it happens to be rooted in a fictional world (like Harry Potter) or the nonfictional world (like BTS) provides the raw material for audience members to see themselves as agents of change and to forge connections with others. :

Fan activism starts where people live – within communities where they have a sense of safely and security, where they have a collective identity and shared culture, and where there is a set of ideals and commitments, even a set of networks, cultural practices, and ways of doing things. You build out from there mechanisms for civic learning and political mobilization. (Jenkins, Ito, and boyd, 2016, pp. 169)

This fanspace, this power to cultivate social change by envisioning (or imagining) something better has been termed civic imagination. “We define civic imagination as the capacity to imagine alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions” (Jenkins et al., 2020, p. 5).  The civic imagination is not private or personal, but intersubjective, a collective attempt to see the world from a new perspective, even a fantastical one.

Civic fandom sits at what I like to call the “crossroads of wonder”  — those who are motivated by a civic imagination have their genesis of civic engagement in a world of wonderment, a fantastic realm where things are different, and that difference inspires them to make a difference in their current circumstances. Because of their investment in a content world that seems somehow fascinating and maybe wonderful (or at least wonderfully relevant to the ‘real’ world, in the case of dystopian fiction like The Hunger Games)^[7], fans wonder about the possibilities for things to be different in their own world. 

References

Barnes, Renee (2022) Fandom and Polarization in Online Political Discussion: From Pop Culture to Politics. Springer.

Brough, Melissa M., and Sangita Shresthova (2012) “Fandom Meets Activism: Rethinking Civic and Political Participation.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 10. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2012.0303.

Cohen, Cathy J., and Kahne, Joseph. (2012). Participatory Politics: New Media and Youth Political Action. MacArthur Foundation.

Hermes, Joke. (2020) “Tracing cultural citizenship online.” Continuum: Journal Of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol. 34(3)

Hinck, Ashley. (2019). Politics for the love of fandom: Fan-based citizenship in a digital world. LSU Press.

Jenkins, Henry, Ito, Mizuko, and boyd, danah. (2016). Participatory culture in a networked era. Polity Press.

Jenkins, Henry, Gabriel Peters-Lazaro, and Sangita Shresthova (2020). Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Social Change. New York University Press.

Kozinets, Robert V, and Jenkins, Henry (2022) “Consumer movements, brand activism, and the participatory politics of media: A conversation.” Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol. 22(1) 264–282  DOI: 10.1177/14695405211013993 

Lynch, Kimery. (2021). “Fan Activists or Activists Who Happen to Be Fans?” The Rhizomatic Revolution Review, Issue 3. 

Mueller, Hannah. (2022). The Politics of Fandom: Conflicts That Divide Communities. McFarland & Company.

Packer, Joseph, and Ethan Stoneman. 2023. “The White Knight: Batman as Esoteric Hero for the Dissident Right.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 40. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2023.2387.