TY - JOUR

T1 - Fandom Meets Artificial Intelligence

T2 - Rethinking Participatory Culture as Human-Community-Machine Interactions

AU - Li, Eva Cheuk-Yin

AU - Pang, Ka-Wei

PY - 2024/8/1

Y1 - 2024/8/1

N2 - Fandom as an interpretive community is the frontier for rich insights into the multi-layered interactions and practices between individual users, communities, and intelligent machines. To understand the challenges and opportunities Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents to contemporary media and culture, we discuss how fans engage with AI, as fandom provides meaningful insights into interactions between individual technology users, the collective, and machines. We propose rethinking participatory culture as human-community-machine interactions (HCMI) to understand the wider implications of AI to society and culture. We outline three emerging phenomena and potential consequences of fans’ engagement with AI: (1) fan labour made (un)easy, (2) parasocial interactions (un)familiarised, and (3) realities (un)settled. Our conceptualisation transcends existing computer science research, which assumes technology users as isolated individuals and also fan studies, which largely focus on text-audience relationships and tend to take digital technologies for granted as the preconditions of fans’ creative and playful practices.

AB - Fandom as an interpretive community is the frontier for rich insights into the multi-layered interactions and practices between individual users, communities, and intelligent machines. To understand the challenges and opportunities Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents to contemporary media and culture, we discuss how fans engage with AI, as fandom provides meaningful insights into interactions between individual technology users, the collective, and machines. We propose rethinking participatory culture as human-community-machine interactions (HCMI) to understand the wider implications of AI to society and culture. We outline three emerging phenomena and potential consequences of fans’ engagement with AI: (1) fan labour made (un)easy, (2) parasocial interactions (un)familiarised, and (3) realities (un)settled. Our conceptualisation transcends existing computer science research, which assumes technology users as isolated individuals and also fan studies, which largely focus on text-audience relationships and tend to take digital technologies for granted as the preconditions of fans’ creative and playful practices.

KW - Artificial Intelligence

KW - VTubers

KW - audience

KW - chatbots

KW - deepfake

KW - fan community

KW - fansub

KW - human–machine communication

KW - human–machine interactions

KW - misinformation

KW - socio-technical interactions

KW - transcultural fandom

KW - virtual idols

U2 - 10.1177/13675494241236146

DO - 10.1177/13675494241236146

M3 - Journal article

VL - 27

SP - 778

EP - 787

JO - European Journal of Cultural Studies

JF - European Journal of Cultural Studies

SN - 1367-5494

IS - 4

ER -