The Negative Power of the Fandom

This post will look at the negativity surrounding online Fandoms.Moving past the more general sharing of videos, images, conversation and hashtags, Fandoms also produce their own version of the film/televsion show. This may be in the form of fan fiction stories, fan art, or well-edited videos posted to YouTube. One danger of Fandoms and their social media posts is that there is the risk that they will come to feel a sense of ownership over their version of the story/characters that they post. While, rightly so, they own what they have created it must not be forgotten that the underlying ownership comes from the original source. 

'When I first wrote about fan fiction, disclaimer statements by fan authors were common and prominent: the author would state that she did not own the copyrigt in the characters and situations, name the entity that did (or the original creator, who is usually not the copyright owner), and sometimes add a request that the copyright owner not sue her. While I have not conducted a scientific survery, my strong impression is that disclaimers are less common today.' (Gray 2007)

For example while a Fandom member may write a fan fiction piece where the plotline is entirely their own, and then publish it to be shared on Tumblr. The characters used are not their own but character from their Fandom source. This can result in a very complicated situation for copyright laws and, as illustrated in the extract above, the growing rise in popularity of Fandoms and Fandom posts has resulted in this fact being overlooked. 

While a Fandom may exist and positively promote their Fandom over social media, there are of course those who existance results only in negative publicity across social media. Nikki De Graeve of Entertainment Outlook says;

'The latest trend is the frankly appalling behaviour of not only tweeting destructive criticisms , but also attacking creators and actors on a personal level. They set up hate groups, hate blogs and twitter accounts with the solely function to tweet abuse and hateful messages. Ranging from discrimination, homophobic attacks, making ungrounded accusations that a certain actor is homophobic, insulting actors and writers because the storylines aren’t going their way or their OTP won’t be canon. Lines between fiction and reality get so blurred'

Like the sad reality of most things, there are people out there who chose to ignore social boundaries and social media platforms do provide them with an easy and simple means of spreading hate and negativity. 

Sources and Further Reading
Booth Paul, Digitial Fandom: New Media Studies, Peter Lang Publishing 2010
Gray Jonathon, Fandom: Identities and Communities in a MEdiated World, NYU Press 2007