Fandom and Fictionality after the Social Web: A Computational Study of AO3

Abstract

Web-based fanfiction is an increasingly important species of modern fiction that is necessary to understanding contemporary literary culture in a multimedia world. Using the Harry Potter fandom on the platform Archive of Our Own (AO3) as our case study, we combine close reading and computational analysis to examine the narrative features of fanfiction and the rhetorical commentary surrounding it. Our approach models a rapprochement between literary studies and fan studies, offering a new data-driven method for analyzing the relationship between traditionally published fiction, web-based fanfiction, and empirical forms of reader response.