Virtual Community and Popular Culture: Expertise and Authority in Fan Discourse

Nottingham Guest Speaker Series

Generation Net: Arts and Culture in the 21st Century
University of Nottingham

'Virtual Community and Popular Culture: Expertise and Authority in Fan
Discourse'
Professor Chris Atton

Thursday 21st May 2009, 6pm-7pm followed by refreshments
Room A18 (Arts Graduate Centre) Trent Building, University of Nottingham.

The third speaker in our interdisciplinary guest speaker series, Professor Chris Atton, will be speaking on Thursday 21st May.

Admission is free. All are welcome. To book a place at the talk, please email Iain Smith at iainrobertsmith@gmail.com

Abstract

Studies of popular culture have increasingly turned to the amateur media practices of fans to understand how ordinary people make sense of their own pleasures. A primary site for this research has been the printed fanzine, a magazine written, edited and published by fans themselves. With the movement of much fan writing to the internet, what can we learn about the key notions of identity and community, often argued to be at the heart of fan culture? This paper will explore the nature of internet-based fan discourse and will look particularly at how fans’ engagement with their objects of desire – and with each other – have developed in an on-line environment.

Biography

Chris Atton is Professor of Media and Culture in the School of Arts and Creative Industries at Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh. His research specialises in alternative media, and he is the author of four books, including Alternative Media (Sage, 2002) and Alternative Journalism (Sage, 2008), as well as over fifty articles and book chapters. He is particularly interested in questions of democratic access to the media and the social value of participatory media. He has made special studies of fanzines, the media of new social movements and popular music journalism.

Attendance is Free. All are Welcome. Please RSVP to iainrobertsmith@gmail.com