Content area
Full text
My first ventures into academia began while studying for an un- dergraduate degree in journalism, film, and broadcasting at Cardiff University. Though I initially wanted to be a music journalist, it was during working for this degree that I realized that academic writing ignited a stronger passion within me. Rather than write about music in the journalistic sense, I decided to pursue my studies in the area of fandom with a specific focus on the Internet. It was through my exposure to Matt Hills's and Will Brookers work at the time that I began to understand how I could conduct valid and exciting research that interrogated and explored the fields of fandom and cyber studies.
Thus, my main areas of research and study have evolved to en- compass an intersection of audiences and the Internet-how the In- ternet is used, how power is negotiated, and the ways in which social media affects communications. Within this field, I am most fascinated by fan cultures and fandom, and my work mainly looks at popular mu- sic fan networks and communities. My PhD, completed in November 2009 (also at Cardiff University), was a cyber-ethnography, focused on Murmurs.com, an online community of the American rock band R.E.M. Under the supervision of Matt Hills, I explored how norma- tive behavior within the community was encouraged and maintained. In doing so, I examined the importance of, and power relations sur- rounding, oppositional fan identities and the manner with which fans negotiate community norms.
As a fan, community member, and part of the administrative team that helped run the community, I was in a unique and challenging po- sition to undertake this research and provide original insight into the maintenance of fan communal norms. In this sense, I had a personal investment in my object of analysis, as Hollis Griffin has also experi- enced and outlined in his essay in this section. While conducting the ethnography, the scholars that inspired me most were Will Brooker, Henry Jenkins, Matt Hills, Daniel Gavicchi, Nancy Baym, and Cornel Sandvoss. Brookers work continues to remain an important source of inspiration: I later built on his chapter on Lost fans in particular in my own post-PhD study of Lost online fandom and its approaches to temporal play...