I wish all academics *were* "fannish" in their intensity of interest.
The thing is, I think they are, but the notion of a veneer of disinterest over the top of it is still perceived as being present. In the humanities, we are in the middle of the task of stripping away that veneer. In fan studies, strangely, explaining your engagement is a must; hardly any essay begins without a paragraph or two of subject positioning. Sometimes it's relevant; sometimes (as in a close reading of a single text) it's not. One fun thing that Kristina and I did in our book was tell writers to not worry about it. We covered the subject positioning in the intro, so the writers could save words for actual relevant content.
I had this in the back of my head when I wrote the response to you. You can tell from the title why I was thinking of it:
Jenson, Joli. 1992. Fandom as pathology: The consequence of characterization. In The adoring audience, ed. Lisa A. Lewis, 9–29. London: Routledge.
I hope to see, under OTW's aegis or not, some work within fandom on developing sensitive but workable rule sets that apply to the varied contexts and communities, such that rules can be proposed by researchers and the community to reviewers, rather than having rules imposed on them by IRBs.
I agree. I also think that in this matter, OTW and TWC may have different standards, because of the different nature of the projects and certain concerns about outside (grant) funding. I doubt OTW would find itself confronted with IRB concerns, but really, you never know.
TWC (the journal) has decided that, for research purposes, we'll follow the tenets of online research laid out in the Association of Internet Research's Guide on Ethical Online Research (http://www.aoir.org/?q=node/30). This is an outside body concerned with online research, and they totally focus on this topic and do it better than we ever could. We support their mission. Check them out and let me know what you think.
It's true that Kristina and I are both from a particular fannish background, and some of our editorial team are from another, but we'll be receiving essays from, we hope, a broad spectrum, and there will be little "community" consensus about acceptability of research methods.
We therefore need to be as broad and open as possible, which means that the policy we have on, for example, quotation of online sources, is not restrictive:
TWC, like its parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), is committed to the free expression of ideas, particularly in the context of scholarly activity about derivative fan artworks. Therefore, we do not require the consent, explicit or implicit, of the original author of a transformative work under discussion, such as a piece of fan fiction or a vid. All citation URLs to such texts need only be open to the public. (TWC's submission guidelines (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions))
So the fannish part of me that firmly feels it's wrong to not obtain permission for that fanfic you're analyzing has to get over it; if it's an open post, it's fair game. Were I to write an essay for TWC, I would personally obtain permission because that's part of my community standards. But as an editor, I must accept the research methods selected by the researcher and trust that she is working within her own community's standards.
no subject
The thing is, I think they are, but the notion of a veneer of disinterest over the top of it is still perceived as being present. In the humanities, we are in the middle of the task of stripping away that veneer. In fan studies, strangely, explaining your engagement is a must; hardly any essay begins without a paragraph or two of subject positioning. Sometimes it's relevant; sometimes (as in a close reading of a single text) it's not. One fun thing that Kristina and I did in our book was tell writers to not worry about it. We covered the subject positioning in the intro, so the writers could save words for actual relevant content.
I had this in the back of my head when I wrote the response to you. You can tell from the title why I was thinking of it:
Jenson, Joli. 1992. Fandom as pathology: The consequence of characterization. In The adoring audience, ed. Lisa A. Lewis, 9–29. London: Routledge.
I hope to see, under OTW's aegis or not, some work within fandom on developing sensitive but workable rule sets that apply to the varied contexts and communities, such that rules can be proposed by researchers and the community to reviewers, rather than having rules imposed on them by IRBs.
I agree. I also think that in this matter, OTW and TWC may have different standards, because of the different nature of the projects and certain concerns about outside (grant) funding. I doubt OTW would find itself confronted with IRB concerns, but really, you never know.
TWC (the journal) has decided that, for research purposes, we'll follow the tenets of online research laid out in the Association of Internet Research's Guide on Ethical Online Research (http://www.aoir.org/?q=node/30). This is an outside body concerned with online research, and they totally focus on this topic and do it better than we ever could. We support their mission. Check them out and let me know what you think.
It's true that Kristina and I are both from a particular fannish background, and some of our editorial team are from another, but we'll be receiving essays from, we hope, a broad spectrum, and there will be little "community" consensus about acceptability of research methods.
We therefore need to be as broad and open as possible, which means that the policy we have on, for example, quotation of online sources, is not restrictive:So the fannish part of me that firmly feels it's wrong to not obtain permission for that fanfic you're analyzing has to get over it; if it's an open post, it's fair game. Were I to write an essay for TWC, I would personally obtain permission because that's part of my community standards. But as an editor, I must accept the research methods selected by the researcher and trust that she is working within her own community's standards.