An approach to online fan persona

Abstract

One application of the emerging field of persona studies is to the analysis of online fan persona. Indeed, there already exists a deep tradition of attention to fan persona within fan studies. A persona-inflected fan studies involves attention to the shift from representational media to a presentational media paradigm and invites questions about the contemporary experience of the public presentation of the online self as a fan. In combining the object and persona lens, an approach emerges that takes into account the agency of the individual in its negotiation with various collectives as well as human and nonhuman actors in the networks of online identity performances. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies are useful in exploring the fan persona as it registers indexically and intercommunicatively in the constitution of public activity in digitally networked environments.