1. Introduction
[1.1] It is well established that social media platforms—websites or apps on which online users interact with one another and post various types of content, including text, audio, and video—are "popular way[s] for users to connect, communicate, and share content" (Mislove et al. 2011, 554) and can become populated by fan works and fan activity (Pearson 2010; Jenkins, Ford, and Green 2013; Chew 2018). In this article, I focus on how fans use social media to demonstrate and participate in fandom and what forms these demonstrations and participations take.
[1.2] I aim to understand how specific features of social media platforms can impact and inform the decisions of fans to share different forms of content in different places. I argue that the types of fan works that appear on different platforms are different and that these differences are caused at least in part by the strengths (and limitations) of each platform, both in terms of the technical scopes of the platforms and the ways they are used as platforms for specific communities and community interests.
[1.3] Fan studies literature covers several types of content posted online by fans. Scholars examine how fandom communities can communicate and coordinate to enable real-life action, including activism—Mattia (2018) examines One Direction fans' antibullying campaigns in the early 2010s, for example, while Chew (2018) examines the fairly common circumstance of fans petitioning to have TV shows renewed after untimely cancellation. Morris (2017) also examines the influence of media platforms on fandom, focusing on music streaming services, specifically Spotify. He notes that traditional fan studies has been "more visually than sonically oriented" (356) and that if platforms "mediate…fandom, media scholars would do well to question in what ways fandom manifests on these platforms" (358); I seek to do exactly that. Askwith, Lundi, and Romano (2017, 389) also suggest that fans on specific fandom forums are more likely to be "reasonably invested in the topic of the forum" whereas on Twitter, "it's harder to assume a consistent level of commitment and investment from all participants"—leading to those who do post doing so because their desires are too strong to ignore.
[1.4] The ability to be a fan around other like-minded people (fandom, as opposed to independent fanship as defined by Chadborn, Edwards, and Reysen [2017]), is often cited by fans themselves as a positive consequence of online fan spaces. Fiske (1992, 38) notes that "many fans report that their choice of their object of fanship was determined at least as much by the oral community they wished to join as by any of its inherent characteristics." While Fiske could not possibly have comprehended the possible ramifications of digital expansion of fandom and fan behavior, his conclusion is supported by multiple recent studies. Chew (2018, ¶ 1.2), for example, points out that many fans report their fandom communities as feeling "like a family." Kompare (2017, 108) also notes how many fandoms have unique "codes, rituals, and media" embedded within their community-specific content. This may help further create a sense of belonging to a special community. This sense of community can in turn inflate and extend ideas, discussions, and theories that might otherwise have remained undeveloped: for example, Christensen and Jensen (2018) study the "JohnLock" conspiracy born out of the BBC's Sherlock (2010–17). This escalated to the point of fans eventually becoming convinced that the show's final season, which disappointed many, was not in fact a real ending and that a fourth secret episode—which would confirm the romantic pairing—had been filmed and would be aired unexpectedly.
[1.5] The use (and value) of anonymity online and in fan spaces is also of interest and may be impacted by how different platforms are commonly used. Brennan (2014, 369–70) notes that anonymity in fandom is "valued…to the extent that to reveal your identity is to commit 'anonfail.'" His argument is rooted in the very specific subculture of slash fan fiction. Anonymity in this context protects those who create slash works who may be subjected to ridicule or even threatening behavior as a result of their creations. On the other hand, Giles (2017, 446) provides some insight into why other fans may choose to forgo such protection. He suggests that on Twitter, fans "can hold reasonable expectations that their favourite celebrities might reply to a tweet." Studying interactions between crime authors and their fans, he makes note of one example of what he calls "fishing" (454): after a brief exchange with an author, a fan attempts to change the subject to their own work. The original author ignores the new topic, but another author replies to the thread themselves, demonstrating opportunism on the part of both the fan and the second author.
[1.6] I analyzed a sample of social media posts made by fans of Murdoch Mysteries (2008–) on three different platforms: Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter. Murdoch Mysteries is a Canadian Edwardian-era murder mystery TV show featuring fictional Detective William Murdoch, adapted from the Detective Murdoch novels by Maureen Jennings. This fandom was chosen for multiple reasons. First, its fanbase is dedicated yet fairly small, making it manageable for a project of this scale. Also, the fanbase is global, as the show broadcasts internationally, and the study took place during a run of new episodes, increasing the likelihood of fan activity. I am also personally a fan of the show, albeit a mostly nonparticipatory one. I had noticed that fan conversations online seemed to differ between platforms, giving me a starting point for this study. Initial investigation of the fandom also suggested that its fan groups are unlike those often studied: all three subgroups demonstrated generally positive fan behaviors and interactions.
[1.7] I discuss further literature on each of the platforms to understand their user experiences, demographics, and how they are used by fans, followed by a thematic analysis of samples of content posted to each platform within a set time period. I have referred to posts within these samples as social media content instead of fan works, because they include posts by the show's own accounts and posts that are not directly linked to fan behavior or identity, as well as because fan works is itself used as an analytical category. However, the majority of the content studied is considered to be both content and fan work. I argue that while fandom activities and fan work can appear to exist in similar ways between fandoms, content itself is strongly impacted by the platforms on which fans choose to post it.
2. Methodology
[2.1] The base methodology I used was inductive thematic content analysis—a technique that allows for identification of "what is common to the way a topic is talked or written about" (Braun and Clarke 2012, 57). Thematic analysis has some history in fan studies; Waysdorf (2020) records using it in her doctoral project about film tourism, while Chalk (2022) used it for her study of reggae online fan communities. I chose it for this study to allow for quantitative analysis of each sample that could then be compared to examine the similarities and differences between platforms.
[2.2] Samples of posts from Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter were collated based on different criteria. The criteria used for each platform were different because users' experiences on each platform are informed by the platform's specific features; while the analysis was comparative, some unique sample categories for each platform were formed by necessity. For example, tweets that used the show's requested hashtag (#MurdochMonday) were assigned to a category that naturally did not include any Reddit or Tumblr posts. The samples were collected and sorted by date. The information was then input into SPSS Statistics, where posts were categorized. These categories were not predetermined but created as and when they were required. I chose this method to avoid unduly influencing the results by attempting to fit posts within too strict a set of categories or by limiting the potential scope of the findings and so that results specific to one platform could be categorized more specifically. I assigned individual posts to as many categories as needed, and almost all of the posts were eventually assigned to more than one category. The post that fit the largest number of categories was a Tumblr post assigned to eight categories, and I created a total of eighty-one unique categories for a total sample of 3,552 posts (a full list of categories is included in the appendix).
[2.3] All three samples covered the same time period: from February 22 to March 21, 2021. This covered the last three episodes of the show's fourteenth season, which ended in Canada on March 15, 2021. The sample period continued for a week following the final episode to include reactions to the final episode as well as to the season as a whole. I did not interact with any fans, so the samples were taken while logged out of my own accounts on the three platforms to ensure that the posts were not hidden or locked in any way—although it is possible some posts have been deleted since then, as is the nature of social media. I made the decision not to engage with fans directly largely due to the time constraints of the research, which I completed over approximately nine months from January to September 2021. Given fewer constraints of this kind, engaging with the fans in question would certainly have allowed for deeper understanding of their decision-making. Because of these constraints, I could not include other platforms on which Murdoch Mysteries fans congregate—Facebook and YouTube, for example. On Facebook, fan groups (both in general and for this show in particular) are often private groups that require an account and agreement to the group's rules before users can access the group. Facebook accounts are also far more likely to use fans' real names and other identifying information, which I specifically aimed to avoid becoming aware of. YouTube was not included because its profile (and user experience) as a platform is far removed from the rest of the platforms studied.
[2.4] As I made no contact with fans and the posts studied were published on publicly available platforms, this research was not required by my institution to obtain ethical approval. Ethical decision-making in fan studies, however, is often more complex: Bennett (2017, 37) notes that anonymity is a "particularly important and key consideration when conducting fan studies research," and Busse and Hellekson (2012) note that people who publish fan works (of any kind) online often do so with strong expectations of privacy, regardless of the technically public forum they inhabit. Many scholars, in order to respect this expectation, have employed a policy of obtaining explicit consent from fans they choose to quote in their work (see Busse 2017; Freund and Fielding 2013, 332). Following difficulty with reaching users whose posts had become inaccessible (due to the fans changing their usernames, for example) and in the interest of protecting these fans in the absence of explicit consent to publication, I decided not to quote directly any of the posts in the sample nor to include any pseudonym or date information. This way, fans are protected from readers using information from this article to search any of the three platforms and potentially discover the posts or any identifying information about the fans themselves. This is not considered to have significantly impacted the findings or conclusions of the research, which are far more concerned with establishing broad patterns of behavior than with attempting to explain the decisions behind these behaviors—and any slight impact is considered acceptable, even necessary, in the interest of protecting these fans from the potential harm of "outsiders" (Busse and Hellekson 2012, 39) discovering or identifying them.
[2.5] The Reddit sample is taken from the subreddit /r/murdochmysteries. According to the subreddit itself, it had approximately 1,800 members in March 2021, with an average of between five and thirty users online at any given moment, depending on time of day. The sample included every main post as well as comments on those posts that fit within the time period but did not include comments posted within the dates specified but on older posts. I made this decision because I felt that categorizing comments without the specific context of what they were replying to would not be useful from an analytical perspective. Comments were far more prevalent than main posts within the sample, making up 482 (93 percent) of the 519 posts.
[2.6] The Tumblr sample took posts using the tag #murdoch mysteries but did not include posts that included the name of the show in the body of the post but not in the tags. This was mainly due to the limitations of the Tumblr search function, which make searching for anything other than a particular tag very difficult. I assigned categories based on both main body and tags. The sample included 927 posts. For the Twitter sample, I searched for posts using the hashtag #MurdochMysteries. It contained 2,106 tweets. The sample included quote tweets but did not include replies to other tweets, as within the time limits of the study, I felt these would have been too difficult to analyze in their proper context. The samples from both Tumblr and Twitter were taken from a single site search of each platform, both accessed on June 28, 2021. The limited nature of the search algorithms on both sites means these samples likely do not contain every single post that was made within the time period studied; I considered this an acceptable limitation given the scale of the research.
[2.7] The samples included in this study were, to a great extent, all from English-speaking fans (only 0.8 percent of the tweets were in a language other than English, with no non-English Reddit or Tumblr posts). These fans may not all be monolingual or of Western cultures, but based on the known demographics of at least two of the platforms (Anderson [2015] states that Reddit's demographic is, in the majority, male and American; Mislove et al. [2011, 554] note that at the time of their data collection between 2006 and 2009 "the plurality of [Twitter] users…are in US"), it can be considered likely that their behavior online is more representative of Western, even specifically North American, fan culture than of global or non-Western fan culture. This suggests a need for further research into how both nationality and ethnicity may impact fan behavior online. As far as is possible to tell, only one fan could be identified as posting on more than one of the platforms, through a post made on Tumblr referencing the fan's ownership of a Twitter fan page. This is not conclusive but means that the study cannot provide an understanding of how the same fans may act differently across platforms. This is something that is certainly worthy of further study (ideally with direct communication with fans themselves).
3. Platform review
[3.1] Before categorizing any posts, I explored the platforms in depth—largely through examination of the literature surrounding each one, though I also spent time briefly exploring the practical uses and limits of each platform as a user. While I have accounts on all three platforms, I rarely make posts myself, and therefore my understanding of how they are used is limited to the small corners I tend to inhabit, with limited or no interaction with other users. Because of this, I needed to take time to more fully familiarize myself with the platforms. This allowed me to begin to understand why certain features of each platform may be considered better or worse for different types of fan work. This exploration was influenced by Alberto (2020, ¶ 3.1), who discusses the possibilities stemming from the intersection between fan and platform studies while noting that "a platform's visibility and accessibility to nonusers…influence what kinds of fans and fan works can be found there."
[3.2] Subreddits are individual communities on Reddit dedicated to a particular topic or person. The majority of these subreddits are public: users can see, post, and interact with users on the subreddit without joining it. Subreddits often have a list of rules—the extent of which depends on the subreddit and its moderators—governing members' behavior over and above the site's own rules. In this, r/murdochmysteries immediately differs from other forums—even other fan-populated ones—as it does not have any additional rules. It does, however, include multiple links to official Murdoch Mysteries websites, viewing platforms, and information on how to watch the show outside of Canada. It also has only two moderators, who seemingly believe their users require little outside intervention (this is borne out by my sample, in which the moderators are referenced only once, and they do not themselves post in that capacity).
[3.3] Reddit's demographic is mainly male and American (Anderson 2015), but there is no easy way of gaining more specific demographic information for the specific subreddit in question. Within a subreddit, users can post links, text posts, or images, as well as comment on other users' posts. All interactions can be up- or downvoted by other users. These votes give or take away karma, an algorithmically determined Reddit-specific currency. Users are encouraged by the platform to post engaging content for other users to interact with, while some subreddits are locked to those below a specific karma level. The existence of smaller subreddits where karma is less likely to be earned suggests, however, that the currency has not become so ubiquitous as to be users' main priority on the site. Massanari (2015, 3) describes Reddit as functioning somewhat like a game, in which the goal is to "accrue as much positive karma as possible by submitting appropriate, interesting original content and engaging in the community's conversation." The building-up of karma by users deemed to be the most original or interesting leads to Reddit's structure being "visibly hierarchical," as those posts with the most karma are often more strongly promoted by the site's algorithm (Lynch 2020, 1).
[3.4] An important aspect of the Reddit user experience is the existence of content moderators, volunteers who "create and enforce subreddit-specific rules detailing acceptable content and community comment etiquette" (Lynch 2020, 4). Lynch goes on to detail how this demonstrates inherent gatekeeping within a fan community: moderators enforce rules by removing posts and comments or, in extreme situations, banning users completely—all without input from other users. Moderators, however, are not responsible for the site as a whole, and each subreddit creates and chooses its own rules to fit the content they host. While Reddit does have general terms of service—including bans on harassment, bullying, doxing, and sexual content involving minors—Massanari (2015, 6) refers to the site's "reputation as an 'anything goes' space," which has led to both social and academic comparisons with far-right website 4chan (e.g., Mittos et al. 2020), as well as raising questions about both the legality and ethics of some subreddits.
[3.5] Tumblr is an online blogging service. Of the three platforms I studied, Tumblr is the most instinctively connected to fandom activity—Stein (2017, 86) pointedly describes it as "fandom's home base." The site is designed to allow for multiple blogs on the same account (unlike Reddit or Twitter, where users must make separate accounts to have multiple access points), which means that some users have separate blogs for each topic or fandom interest. Identifying fan work on Tumblr is more difficult than on Reddit, where the site's own interface enforces divisions. Tumblr users are encouraged (but not mandated) to tag their posts to sort them and allow them to be more easily found by other users. Having an account allows users to follow particular tags, meaning posts under those tags will appear on a user's dashboard even if they are not following the poster. Searching for a particular tag reveals how many followers that tag has: #murdoch mysteries had approximately one thousand followers at the time I collated my sample, although it is likely there are people active in the Tumblr community who do not specifically follow the tag and instead follow particular show-related blogs or make their own posts.
[3.6] Once posts have been made, users can like or reply to them or reblog them. Within the sample of Murdoch Mysteries posts, replies were fairly uncommon (although I didn't include them in the sample, I did make note of them, and very few posts had more than a single reply—if that). Where they do occur, though, they are generally used to communicate in a much more direct manner than user posts, which tend not to be directed at any specific person. When reblogging, users can add to the post, including text, images, or videos, or add their own tags. Posts can be added to a user's post queue, allowing them to be posted at a time where the user is not online. Tags are user-chosen and can be made as long and complex as a user chooses. Unlike Twitter, neither spaces nor full stops interfere with a tag (although a comma will end a tag). The ease and lack of rules surrounding tags leads to them being used not just organizationally but also expressively (Stein 2017). Posts can be deleted or edited at any point after publication, but reblogs of the original post remain unchanged. If a user deletes the blog that they posted a particular post on, the original post is removed forever, but reblogged versions of the post will remain accessible.
[3.7] Stein (2017, 89) also argues that contrary to popular belief, Tumblr is not inherently a community platform: she states that "substantive conversations…happen out of fan negotiation with the limits of the interface"—rather than being aided by it. The user interface of the site includes infinite flow, which the site calls "endless scrolling": posts automatically load as the user scrolls down their dashboard. Tumblr is colloquially known as a fandom platform, and many fans may instinctively seek out a fandom's Tumblr community before any other.
[3.8] The third platform is Twitter, which (at time of writing) imposes a 280-character limit on user posts. Twitter, like Tumblr, uses hashtags to help organization of posts into topic categories. Also like Tumblr, these are not compulsory, and not every user chooses to include them. Unlike Tumblr, the creation of hashtags is more limited, and users are not given any sort of prompt to add them. For the purposes of this study, the Murdoch Mysteries fandom on Twitter has been identified using the hashtag #MurdochMysteries. Twitter allows users to follow both hashtags and—within certain constraints—particular topics. However, both functions are limited, and the site provides no suggestion of how many followers a particular hashtag or topic has at any time. Topics are algorithmically generated by Twitter: tweets may be automatically assigned to a topic, but these assignments are not always entirely reliable, and there is little to no transparency into the process. Twitter is the only platform included in this study on which Murdoch Mysteries, as well as many of the people involved in its production, has an official presence. Twitter's demographic, like Reddit's, consists of majority male users (Mislove et al. 2011).
[3.9] The use of Twitter by fans and for fandom-related purposes in some ways fits Weller and colleagues' (2014, xxx) assertion that uses of the platform range from a "source of real-time information and a place for debate" right down to "mundane expressiveness and interaction…as a journal of [users'] thoughts and everyday activities." Especially in larger fandoms, discussion and debate can easily overtake Twitter's Trending Topics, while other fans' comments and observations about their fandom are intended only to be seen by their immediate circle. Recuero, Amaral, and Monteiro (2012) note that many cases of artificial trending topics are hashtags created in fan wars—competitions, either between two or more groups of fans or between fans and antifans of a particular object. While the Murdoch Mysteries fan group on Twitter did engage in tweeting behavior that contributed to artificial trends, no fan-war behavior was noted within the sample.
4. Findings
[4.1] With different categories appearing in each platform sample, the analysis is not directly comparative. However, I was still able to determine several differences in the types of content posted on each platform. Fans were more likely to request help finding ways to watch the show on Reddit but more likely to seek interactions with show personnel on Twitter. On Tumblr, I found far more interaction between fans specifically about their fandom.
[4.2] With only 519 posts, the Reddit sample is the smallest. Massanari (2015, 3) notes that Reddit "serves as an aggregation platform, which means that most content on the site is linked to rather than directly hosted" by the site. However, this is not reflected in the Murdoch Mysteries subreddit: only 1.9 percent of the posts in the sample contained external links, with the majority being short- or long-form text posts and comments. There were also a number of posts asking or informing fans how to access the show—arguably providing examples of what Kompare (2017, 107) calls "fan curators." Of this sample, 5.9 percent o included information on how fans could watch the latest episodes, often in the context of suggesting options to other fans. This was notable partly because the subreddit itself includes access guides for fans, so posts asking these questions could perhaps be considered superfluous and possibly speak to fans seeking genuine connection or information from a seemingly more trustworthy source than the subreddit sidebar.
[4.3] The Tumblr sample consists of 927 posts. I assigned categories based on both main body content and the tags that had been included. This platform plays a large role in the discussion, sharing, and soliciting of fan work. Of the posts in this sample, 5.1 percent either referenced or were themselves fan work (I define this category as fan fiction, fan art, and other specifically creative output) of some kind. Where posts included references to a specific fan work created by someone users consider a peer, they were all positive—there were no posts referencing fan creativity in a negative light. Some fans even responded to upsetting storylines in the show by requesting—in a very general way—ideas for fan fiction narratives that would solve whatever issue they had with the canonical story.
[4.4] Tumblr is also the place where fans are apparently more likely to post about sexuality—while there were multiple tweets referencing the many relationship pairings in the show, the Tumblr sample also included many posts discussing the sexuality of characters outside of these relationships. Ten percent of the posts included some reference to sexuality, mostly in the context of either of the show's two significant queer relationships: Dr. Emily Grace and Lillian Moss, who both left the show in season 9, and Detective Llewellyn Watts and Jack Walker, whose relationship—and relationship struggles—made up a significant side-plot throughout season 14. I created a separate category for this relationship (known as "jackwatts") due to its prevalence in the sample, as well as to differentiate between posts about the pairing specifically and posts about sexuality more generally. This category contained 12.5 percent of the posts (table 1). Tumblr itself has certainly tried to cultivate a reputation for this type of discussion; a (controversial) May 4, 2021, tweet claimed that it was the "queerest place on the internet" (https://twitter.com/tumblr/status/1389602794848415744?s=19). While the tweet received backlash as a result of the site's 2018 ban on content deemed not suitable for work (NSFW, generally used to describe pornographic content), the increased number of posts about the topic on this platform compared to the others studied suggests at least in part that its reputation is not unfounded.
| Number | Percentage | |
| Sexuality | 92 | 10.0% |
| Jackwatts | 116 | 12.5% |
[4.5] Another way in which sexuality was discussed was through fans' own headcanons, a category that contained 2.8 percent of the Tumblr sample. The term "headcanons" refers to theories and suggestions that are not confirmed in the text itself but are believed to be hinted at. These are often about characters' sexualities or suspected neurodivergences—both of which are, as themes, often underrepresented in mainstream media; both Detective Watts and title character William Murdoch are considered by some fans to be autistic, while Constable George Crabtree is often seen as bisexual. Other headcanons take the form of (occasionally insincere) suggestions for future plot points. The "jackwattsraisebaby" headcanon, which arose following the reveal that Walker's newly engaged fiancée was expecting a child, was a particularly prominent example of these within the sample.
[4.6] A number of the posts also demonstrated Stein's (2017) argument regarding the expressive use of tags. A small number of the posts included tags where punctuation did not follow strict grammatical convention. Where and how sentences are broken into separate tags creates a particular rhythmic communication seemingly removed from standard English grammar; the effects of this can be seen through the stylization of individual blog pages, where users can choose to have tags separated by full stops or other punctuation marks instead of the standard # symbol. This provides a good visual understanding of how tags are separated to create the same effect in the reader as does a comma in plain text.
[4.7] The Twitter sample was the largest, with 2,106 tweets. The show has an official Twitter account, as do several of its stars and showrunner Peter Mitchell. Kehrberg (2015, 87) discusses the experiences of celebrities on Twitter, suggesting that they must draw a balance between appearing authentic, communicating through Twitter the same way their followers do, and being "always available for a thrilling 'Follow' or 'Retweet.'" While many of the actors in Murdoch Mysteries would be categorized as celebrities with regards to their personal Twitter accounts, there is some evidence that the show's official Twitter page has also been granted some level of desirability. This suggests that Kehrberg's suggestion holds true even where the object of fanship is not a single celebrity but a piece of media such as a movie or TV show.
[4.8] The parameters of the Twitter sample meant that every tweet included would have contributed to a potential trend of the #MurdochMysteries hashtag. However, it also included the tweets by @CBCMurdoch asking fans to use the hashtag in order to encourage this trend. While this speaks to the appeal of a TV show fans enjoy becoming a trending topic across the internet, it could also be seen to showcase what Recuero, Amaral, and Monteiro (2012) refer to as artificial trends, created when groups of people coordinate specific key words or hashtags in order to make a trend appear stronger than it would otherwise be. Recuero, Amaral, and Monteiro do not make any distinction between artificial trends started by fans and those started by the object of fanship itself, but it should not be assumed that the artificiality of the trend makes its fans any less passionate. Such trends, while perhaps implying a larger group of fans than truly exist, also speak to highly motivated groups of fans wishing to record their fandom online in visible ways. The trending topic feature also inspired an interesting category that does not appear on either of this study's other two platforms: posts about an episode the user had not yet seen.
[4.9] The posts made by the show's official account could also be seen as similar to the actions noted by Brown (2018) wherein TV show creators and producers direct fans to social media by including hashtags on the screen at particularly interesting, emotive, or controversial events within the narrative. While this is a much more invasive technique (compared to @CBCMurdoch's tweets, which fans would have to be looking for), they are both examples of official sources driving fan interactions online.
[4.10] Other types of content appeared across all three platforms, albeit in different proportions. All three platforms generally attract high levels of specific episode and character discussions, including theorizing about what might happen next in the series (table 2). Post volume increased on days when new episodes aired (especially on Twitter, speaking to the site's reputation as a real-time forum) but did not drop off completely in the days between episodes (figure 1). This supports Matt Hills's (2017, 20) argument that fandom activity is in many senses "always-on." He notes that fans find a number of ways to fill the time between installments, including re-viewing and creating or consuming fan-made content—both of which can be seen in the Murdoch Mysteries fandom (indeed, while the number of posts inspired by a rewatched episode cannot be accurately counted, such posts make up a minimum of 1.7 percent of the Reddit posts, 0.5 percent of the Tumblr posts, and 0.2 percent of the tweets.)
| Tumblr | ||||||
| Number | Percentage | Number | Percentage | Number | Percentage | |
| Episode discussion | 125 | 29.5% | 325 | 13.8% | 1605 | 78.4% |
| Specific character | 124 | 29.25% | 398 | 16.9% | 833 | 40.7% |
Figure 1. Date dispersal of posts across Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter from February 22 to March 21 2021, created by Sam Binnie using Microsoft Excel from the data collected in the study.
[4.11] Fans can also, as Owain Gwynne (2014, 80) points out, use time between episodes to engage in fan activities. These can include fan creation but also theorizing about future plot points, both seriously and satirically (table 3). This did occur in this study, with 0.7 percent of tweets, 5.7 percent of Tumblr posts, and 10.4 percent of Reddit posts categorized as plot theories. It is notable that this, unlike many other categories, is far more prevalent on Reddit than elsewhere, perhaps due to Reddit's long-form, discussion-heavy format. Reddit also provides a somewhat more collaborative experience for fans who wish to engage in discussion.
| Tumblr | ||||||
| Number | Percentage | Number | Percentage | Number | Percentage | |
| Plot theories | 44 | 10.4% | 52 | 5.7% | 2 | 0.1% |
| Plot suggestions | 14 | 3.3% | 34 | 3.7% | 15 | 0.7% |
[4.12] All three platforms allow users to tag each other in posts. Users being tagged are generally notified by the site that they have been tagged in a post. The practice was widely more prevalent on Twitter than elsewhere, with 35.8 percent of the tweets including at least one tag—compared to 0.2 percent and 0.9 percent on Reddit and Tumblr respectively. Of the 733 tweets that included a user tag, 85 percent tagged the official Murdoch Mysteries account, @CBCMurdoch. In many of these posts, the tag seemed to be used more as a way of ensuring the tweet remains within the Murdoch Mysteries fan group than in the hope that the account might notice and react to it. Of course, tagging an official account is not possible on the other two platforms (while there is an account on Tumblr that claims to be the show's official account, it has not been active since July 2020 and did not appear in the sample studied here, neither through its own posts nor through other users' interactions with it). On Reddit and Tumblr, tagging of other users occurred either to speak directly to the person being tagged or to let the user know they were being talked about.
5. Conclusions
[5.1] The analysis of a total 3,552 social media posts across three platforms provides interesting insight into what types of content fans choose to put on different platforms. Twitter and Tumblr can both be described as microblogging services, enforcing or encouraging short-form posts—as Lee and Goh (2013, 475) point out about Twitter, "the restrictive character limit of tweets prevents elaboration." Reddit, on the other hand, both allows and encourages long-form posts, discussions, and discourse. The sample collected from Reddit does not appear to support the evidence found about Reddit in other work, namely Massanari (2013, 2015) and Mittos and colleagues (2020); my conclusions do not support the arguments that Reddit is used solely for the purpose of gaining karma or because it is a site that allows more potentially controversial content than do other, more moderated sites. This may be due to the constraints of my research, but it is also likely to be caused at least in part by the dearth of study into the fandom side of the platform.
[5.2] The Tumblr sample, which contained many references or links to fan works, provided some interesting insight into how fans view visibility within fandom communities, as well as how the site is used to promote and distribute fan work. Tumblr is also a site known for its fandoms, to such a degree that many of its users simply adopt new fandoms through the site without necessarily wanting to look elsewhere. Almost all of the literature on Tumblr focuses on fan activities, and my results do appear to correspond with previous work.
[5.3] The content posted on Twitter, on the other hand, consisted primarily of live-tweets and attempts at visible interaction with the show. This suggests a significant distinction between these platforms and how fans use them. Twitter appears to be less fan-oriented than Tumblr, suggesting that fans who do not consider themselves a part of fandom may gravitate toward it—or already use it—even as they take part in activities that can be considered fan activities. Twitter has been the subject of much academic study, but much of this comes from media studies, not fan studies scholars. However, the results of this study are consistent with the literature that does exist within fan studies. While it does highlight a fandom that appears to use the site in a positive manner, seemingly refusing to engage in fan wars or NSFW content (which is not banned on the platform yet did not appear in my sample), this is arguably an artificial trend created by not including post replies on Twitter and Tumblr, as this is where disagreement is perhaps most likely to occur.
[5.4] All three samples prompted categories that were unique to their specific platforms. This alone suggests that different platforms do encourage different forms of content and posting behavior. While most of the content categories contained posts from all three samples, the significant differences in general content do support the argument that fans choose to create and share different types of content on different platforms. This study, which did not interact with any of the fans whose posts appeared in its research samples, does not provide enough information to examine why this occurs, but further study in this area would certainly be useful in expanding fan studies literature. The results found here could lead to other new avenues of interest as well: an interesting dynamic that appeared in the Tumblr sample, for example, is the specific communication and grammatical styles that exist on Tumblr, which could possibly lead to a different understanding of grammar and syntax and therefore influence communication, both online and in the real world. Also pertinent could be how, when, and why fans choose to tag other users in their posts and what is gained through this action.
[5.5] While I chose a time period during a season broadcast to ensure enough posts to analyze, it would be interesting to examine posts during the hiatus between seasons, in order to gain a more advanced sense of how Gwynne's (2014) fan-made time manifests itself within this (or any) particular fandom. The study may also have been improved by using a larger sample in general; I was only able to analyze four weeks' worth of posts. Examining fandom activity over a year, or even longer, could provide a much greater and more significant set of results. I could also have decided to include replies to Twitter and Tumblr posts, both to increase sample size and to understand more clearly the interactive aspects of both platforms. It is also important to acknowledge that while case studies provide good opportunities to examine fans and fandom behavior, the Murdoch Mysteries fandom cannot be assumed to be representative of all or even any other fandoms. It is also likely that the online fandom does not make up even a simple majority of the show's fans and viewers.
[5.6] I believe that this study, despite its constraints, adds interesting insight to fan studies discourse. The comparison of a single fandom across platforms has only rarely been the subject of extensive study, and I consider it to have potential use for both creative and digital media industries. The types of content fans choose to put online and where may be interesting to the creators and moderators of those platforms, and it adds a mostly new dynamic to the academic literature within the fan studies discipline. It may also be interesting to media creators to understand the potential impact fandom can have. The impact of this has already be seen in some areas; One Direction fans, for example, were carefully watched during the band's lifetime, leading to feedback that had the power to "literally change the public behaviour or narrative of the group" (Carmona 2020, ¶ 3.2). I am also adding to the relatively unexplored intersection between fan studies and media studies by investigating how fans use social media platforms to undertake fan activities that, prior to the development of Web 2.0, existed in an analogue form. The study of a fan community on Reddit, in particular, is an interesting and necessary addition to the literature surrounding the platform. Overall, my findings certainly support the argument that fan work posted online differs in significant ways between social media platforms.
6. Acknowledgments
[6.1] I am enormously grateful to Dr Rhys Jones for his invaluable support and feedback throughout the course of this research.