12 research outputs found
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"Being in a Knowledge Space": information behaviour of cult media fan communities
This article describes the first two parts of a three-stage study investigating the information behaviour of fans and fan communities, focusing on fans of cult media. A literature analysis shows that information practices are an inherent and major part of fan activities, and that fans are practitioners of new forms of information consumption and production, showing sophisticated activities of information organisation and dissemination. A subsequent Delphi study, taking the novel form of a 'serious leisure' Delphi, in which the participants are not experts in the usual sense, identifies three aspects of fan information behaviour of particular interest beyond the fan context: information gatekeeping; classifying and tagging; and entrepreneurship and economic activity
Popularity markers on YouTubeās attention economy: the case of Bubzbeauty
This article focuses on issues of attention and popularity development in YouTubeās beauty community. I conceptualise the role of views and subscriptions as popularity markers, based on a broader ethnographic examination of 22Ā months of immersed fieldwork on the platform. I consider the case of Bubz, a British-Chinese beauty guru, through a purposeful sample of 80 videos. A content typology is introduced, presenting four distinctive video categories: content-oriented, market-oriented, motivational, and relational. Drawing from the concepts of āattention economyā and āmetrics of popularityā, I explore content characteristics and affordances for the creation and maintenance of viewersā attention. I argue that the guruās uploads lead to two types of audiencesācasual viewers and loyal subscribers. Vlogs renew attention and help maintain the interest first generated by tutorials, leading to treasured subscribersāan essential commodity within YouTubeās highly competitive environment