Transformation of Fan Culture Under the Influence of Social Media

Abstract

Nowadays, fandom and fan culture have step into the eyes of the public gradually. Many people are curious about how this subculture carries weight to society. In this article, we mainly focus on discussing two problems. The first is how the development of social media and technology influences fandom. The second is how the fan culture influence back to the economy and society. For the importance, our study could help with the further study on fan culture, social media, explore their relationship, and help the audience have a better understanding of fandom and fan culture and their working principle under the surface. The method we choose to solve the problem is literature review. Through reviewing journal articles searched from google scholar, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and some secondary data from media reports. And we find that fan culture can be considered participatory culture, which was promoted by the development of social media (development of technology pushes the change of social media). And as the participatory culture grows, fans change their roles and actively influence back society. Our general findings are that emerging new media promote the role change of fans, push the subculture to stand on the stage of mainstream culture, and become a stream that cannot be ignored in the social economy. Our work can be used in entertainment media firms, which helps them have a better acquaintance with their targeted customer and helps the relative department govern the fandom market.