Fan geographies and engagement between geopolitics of Brexit, Donald Trump, and Doctor Who on social media

Authors

  • Hannah Carilyn Gunderman University of Tennessee-Knoxville

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2020.1675

Keywords:

Data mining, Facebook, Fandom, Science fiction

Abstract

The 2016 Brexit decision and Donald Trump's election to the US presidency that same year led to a wide variety of social media activity, ranging from visceral anger to unadulterated jubilation. How members of particular fandoms choose to express their emotions regarding a geopolitical event can be filtered through the lens of their fannish enthusiasm. Analysis of Doctor Who-influenced geopolitical engagement on Facebook that uses case studies of both Brexit and Donald Trump's election and 2017 inauguration shows that fans used Doctor Who to cope with emotionally taxing geopolitical events and expressed their anguish through the lens of selected Doctor Who plotlines. This use of social media permits fans to shape a new geopolitical landscape within which they can grapple with their political surroundings as influenced by their fandom.

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Published

2020-03-15

Issue

Vol. 32 (2020): Fandom and Politics

Section

Praxis

License

Copyright (c) 2020 Hannah Carilyn Gunderman

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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