Free Playing Fans: Negotiating Fandom And Media In The Digital Age Generated By Paul Booth Kindle

are everywhere: from Fifty Shades of Grey to Veronica Mars, from ComicCon to sitcom, from niche to Geek Chic, fans are becoming the most visible and important audience of the twentyfirst century.
For years the media industries ignored fans and fan activities, but now theyre paying attention and a lot of money to develop a whole new wave of products intended to harness the power of fandom.
What impact do such corporate media efforts have on fan practice

and fan identities And are the media industries actually responding to fans as fans want them to

In Playing Fans, Paul Booth argues that the more attention entertainment businesses pay to fans, the more mainstream fans have become popularized.
But such mainstreaming ignores important creative fan work and tries to channel fandom into activities lucrative for the companies, Offering a new approach to the longstanding debate about the balance between manipulation and subversion in popular culture, the author argues that we can understand the current moment best through the concepts of pastiche and parody.
This sophisticated alternative to conceiving of fans as either dupes of the media industry or rebels against it takes the discussion of “transformative” and “affirmative” fandom in a productive new direction.


With nuanced analyses of the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff, the representations of fans in TV shows like Community and films like Fanboys, SuperWhoLock fans use of gifs, and the similarities in discussions of slash fandom and pornographic parody films, this book reveals how fans borrow media techniques and media industries mimic fan activities.
Just as the entertainment industry needs fans to succeed, so too do fans needand desirethe media, and they represent their love through gif fics, crowdfunding, and digital cosplay.
Everyone who wants to understand how consumers are making themselves at home in the brave new world being built by the contemporary media should read this book.

Paul Boothis a Professor of Media and Cinema Studies Communication Technology in the College of Communication at DePaul University, in downtown Chicago.
He received his Ph. D. in Communication and Rhetoric from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in, He researches New Media, Technology, Popular Culture, and Cultural Studies, He teaches classes in media studies, television narrative, convergence and digital media, popular culture, social media, communication technology, and participatory cultures, He is the editor of Fan Phenomena: Doctor Who, and the author of Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games, Playing Fans: Negotiating Fandom and Media in the Digital Age, Time on TV: Temporal Displacement and Mashup Televisi Paul Boothis a Professor of Media and Cinema Studies Communication Technology in the College of Communication at DePaul University, in downtown Chicago.
He received his Ph. D. in Communication and Rhetoric from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in, He researches New Media, Technology, Popular Culture, and Cultural Studies, He teaches classes in media studies, television narrative, convergence and digital media, popular culture, social media, communication technology, and participatory cultures, He is the editor of Fan Phenomena: Doctor Who, and the author of Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games, Playing Fans: Negotiating Fandom and Media in the Digital Age, Time on TV: Temporal Displacement and Mashup Television and Digital Fandom: New Media Studies.
He has also published in the books The Languages of Doctor Who, Remake Television, Transgression,, American Remakes of British Television, and Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy, He is currently enjoying a cup of coffee, sitelink.