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Kean Quest

Abstract

Welcome to the summary of my M.A. thesis website, DichotomyofFan.com, whose full title is, as you saw on the previous page, Dichotomy of Fan: A Snapshot of Interaction, Participation, and Belonging in Modern Fandom Culture. As I believe it would be a bit much to dump everything on the site—there are 15 interviews and that’s only one section—into this summary, I’ll be including a preview of each main section of the project. Speaking of, there are a lot of ways I can (and have) introduced this project to people. Instead of the default Surprised-Pikachu-meme-How-Do-I-Even-Explain-This awkward pause, allow me to use past mini-projects requiring me to explain it in succinct terms that make sense... in order to make it make sense. Everyone is a fan of something. Everyone has their thing—music, shows, books—that influences them, drives them, or simply puts a smile on their face throughout the day. My thesis project started as a result of fan experience—a creative piece after years of influence, interaction, and participation—but soon moved to an exploration of fandom itself. It has become a snapshot of fan communities today as both my peers—through interviews—and I—through autoethnographic accounts—have experienced them, analyzed through the theoretical discussions of researchers like Henry Jenkins and compiled in a series of vignettes (read: rants) on fandom trends, ethics, memes, and lingo.

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