Repackaging fan culture: The regifting economy of ancillary content models

Abstract

As "Web 2.0 companies speak about creating communities around their products and services, rather than recognizing that they are more often courting existing communities with their own histories, agendas, hierarchies, traditions, and practices" (Jenkins et al. 2009a), media fandom is rapidly being constructed as a fertile battleground where the territory between online gift economies and commodity culture will be negotiated. My concern, as fans and acafans continue to vigorously debate the importance or continued viability of fandom's gift economy and focus on flagrant instances of the industry's attempt to co-opt fandom, is that the subtler attempts to replicate fannish gift economies aren't being met with an equivalent volume of discussion or scrutiny.