and for aca-fans broadens out to how they represent fandom material to non-fandom viewers (and on the flip side, how they gained permission from their fandom sources). The "netiquette" of quotation, linking, remixing, commenting, etc., are all related strongly to both the ways that fandom gets its own original material (poaching?) and how it wants aca-fans or pro-fans to treat fandom (not poaching!).
I have noticed that this is a fandom-specific concern. I have seen published studies where the writer did not obtain permission to quote from blogs, stories, or open posts. In my little fandom corner of the world, this is considered impolite, even unethical. And yet it's absolutely reasonable to many, who consider an open post...well...open. This kind of thing lacks consensus within the fan community, and the strategies you list may not be consistently meaningful.
My personal take on academics writing in fandom, be they acafans or just academics who happened to stumble across something fannish and interesting and engaged as an outsider (like an interesting study I read about Television Without Pity by a nonfan), is that all academic work, of every kind, is a kind of nonfiction fanfic, and fanfic itself is a kind fictive criticism. Don't all these forms of creation require basically the same strategies? Deep understanding of the source text; engagement with a community with certain standards that surrounds the text and provides a framework whereby it is judged; remix for effect or parody; application of an outside theory on an artwork (deconstruction! stream of consciousness! pointillism!).
Academics are intensely, fannishly interested in a particular subject, and they engage according to a set of rules governed by a community, which rewards them if they do well with things like tenure. Fans are intensely, academically interested in a particular subject, and they engage according to a set of rules governed by a community, which rewards them if they do well with things like feedback or status. It's true that if you get tenure, you presumably get money to go along with the job that they now can't arbitrarily fire you from, whereas with fanfic, you get adulation and little else, which brings us to...
There's more than money involved. Distrust of aca-fans is similar to discourse about BNFs. At issue, then, is voluntarism vs. reward, anonymity vs. recognition.
I'm unaffiliated, but I do see some troubling trends that may limit the ability of acafans to continue their work. One big one is ethnographic research, which is increasingly becoming limited to publication from people or groups who have been certified by an institutional review board to do work with human subjects, even if that means that you just administered a questionnaire online. Ticky boxes = human subjects! And it's also true that academics who work with things considered weird by nonfans, such as, oh, let's say SLASH, may not do work in that field, because it would do to have their RL name linked with such a topic.
So even within the academic world, "voluntarism vs. reward, anonymity vs. recognition" is fraught. It's just not that simple. You probably can't get a job or tenure if you're doing nothing but fan studies, but you can if you leaven it with something respectable, like media or film studies, or audience analysis. And sometimes you can't publish on what you're interested in because you don't want to out yourself or force your school to fire you because you are interested in Harry Potter slash and they're all underage ohno!
I agree that all these topics need to be discussed; and I really didn't know, one way or the other, what fen think of acafans, mostly because I know quite a few acafans and they seem pretty much like fen to me. It seems odd to be so mistrustful of people who have so very, very much to lose, merely by dint of having a RL name attached.
no subject
and for aca-fans broadens out to how they represent fandom material to non-fandom viewers (and on the flip side, how they gained permission from their fandom sources). The "netiquette" of quotation, linking, remixing, commenting, etc., are all related strongly to both the ways that fandom gets its own original material (poaching?) and how it wants aca-fans or pro-fans to treat fandom (not poaching!).
I have noticed that this is a fandom-specific concern. I have seen published studies where the writer did not obtain permission to quote from blogs, stories, or open posts. In my little fandom corner of the world, this is considered impolite, even unethical. And yet it's absolutely reasonable to many, who consider an open post...well...open. This kind of thing lacks consensus within the fan community, and the strategies you list may not be consistently meaningful.
My personal take on academics writing in fandom, be they acafans or just academics who happened to stumble across something fannish and interesting and engaged as an outsider (like an interesting study I read about Television Without Pity by a nonfan), is that all academic work, of every kind, is a kind of nonfiction fanfic, and fanfic itself is a kind fictive criticism. Don't all these forms of creation require basically the same strategies? Deep understanding of the source text; engagement with a community with certain standards that surrounds the text and provides a framework whereby it is judged; remix for effect or parody; application of an outside theory on an artwork (deconstruction! stream of consciousness! pointillism!).
Academics are intensely, fannishly interested in a particular subject, and they engage according to a set of rules governed by a community, which rewards them if they do well with things like tenure. Fans are intensely, academically interested in a particular subject, and they engage according to a set of rules governed by a community, which rewards them if they do well with things like feedback or status. It's true that if you get tenure, you presumably get money to go along with the job that they now can't arbitrarily fire you from, whereas with fanfic, you get adulation and little else, which brings us to...
There's more than money involved. Distrust of aca-fans is similar to discourse about BNFs. At issue, then, is voluntarism vs. reward, anonymity vs. recognition.
I'm unaffiliated, but I do see some troubling trends that may limit the ability of acafans to continue their work. One big one is ethnographic research, which is increasingly becoming limited to publication from people or groups who have been certified by an institutional review board to do work with human subjects, even if that means that you just administered a questionnaire online. Ticky boxes = human subjects! And it's also true that academics who work with things considered weird by nonfans, such as, oh, let's say SLASH, may not do work in that field, because it would do to have their RL name linked with such a topic.
So even within the academic world, "voluntarism vs. reward, anonymity vs. recognition" is fraught. It's just not that simple. You probably can't get a job or tenure if you're doing nothing but fan studies, but you can if you leaven it with something respectable, like media or film studies, or audience analysis. And sometimes you can't publish on what you're interested in because you don't want to out yourself or force your school to fire you because you are interested in Harry Potter slash and they're all underage ohno!
I agree that all these topics need to be discussed; and I really didn't know, one way or the other, what fen think of acafans, mostly because I know quite a few acafans and they seem pretty much like fen to me. It seems odd to be so mistrustful of people who have so very, very much to lose, merely by dint of having a RL name attached.