Expanded Participant Network: Digital Fan Activism Transformed into the Economic and Political Sphere in China

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.200901.024How to use a DOI?

Keywords

fan activism, participatory culture, digital surveillance and censorship

Abstract

Fan activism is getting attention from scholars as its influence is gradually spreading into the economic sphere, even political space. During the outbreak of COVID-19, a movement around actor Xiao Zhan became the hottest issue on Weibo. Rather than just discussing how fanatic those fans were, people had conversations around economy and politics, such as the resistance to capital, the reputation rights of celebrities and the use of civil rights. To illustrate how Xiao Zhan movement was transformed from fandom to the economic and political sphere, this study applied Jenkin’s views of participatory culture while also considering the digital surveillance and censorship in China. With participant observation and interviews, this study sorted out some details of the development process of the movement. Finally, it found that fans, media, businesses and even the state were all embroiled in a network as participants. They expanded the participant network while interacting with each other.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shuang Zhao
AU  - Chenyu Ni
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/09/01
TI  - Expanded Participant Network: Digital Fan Activism Transformed into the Economic and Political Sphere in China
BT  - Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities - Philosophy of Being Human as the Core of Interdisciplinary Research (ICCESSH 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 119
EP  - 124
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200901.024
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.200901.024
ID  - Zhao2020
ER  -