Scholars working across fan studies, internet studies and politics have noted the centrality of something that resembles ‘fandom’ across contemporary politics and political participation (Sandvoss, 2005; Hinck, 2019). One important and increasingly visible facet in such scholarship outlines the similarities and overlaps between fandom and conspiracy theory (Aupers, 2020; Marwick and Partin, 2022), a tendency that Driessen, Jones and Litherland playfully describe as “fanspiracy” (2024). Conspiracy theories increasingly emerge from online fan groups, and conspiracy theorists and right wing groups increasingly resemble traditional fan organisations. Both fans and conspiracy theorists develop elaborate and intensive interpretative communities, deploying creative and productive textual production to support their claims.

This panel offers a space to explore the social, cultural and technological underpinning of “fanspiracy” and consider its wide-ranging influence. Across five papers it offers a conceptual framework through which fanspiracy can be understood, highlighting ten key elements that underpin the fanspiracy sensibility, in addition to case studies from the US, the UK, China and South America. The concepts of play and performativity are highlighted as participatory modes of engagement which incorporate fan-like practices both for pleasurable engagement and political propaganda and indoctrination. Decoding of text and audiovisual content is also foregrounded in political fanspiracies as a response to and interpretation of real-world events, often resulting in increasingly esoteric responses.

This panel thus recognises that more ambiguous forms of audience engagement are at play in the current media landscape and offers a timely and relevant intervention, highlighting fannish practices with real-world consequences.

References

Aupers, S. (2020). Decoding mass media/encoding conspiracy theory. In Routledge handbook of conspiracy theories (pp. 469-482). Routledge.

Driessen, S., Jones, B. & Litherland, B. (2023) From fan citizenship to ‘fanspiracies’: Politics and participatory cultures in times of crisis? Convergence (online first). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548565241236005.

Hinck, A. (2019). Politics for the Love of Fandom: Fan-Based Citizenship in a Digital World. Louisiana State University Press

Marwick, A. E., & Partin, W. C. (2022). Constructing alternative facts: Populist expertise and the QAnon conspiracy. New Media & Society, 146144482210902. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221090201

Sandvoss, C. 2005. Fans: Mirror of Consumption. Polity.