‘This Side of Paradise’: The Role of Online Fandom in the Construction of Leisure, Well-Being and the Lifeworld

Abstract

Leisure has the potential to be transformative For individuals, but the benefits of leisure activities are not necessarily easily achieved. Leisure, in Fact, is as likely to be unfulfilling for individuals, without value for society and instrumental in its application to the social and cultural spaces in which we live. Which leisure activity is valuable socially and morally, or which leisure activities and spaces provide well-being, cannot be asserted a priori to empirical research. But there is a way of understanding the meaning and purpose of leisure that is felt to be worthwhile, for the participants and for researchers investigating that leisure form. In this chapter, I will explore the well-being value of engaging in online leisure spaces around science fiction fandom. In particular, I will use a virtual ethnography of four unofficial Star Trek fan websites to explore the meaning and purpose of individual engagement in debates about the franchise. I will explore the ways in which fans support or critique particular iterations of the franchise, and how they understand the core elements of the franchise's philosophy of future leisure. I will show that watching a television programme, and writing about it on the internet, can actually provide a meaningful, communicative leisure space and form in which individuals can resist the commodification and commercialisation of leisure. In this chapter, I will use the concept of communicative leisure to frame my analysis, so the literature review will focus on the work of Habermas and my own application of Habermas to leisure studies. Before the literature review, however, it is necessary to contextualize the chapter through a brief discussion of the Star Trek science fiction franchise. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)