ABSTRACT
Digital fan communities allow teenagers to build a community of interest around an idol and thus establish friendships. Data from a three-year ethnographic study of a group of girls aged between 13 and 14 years old who regard themselves as fans of celebrities such as One Direction or Harry Styles was used to examine contact management practices. Analysis of mobile phone contents and in-depth group interviews reveal material practices that connect meanings created around the fan community and help create multimodal discourses that mark the belonging to or exclusion from that community.
