• While it's generally known that fandom is a major part of life on Tumblr, several researchers from Canada's Simon Fraser University will be presenting the results of their fandom study at the Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing conference in February 2014. Their paper is already available. "We investigated Tumblr fandom users’ motivations behind participating in fandoms, and how they interacted within the Tumblr community. Our results show that fandom users feel their Tumblr experience is ‘always-on’ where they participate at nearly any point in the day. They have also adopted a unique set of jargon and use of animated GIFs to match their desired fandom activities."
• RocketNews24 discussed how Vocaloid fandom has become a milepost for distinguishing otaku generations. "The real rise in Vocaloid’s popularity began in 2007 with the introduction of Hatsune Miku, though the software existed years before. Songs like Melt and The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku led to the character, Miku, becoming the axis of Vocaloid fandom, and people first falling into the series for more than just its capabilities as music-making software adopted the perspective that Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid are synonymous. According to Febri’s article, these people belong to the first generation of Vocaloid fans."
• On Grantland, Molly Lambert uses the Brony fandom revealed in its documentary to discuss adopted personas. "Defining yourself by the media you consume has always been commonplace, but it took social media to really demonstrate how inadequate it feels to reduce your personality into a series of lists. The ownership we feel over our favorite things is false, and Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook really served to drive this home. You like The Big Lebowski? Cool, so does everyone. The things you thought made you unique when you were the only person you knew interested in some genre of music, independent film, or corner of history turn out to be laughably banal. Even personality traits are memes, picked up and transmitted or willed into place."

What stories of fandoms developing do you have to share? Write about them on Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

• Bronies have frequently been written about as the poster children for unexpected fandom demographics, but they aren't alone. Writing about "The Male Fandom of the Disney Princesses", Steven M. Johnson said "Maybe it was because I grew up in a family with two older sisters and no brothers — but in my house, videos of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Sleeping Beauty played every single day — and I enjoyed them just as much as my sisters. Dads don’t have any need to worry or feel funny if their sons are Princess fans. Just like the great Disney heroes, the Disney heroines can teach your kids, male and female, valuable lessons of strength, independence, and pursuing their dreams."
• While academic discussions of fandom have explored its cultural implications, it's also revealed activity obscured by assumptions about who takes part in what. Anthropologist Meghan Ferriter has been studying the fandom of the US Women’s soccer team on Tumblr. "What the USWNT fandom actually discusses and creates are representations of the USWNT, players, other fans, opponents, and other popular culture narratives...Mediated sport discourse, as well as USWNT fandom Tumblr disourses, provide accounts; neither reality nor clean interpretation of events. Rather, as with discourses of mediated sport, Tumblr discourses present a version of events that speaks to broader social relationships and understandings of sexuality, national identities, gender, and imply relationships of power."
• WhatCulture.com suggests that pandering to preconceived fannish notions will be the downfall of the Hollywood machine. "There is a virus sweeping the boardrooms of film studios throughout Hollywood. It is a bitter, poisonous little blighter that sucks the joy and originality out of anything it touches. It is a self-serving, self-aware, tyrannical strain of social profiling. And it is quickly dominating the way in which films are conceived and made. It is eating away at filmmakers, and rapidly controlling the output of every major studio in modern cinema. It is known only as the ‘Fanboy’ plague."

What assumptions have you seen perpetuated about fandom? Write about them in Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

As an organization designed to support the fan, we're aware of the importance of following fandom as it migrates across social networks. That's why we've rehabbed and redesigned our Tumblr. By following transformativeworks you'll get our OTW blog posts along with photos, gif sets, quotes and all the cat macros that make Tumblr great.

In addition to redesigning our layout, we're also starting a new campaign dubbed First Friday. Each first Friday of the month we'll highlight a different section of fandom. Whether it's a specific fandom like Star Trek, Sailor Moon, or Sherlock Holmes, or a fandom practice like cosplay, fan videos, or knitting, we'll spend the whole day celebrating. For our inaugural First Friday we're highlighting Archive of Our Own. To kick off the festivities we're giving away 15 Archive of Our Own invite codes. Simply follow transformativeworks for a chance to win an invite for you or a friend.

Our latest social network endeavor is spearheaded by our Communications volunteer Nistasha. As a freelance social media manager by day and internet scholar by night, Nistasha's tracked tags include #Armie Hammer, #crossovers and #acafan.

We look forward to seeing everyone on Tumblr and celebrating our first First Friday.