Virtually Multicultural

Trans-Asian Identity and Gender in an International Fan Community of a Japanese Star

Bibliographic Data

ID7529636
AuthorsFabienne Darling-Wolf (0000-0002-9362-2911, Temple University, corresponding author)
Year2004
Volume6
Issue4
Pages507-528
Publication date2004-07-14
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Media & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/146144804044332
OpenAlexW2016705802
LanguageEN
Citations received15
References cited29

While recent analyses have helped to challenge commonly-held stereotypes of fans of popular cultural texts as freakish individuals ‘without a life’, few studies have focused on texts produced and/or consumed outside the United States and Europe. Even fewer have considered the particular significance of the advent of the internet as a tool for intercultural fan activity. This is what this study attempts to accomplish through an ethnographic and textual analysis of an online community of fans of Kimura Takuya - one of the most popular Japanese male celebrities of the moment - dispersed across 14 countries. It explores, in particular, how participants defined their fan, gendered and cultural/global identities through their involvement with each other and with their favorite star, and negotiated as a group the complex process of virtual cross-cultural identity formation

Aesthetics · Art · Ethnography · Identity (music · Identity negotiation · Media studies · Multiculturalism · Negotiation · Social science · Sociology · Star (game theory · Anthropology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Gender Studies · Japanese History and Culture · Media, Gender, and Advertising

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