Introduction
A report by Fandom Forward about Fan Activism which is the practice of organizing fans of pop culture for social change.
FANDOM is a human instinct. For as long as people have been telling stories, we’ve been driven to share those stories with one another: through retelling, reimagining, and remixing. Fandom happens when media is consumed in community.
You’re probably picturing a convention floor, cosplayers, and release parties, but if we travel back in time we’ll find oral stories passed down generation to generation: pub-goers demanding a favorite tale from the traveling bard, family stories that get more fantastical with each retelling, the fish bigger and bigger as the years go on. When we love something, our instinct is to share it.
As our world became more globally connected, fans with ideas considered “fringe” began to be able to connect – the popularity of imagining Captain Kirk and Spock in a romantic relationship (shipping, and in the case of a same-gender relationship, slash shipping) during Star Trek’s original run is often cited as a beginning of modern fandom culture. Using systems of forwarding addresses and hand-assembled magazines, Kirk/Spock shippers – primarily women – distributed original stories, art, and analysis of the show through the mail. Kirk/Spock fandom stands out not just because of the ingenuity involved or the fact that it remains a popular ship to this day, but because it represents a shift in core fandom culture: imagining Kirk and Spock together wasn’t just retelling the story of Star Trek, it was retelling it in a way that imagined how that world – how our world – could be.
FAN ACTIVISM is the practice of organizing fans of pop culture for social change. It’s a diverse community of practitioners with varying interests, fandoms, and approaches to the work, but a common vision unites the fan activism community: to make the world a more loving, equitable place for all.
During 2021 and 2022, a founding group of fan organizers joined a collaborative efort, led by Fandom Forward and Black Nerds Create and supported by Pop Culture Collaborative, to document the core principles and opportunities of fan activism. We hope this document serves as both an entry point to fan activism and a call to action for movement strategists looking for innovative methods to meet the demands of our time.
In our favorite stories there’s always a moment when it becomes clear that every person and every tool is needed if the fight is going to be won. As organizers across the globe work to push back a growing rise of fascism, division, and greed, we know fan activism has unique opportunities to build momentum in that work.
As they say in another iconic space opera, Star Wars: this is a rebellion, right? Let’s rebel.
Organizers in the Field
The field of fan activism is populated by diverse and passionate organizers who collectively reach an audience of millions worldwide. Fan organizers begin simply as fans who want to make a difference, and their efforts often start as self-funded, volunteer-driven projects.
Many of the hallmark activities of fandom participation lend themselves to strong organizing skills – fandom is, after all, a form of community organizing in and of itself. Fans participating in fandom learn how to quickly connect with like minded folks, mobilize for shared goals, communicate ideas, generate evocative content, take advantage of social media, and in many cases even organize large in-person events. This knowledge base can be easily adapted to organizing towards goals of social change.
The fan organizers who participated in creating this report represent a diverse sample of strategies, fandoms, and identities. The goal of this founding coalition group was to identify key needs and opportunities for fan activism. They also collectively documented best practices from their own experiences as fan organizers, creating invaluable resources for budding fan organizers.
The fan organizers here are organizing specifically around narrative-based fandom – think movies, television, books, games, and other media with an inherent story embedded within it. Though they’re not represented here, non-narrative fandoms like sports have ample opportunity to build on the work of these organizers.
Shared Values of Fan Activists
Intentionality
We are intentional in the ways we interact with, engage in, and support each other across fandom spaces.
We believe that fan communities are powerful, purposeful, and help to shape the broader world through their influence on mass media and fans. We shape our fan communities to reflect the world we want to live in. As such, our communities intentionally center the experiences of marginalized people and provide space for fans to create, learn, and share.
As a coalition, we seek to engage and support one another by sharing resources, knowledge, and opportunities across organizations and fandoms.
Imagination
Fandom is meant to be fun! We give ourselves permission to play and imagine beyond the original source material. We believe that imagining new worlds and ways of doing things in fandom influences and helps change the broader world.
By valuing fan creation and imagination, we model a world where everyone’s story matters and can change their community and the world for the better.
Accountability
We approach this work with the knowledge that we will make mistakes. We are open to learning and understand that our ignorance is not an excuse for perpetuating harm, but an essential opportunity to help ourselves and our communities grow and do better. We are committed to listening to, learning from, and using our platforms to elevate marginalized voices rather than speak over them. We commit to working together to prevent harm, to provide genuine apologies and behavior shifts when harm is done, and to learning in public.
Community Care
We practice empathy and generosity, and prioritize accessibility across fandom spaces. We support the work that individual creators and fans must do to care for their health and wellbeing, but we reject the capitalist model of “self-care.” Alternatively, we support community care in the form of sharing, confidence-building, activism, learning, and the commitment to be there for one another as we co-create welcoming, long-lasting fan communities.
Establishing Best Practices in Fan Activism
Fandom is a practice of invitation. It’s loving something and immediately asking your friends if they’ve loved it too. It’s no wonder that fan organizers are nearly universally invested in how to support the next generation of organizers.
As part of the coalition’s initial dialogue, it was immediately clear that documentation of all we’d collectively learned in our time as fan organizers was a major priority – not just for the fan organizers working currently, but so that anyone who wants to begin in the future has this collective knowledge to draw from.
Why Fan Activism
Of the myriad organizing strategies available to us, why are fan organizers so passionate about fan activism?
The most obvious answer might be that it’s fun, and in a time when almost every organizer you meet is spending most of their time frustrated and exhausted, finding ways to make organizing fun is a welcome balm.
But it’s not just that: fan activism is uniquely equipped to build new inroads across the political spectrum, communicate a vision of tomorrow, and empower the next generation of activists.
Fandom is Made to be Discussed
Our culture is still steeped in that old advice to never discuss politics or religion in polite company. These norms make casual conversations about our collective values and politics fraught.
Furthermore, topics like privilege and systemic oppression are more likely to garner a reactive response from those who need to have these discussions the most, a function of white supremacy that is critical to push through.
On the other hand, fandom is inherently a practice of discussion. Sharing our favorite or least favorite parts, discussing theories of what will happen next in between instalments, debating how we interpreted different scenes and characters: these are all cornerstones of what fandom is.
Fandom also lends itself to a practice of accepting multiple “correct” answers; you and your friend may have different opinions about the best movie in the franchise, or whether or not Han Solo shot first, but this variation enriches rather than endangers the experience of being in community.
Fandom is a world where thoughtful critique is part of the game. So when it comes to tackling complex issues across the political divide, fandom becomes an incredibly effective tool to circumvent knee-jerk reactions.
The same person who struggles to discuss racism without becoming defensive can probably have an open conversation
about the ways prejudice against people from different backgrounds is explored in Star Trek. By leading with fandom, a shared language and common set of values, moving from the hypothetical (or in this case, imaginary) to reality becomes easier.
In many ways, fandom affiliation acts as a “third space” of identity.
In sociology, a third space is somewhere outside of home or work that serves as a more neutral, community-oriented place to gather. Engaging with people through their fandom identities helps us subvert the cultural norms and white fragility that has functioned as a protective buffer for systemic oppression. For the same reasons, fandom left unchecked and unexamined can become toxic, a fact that far right organizers use to their advantage.
Opportunities
Building upon the decades of successful work by fan organizers, we see ample opportunity for fan activism to act as a key tool in the fight for a more equitable, pluralist future for all.
Fighting Radicalization
The far right has been incredibly effective at weaponizing the internet, particularly in radicalizing young white men through social media and other online communities. We’ve seen the ways these groups are co-opting not just American imagery, but pop culture imagery and ideas; in just one example, a Captain America shield was on display at the Capitol Insurrection on January 6, 2021.
If fan organizers do not intentionally create counter narratives and pluralist spaces within fandoms like Marvel or Star Wars, we’re essentially leaving these powerful stories and iconography up for grabs – and the far right isn’t hesitating to claim them.
Because fandom communities are communities, with shared identities and norms, the potential to radicalize young audiences is high. Fan activists help to hold the line within these spaces, and with further resources and allies they could be an even more potent force to help combat the radicalization of young white men and others via the internet.
Shifting Narratives Through Cross-Fandom Strategy
Different fandoms generally have different political landscapes; for example, the original Harry Potter fandom tends to be very progressive, while Star Trek fandom tends to be more centrist. These are obviously broad stroke generalizations – fandoms are composed of millions of individuals – but they are consistent enough that fan organizers can typically tell you what the general landscape of different fandoms looks like.
Through collaboration with Harmony Labs and their Narrative Observatory project, in 2021 Fandom Forward was able to map key fandoms with data analysis. Harmony Labs uses a combination of data from 55k+ Americans (via opt-in internet panels) and review by researchers to discover and track narrative trends — in other words, what kinds of things people are interacting with and how they’re interacting with them.
They can also group people into audiences based on their values (fig. 1) using survey and cultural interactions on platforms like Tumblr, Reddit, and YouTube. Harmony Labs then identified people who look to be in particular fandoms by using frequent search terms (like “Hufflepuff ” for example), and mapped them against the four values-based audiences (fig. 2).
Almost no one has just one fandom – most fans, including fan activists, participate in multiple fandoms, sometimes for media very different in nature. This means that rather than fandoms acting as distinct circles, you should think of fandoms more like venn diagrams, with overlapping participants in each.
Using these overlapping participants, fan organizers could strategically “pass” a campaign from one fandom to another over several months or years in order to strategically shift the narrative on that issue over time.
For example, using the fandoms mapped above, a campaign on gun control may be best suited to begin within the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom (who are likely to readily accept that narrative), then be run again within the Marvel fandom, then again in the Star Trek fandom. Because there is likely to be overlap of fans in each community, those fans serve the role of early adopters and trusted advocates within each new community.
Thus, the narrative shift becomes a message coming from inside the community, rather than from external organizers with less earned trust.
Access Full Report
Explore Further
- Resources for Fan Organizers
- Fandom Forward closes after 19 years
- Narrative Change, Popular Culture and Cultural Strategy
- What We can Learn from Star Wars’ Andor: The Role of Sacrifice in Revolutionary Organising
- What Star Wars’ Andor can teach us about Revolutionary Leadership Development
- What ChangeMakers can learn from Brooklyn Nine Nine
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