Fan studies is moving from the margins of media and communication studies at the same time as fans and fan-like engagements are becoming mainstreamed and truly globalised. Despite the increasing inclusion of fan studies research in fields such as political science, sociology and cultural studies, fan studies has further insights and synergies to offer to the wider internet research community. Questions such as: is the right-wing turn an ideological shift or simply populism masquerading as fandom? What is the role of social media in promoting polarisation as well as fandom? Or are our elected leaders more celebrity than politician and whether their partisan bases are activists or stan armies? These questions run as deep currents through our present moment in internet research and can only be answered by taking the overlaps - and the problems and questions they bring - seriously.

As global scholars, representing Brazil, Europe, and Australia, within the intersections of internet studies, media, communication, and fan studies, we outline the stakes of our current moment and debate how to move ahead as researchers in a time where fanisation and celebrification are visible in a range of arenas , but which wider scholarship struggles to effectively theorise. What do we study, what do we need to do, and how do we do it?

This roundtable offers a series of provocations to address the ways in which we study transcultural fans online in our current political and social environment. We open a discussion on how and where fan studies as a theoretical lens and fan studies methodologies can contribute further, and draw out larger synergies with, wider internet studies within media and communications contexts.