ABSTRACT
The academic analysis of fans has frequently foregrounded two dimensions: creativity and collectivity. These characteristics of fandom in turn appear to set the practices of fans apart from other less productive and tightly knit audience groups. The 'field' of study in the empirical investigation of fan audiences is commonly defined as a given fan culture. Aspects of these fields are physically manifested through the in situ spaces in which fans move and associate such as sports stadia, concert venues, festival sites or other places of fan pilgrimage. While sociologists such as Robert Putnam famously have pointed to the rise of mass media consumption as a central factor in the growing social isolation and the decline of social capital, fan studies have frequently emphasized the role of community in media fandom. The notion of the interpretative fair as a textual market contrasts with much of the work of the first wave of fan studies.
