Campbell, John

CONSUMING VAMPIRES IN CYBERSPACE: ONLINE MEDIA FAN COMMUNITIES AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW

Abstract

A unique mix of horror, pop culture, teen angst, and camp sensibility, the television series, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, has engendered numerous fan sites in cyberspace. Based on a year-long ethnographic inquiry into one such site (the Internet Relay Chat channel, #buffy-unlimited), this study examines how individuals living within a mass-mediated society integrate emerging communication technologies into their consumption of cultural texts. Of particular interest is how such fan sites exemplify the increasingly polemical relationship between media fans and media corporations.

In examining this particular IRC chat room, I argue that such online fan sites constitute key spaces for the formation of a participatory culture in a mass-mediated society. Cyberspace affords fans new opportunities to engage in cultural production, often by building upon mass-mediated texts in diverse and innovative ways. Conversely, the Internet has also proved to be easily policed by large media corporations attempting to circumscribe fan activities through intellectual property law.

Conventionally, there has been a distance between fan ethnographers studying cultural consumption from an anthropological perspective, and political economists examining cultural producers from an institutional perspective. This study attempts to bridge these perspectives by contextualizing the activities of media fans within the larger social frame of corporate media structures. As this particular fan site poignantly demonstrates, the expected roles of cultural consumers and cultural producers are being contested in cyberspace.

The equipment requirement for this presentation is either a computer and projection system for PowerPoint slides, or, if such is not available, a projector for overhead transparences.