- FanFiction.net: This website, an oft-derided repository of fic from hundreds (maybe thousands) of different fandoms, includes some 16,000 Doctor Who fanfics, user-maintained communities in each fandom, and fandom-specific forums. Although a study of the site as a whole would be nearly impossible because it's so large and diverse, restricting myself to the Doctor Who fandom as represented at ff.net should be feasible.
- doctorwho: the livejournal community about doctor who and stuff: Livejournal hosts dozens of Doctor Who communities and dozens of multifandom comms that include this particular fandom, but doctorwho is easily the largest and most inclusive Doctor Who community on this blogging site. Members regularly engage in discussion across broad topics of the fandom and post fan-created works such as fanfics. Other aspects of fandom, like ship wars, fanwank, macros, fanart, RPing, sporking of badfic, and fanmixes are likely to show up here as well. Rather than being a forum per se, however, this is a community blog that allows members to post individual entries, which other members then comment on.
- Gallifrey Base (members-only forum): This looks like a very large forum for Doctor Who fans, covering all levels of discussion and fan-created works. Because I only joined it very recently, I'm not sure how suitable it would be, although it does appear very active.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Possible sites for investigation
As I stated in my introductory post, I plan to look into fandom as literacy, especially fanfiction and some of its offshoots, and while I might occasionally bring in other sites, I'll be focusing on the fandom for the British sci-fi cult classic Doctor Who (both the old series and the revived version, as well as its spinoffs). The fandom is spread across dozens of different websites, as most fandoms are, but I'll be focusing on the particular pocket of fandom that has taken up residence on one specific website. I've narrowed the possibilities down to a few different sites:
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Kyra--This is a very exciting and timely topic to examine for 676. I recommend reading Rebecca Black's work carefully. She is the best known digital literacies scholar doing work on fanfic. She also had a book come out on the topic recently.
ReplyDeleteI'd like you to work on narrowing down your focus a bit. You've already made a big step by focusing on Dr. Who, but that still will yield thousands of fanfics and who knows how many related comments. You could try focusing on one particular type of Dr. Who fanfic, a small group of active writers, or even one or two individual writers as they move across different fanfic communities. An autoethnography would work too--looking at your own experiences as a fanfic writer.