Theorizing fanfiction: The importance of remixed social genres composed on the internet

Abstract

Due to their rapid evolution, scholars sometimes categorize digital and computer-mediated genres as fully distinct from more traditional offline genres. In this theoretical exploration, we complicate binaries of online/offline to understand networked genres in their own right and situate fanfiction and its associated practices. We examine how social genres intertwine with reader response and transliteracies in the complex, ongoing fandom conversations that surround original texts and fan works. We consider the computer-mediated and networked nature of fandom practices and communities, and how these networks allow fans to interact with source content in ways that are distinct from more official interpretive communities such as publishers and literary critics, media producers and reviewers, or writing instructors. Finally, we explore how literature and publishing have been disrupted by contexts like fandoms where texts are often constructed online in bottom-up ways— and the consequences of this disruption for learning about composition.