From the fifties with Elvis Presley’s arrival to stages, a new phenomenon appeared: fans. At that time, most fans were young girls who longed for the bones of the King of Rock. Nowadays, sixty years later, fans are still as important or even more than before, but with one difference: today they are also content creators. Not only that, but they are also very active, creative and socially connected. In fact, without this new concept of fan, the great success of media products such as Lost, Harry Potter, Matrix and Twilight would not have been possible.
As the professor Henry Jenkins says, “We are living in an age when changes in communications, storytelling and information technologies are reshaping almost every aspect of contemporary life –including how we create, consume, learn and interact with each other-. A whole range of new technologies enable consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content”.
So, according to Henry Jenkins, we are living in a co
nvergence cultural time where the audience generates contents and the industry responds to these contents. As Jay Rosen says, we are anymore in front of a passive audience, we are now faced with an active audience that wants to join, discuss, create and communicate. We are living in a society where people stay together on the Internet and create fans communities where they can share their passions about what is important for them. Nowadays, we are in front of the Web 2.0 where people can create their own information because they have access to the tools which were for traditional media in the past.
People join communities where can listen, share, collaborate and tell their enthusiasm and passion for something, share plot details and tips on completing game missions. In fact, in these new fan communities, people can create new stories around some characters of their favorite series, produce fan videos or change the content of a show or a game. Just keep in mind that fans have been able to adapt to new technologies which have appeared. Indeed, they have been pioneers in bringing out the best in new media. So, at this point, we should not regard them as a bunch of freaks but as a new way to connect producers and consumers.
Fan communities are very active in the construction of groups that use these new tools: web pages with photos, videos, music, creating radio programs, blogs… They create so much content on the Web that they can be considered not only as content distributors but also as content creators. At the same time, fan communities are also responsible for gathering information on everything related to their series, movies, bands… A clear example occurred with Harry Potter. The fans of the magician, which was invented by J. K. Rowling, wrote hundreds of thousands of alternative stories about the young wizard. On the other hand, Lost fans have created huge communities where they discussed about possible endings of the story. There are some other examples of community fans. For instance, the Rolling Stone magazine published a ranking with the biggest fans communities of musicians. There we can see that at the top of the ranking there are Justin Bieber, Clay Aiken and Katy Perry.
Moreover, fan communities allow the audience to interact directly with media producers and with each other. We are in a new culture of convergence which is a networked culture that connects producers and consumers in increasingly complex ways. Thanks to these communities, cultural industries have found new ways to determine their economic success. Nowadays, the role of the production has been spread to different production areas. And not only that, but also industries can control better what they produce. For example, they are able to know the success of some chapters, some plots or some characters even before the premiere of the chapter. They can find it out asking to the thousands of fans they have in the communities or even better.
Well, now we are in a situation where it is easier than ever to find out what the audience wants. However, at the same time, it is also harder than ever to please this audience as they have more information and a great knowledge of communication tools. Furthermore, they have Internet, such an important tool that let them criticize everything that they dislike. Thus, cultural industries should consider a joint effort between audience and producers to be more successful and operate new stories because fan communities will be more and more important.
Antònia Pozo
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