Intersectional critique and social media activism in "Sleepy Hollow" fandom
Abstract
We examine fans' social media engagement with the supernatural detective series Sleepy Hollow (2013–17) and argue that fan discourses about the African American police detective Abbie Mills address the representational and institutional treatment of women of color. Sleepy Hollow fans use social media to counter and reshape industry narratives that often cast Black women as archetypes. We explore how fans recreate meaning by writing fan fiction, how fans collectively critique stereotypes on social media, and how fan boycotts challenge media institutions. By charting the evolution of fan responses to Abbie Mills's narrative arc over three seasons, we explore the potential for fan actions to disrupt the television industry. While fan activism is unlikely to alter the industry objectives of a capitalist media system or reconfigure power dynamics between producers and consumers, organized actions can resist institutional efforts to channel fan activity into show promotion.
Copyright (c) 2018 Jacquelyn Arcy, Zhana Johnson

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
TWC Nos. 25 onward are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For an explanation of the journal's reasoning, see the editorial, Copyright and Open Access.
TWC Nos. 1 through 24 are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License with TWC, not the author, retaining copyright. For more information, see the Copyright Section.