From Comic-Con to Amazon: Fan conventions and digital platforms

Abstract

San Diego Comic-Con is North America’s premiere fan convention and a key site for mediating between media industries and fandom. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Comic-Con to abruptly move its programming onto an array of digital platforms in an apparent “platformization” of the con. Informed by research on fan conventions, media industries, and the platformization of cultural production, this analysis of the online convention argues that Comic-Con was primed for platformization because it is already platform-like. Conventions organize markets, infrastructures, and governance to bring together attendees, media industries, and other “complementors.” Moreover, platform logics were already shaping the convention pre-pandemic in the form of experiential marketing and brand activations designed to capture attendee data. Rather than a radical break, the Comic-Con@Home online convention and in particular Amazon’s Virtual-Con activation are part of a longer process of reconfiguring the relationships between fan conventions, cultural producers, and platforms.