Fans

First Wave of Fan Research

Henry Jenkins, Camille Bacon-Smith, Roberta Pearson, and John Tulloch are credited with some of the first research of fans. For a while in social scientific research, fans were dismissed as “others.” A binary approach to fan research during this time suggested that researchers either were outside the fan communities or were fans themselves. In the majority of cases, researchers remained outside fan communities. However, these early scholars did little to dissect and break down this binary approach to research. Rather, these researchers studied the activities of fans, including attending conventions, organizing letter-writing campaigns, and collecting memorabilia. They observed that fans do not simply become attached to music but become engaged in these activities as a way of communicating and gathering together with other music fans. Yet, fans in the early part of this approach to research were still regarded as different, outsiders, and others to mainstream society. The strength of this early research was found in the collective nature of music fans. Rather than being considered individuals, fans were regarded as communal, based on their shared adoration for particular types of music, musicians, and other aspects of fandom.

Second Wave of Fan Research

As researchers in the social sciences continued their work on fan studies, they discovered that cultural and social hierarchies, much like those that are prevalent within mainstream society, were also widespread among music fans. They argued that the social and cultural capital of fans' activities and practices mirrored people's own social and cultural everyday choices. However, while researchers in the first wave of fan studies championed inequality in the practices of fans, researchers within the second wave were convinced that fans were actually reinforcing their own versions of social and cultural hierarchies that emulated those within mainstream dominant ideologies. Thus, fans and their practices were the sites of reflection rather than resistance of prevailing norms. Fans were agents of social control, as opposed to dissenters. However, this wave also did not consider human agency in its study of music fans. This research never addressed individual motivations and the enjoyment fans have.

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