Fandom and Popular Culture in the New Media Age Specialization

Abstract

According to media scholar Jenkins Henry, fans can prefer popular media as an avenue of acquiring ideas through texts and making them creative and innovative for personal use. The popular culture theory suggests that a culture industry tends to prioritize making a profit from fan activities instead of focusing on production quality. Historically, culture is used to express or pass ideologies between generations; therefore, the next generations are likely to lose the original contents of the text in the case of popular culture fandom. However, the participatory theory suggests a different way of understanding media fans. Rather than classifying media fans as social misfits, cultural dupes, and mindless consumers, they can be referred to as manipulators of meaning and active producers. Therefore, fandom culture and media are social activities that promote fans to develop their communities to enable them to express themselves (Hills, 2017). The fans' freedom promotes an open community where fans can critique various ideas spread or promoted in the media. The paper analyses the Fandom and Popular Culture in the New Media Age Specialization and its trends in several thematic areas.