After spending a semester assisting Dr. Hardin’s research regarding the Supernatural fandom, I have conducted my own research to answer the question regarding opposition in fandom. While using platforms online such as Reddit in addition to Dr. Hardin’s interviews with members of the Supernatural fandom, to conduct the research for both audience analysis and discourse analysis. Audience analysis involves explaining the context of the text, in terms of who reads it, what their practices are like, what their lives are like apart from the text and the audience’s overall experience with the media text. By conducting audience analysis we will be able to understand how the audience takes and interprets the text, how it serves them, and then be able to see how this becomes discourse amongst the fandom. Audience analysis looks beyond the meaning behind the text and sees how the audience interprets the text and puts it to use. Discourse analysis is a research method that studies language used in relation to its social context. This is helpful in understanding how fandom members interact with each other as it aims to understand how language is used in real life situations. Many outsiders of the fandom would say that fans who would spend this much to see actors of some CW show are crazy, but if we look further into this we see that the fans involved in this practice even view other members of the fandom and identify them as taking their love for the show too far. While the core of my research is not in why fans engage in these practices, however, understanding why will give insight into how fans than categorize behaviors of others as acceptable or unacceptable. I have determined this annoyance within multiple members of the fandom to be fan exasperation.
Author: Rachel Tortora
Advisor: Carolyn Hardin, Media, Journalism & Film and Global & Intercultural Studies
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