The digital environment has opened up new spaces for fans to engage with the production process of their favoured texts. However, fan studies have largely neglected the larger temporal structures undergirding this engagement. In this article, I augment studies of digital fandom by utilizing Bruce Sterling’s technosocial concept of the Spime as a means of investigating the relationship forged between the technology of crowdfunding and the affect of particular audiences. The successful Kickstarter campaigns for Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell’s Veronica Mars film and Zach Braff’s film Wish I Was Here, and the failed Kickstarter campaign for Melissa Joan Hart’s film Darci’ s Walk of Shame, each illustrate how the entertainers drew (or did not draw) on specific support from the lineage of his or her own fan communities to generate funds and word-of-mouth publicity. These campaigns ultimately illustrate the consequential powers of the fan at multiple nodes within the production process.

Entrepreneurship is vital to the success of tourism and hospitality and the sector makes an important contribution to many island economies. Despite this, far too little attention has been paid by researchers to tourism and hospitality entrepreneurship in islands (THEI). This research helps to address this gap through a systematic review of the literature, conducted to provide a platform for further research and to help investigators set their research priorities and thereby advance understanding of this important field. Using the Scopus database and the PRISMA technique, a total of 132 articles were included in bibliometric and thematic content analyses. The review revealed that, although there has been an increase in THEI research, this has tended to focus on the Asia-Pacific region rather than the European and North American contexts. It was also found that, hitherto, the generalizability of much THEI published research is limited. It is therefore suggested that researchers consider redressing this geographical bias and conduct more quantitative and comparative THEI studies. Further opportunities exist for scholars to investigate the characteristics and behaviors of tourism and hospitality island entrepreneurs as well as the impacts of the industrial and spatial aspects of THEI. For professionals working in island economic development and business support, this research identifies many of the challenges and opportunities associated with supporting THEI.

Fan studies as a discipline is still in its infancy. But even given this nascence, there have been significant shifts in the ways that it has theorized, studied and investigated fans over the first two and a half decades of research. As scholarship, fan studies has moved away from ethnographic investigations of fans as the main object of study to focus instead on the output of fan discourse as the key mode of examination. At the same time, scholars like Henry Jenkins and Matt Hills, both central to the discipline, have opened dialogue about the nature of the fan/academic, often called the ‘aca-fan’. This article uses the lens of aca-fandom to analyse fan answers to interview questions at a large Midwestern Doctor Who convention. Fans were asked about the role that fan studies has played in their life, how they perceive the study of fans and whether fan studies as an academic discipline has an effect on their fandom. The fans’ answers reflect a critical awareness of fandom but a general ignorance of fan studies. This article argues three points to take away from this. First, fan studies needs to refocus attention back onto fans themselves through ethnographic work. Second, the discipline needs to refocus its output less on esoteric academic titles and more on popular venues. Finally, fans and academics should engage in specific dialogue to open up avenues for new fannish and academic exploration.

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Alternate Reality Games can be used to reinforce classroom knowledge by encouraging collective learning practices and focusing on new media literacy skills. An Alternate Reality Game creates a game space from real-world locations by relying on information, both online and offline, to physically involve players in a game "space." While the majority of large Alternate Reality Games, to date, have been used as part of marketing campaigns, an increasing number of faculty teaching topics in digital media, technologies, and game studies have begun to employ the alternate reality game in the classroom. We argue that the affordances of Alternate Reality Games are best integrated within a "play-revise-design" format. By appropriating this emerging format in classroom spaces, we hope to teach students concepts such as new media literacies, the values of "safe failure," and social learning, while giving students the tools for interactive storytelling.