[PDF] The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales For The Digital Age
https://ssurll.com/2suO1c
the first project, festival of fandom, debuted in september 2015 and ran for just under a year. the idea for the festival was a response to the success of a similar event, the fanlore quilt, and a desire for more open and creative engagement with the archive. the idea was to celebrate the archive as a living community, and thereby, provide a place for fans to gather and create.
since the festival finished in october 2016, the focus of that work has shifted to fiction vortex. this project is still in its early stages and its goals and methods are being developed, but it is designed to be a place for people to engage with the archive in creative ways, including by hosting content in their own works. similar to the festival of fandom, the idea for the fiction vortex is to provide a place for fans to gather and create, and in the process, provide a platform for those fans to get noticed and become more widely recognized for their works.
but creating content in the archive is only part of the story. getting that content in front of the community, whether that community is an individual or an entire fandom, is another. at ao3, as a member of the archive team i have been doing some of this work. we are currently developing a new faq page to explain how the archive functions. we are also planning a new faq page to explain how to get involved in contributing content to the archive. and we are planning to expand the faq page to help fans identify ways to promote and use the archive to benefit their own communities.
our work is ongoing, and we have much to learn about how to best engage fans to contribute content. but it is clear to me that our success will depend on how willing we are to listen to what the community wants, and how willing we are to adapt our work to the needs of the community. d8a7b2ff72
it is crucial to understand the nature of the gift economy and then to consider how it might change in order to understand changes in the community over time. it is useful to consider the difference between a gift economy and an economy of exchange that is based on trade or economics. as social theorist harvey molotch suggests, a gift economy is one in which people in a community rely on gifting for their survival, where they receive more than they give. economies of exchange, on the other hand, are based on the exchange of money, property, or other things that are brought to a community for its use. the difference between a gift economy and an economy of exchange is that, whereas economies of exchange are based on the exchange of money, people often give gifts with a specific sense of reciprocity in mind. the gift is a way of linking the giver and the recipient. the giver knows that the recipient will not receive anything if they do not gift, and the recipient knows that the giver will not receive anything if they do not gift. to give is to gift oneself to the recipient. a gift exchange is a way of linking the giver and the recipient, of continuing to gift to the recipient over time, and of ensuring that the giver gets what they give, whereas an economy of exchange is not usually a reciprocal relationship, and the giver or the recipient may not always get what they gift.
i found evidence that communities like the fanfiction community had a strong sense of who they were and where they fit in the larger online community, where community members felt a strong sense of identity and belonging to the group, and i found evidence that community members desired a strong sense of community identity. however, i also found that because of the self-interested actions of some individuals, these communities were often not able to withstand the loss of such individuals. in the case of fanfiction, which is a creative, transformative form of online community art, i found evidence that the death of fanfiction communities in the wake of the rise of the social media platforms, and the rise of the professionalization of fandom, resulted in the cacophony of the fanfiction community, where fanfiction creators were forced out of their own communities and into the professional fandoms of the day.