From Play to Political Action: Prosumerism on Fanvideo Meme Production.
| Autor | Leao, Andre Luiz Maranhao De Souza |
| Cargo | Research Article |
INTRODUCTION
The impact of technological transformations strongly permeates the contemporary cultures (Levy, 2007). This can be verified in popular culture, which industry (i.e., entertainment) is increasingly attempting to get closer to its consumers (Kizgin, Jamal, & Richard, 2018; Penaloza, 1994). In a singular way, part of these industries' consumers are fans that commonly engage with the consumed products (Hills, 2013). This practice was enhanced by technological advancement and by the media convergence, which provided the foundation for a participatory culture, whose members, based on common interests, produce collectively (Guschwan, 2012; Jenkins, 2006). Thus, fans are characterized by active consumption, which encompasses sharing of impressions and ideas, in a network of connected individuals who share common interests, marked by affection and involvement with the products they consume (Jenkins, 2006; Kozinets, 2001). Since fans collaboratively participate in the production of their own consumer experiences, Souza-Leao and Costa (2018) characterize them as prosumers. The notion of prosumption comes from the conception that consumption is inseparable from production (Ritzer, 2014), which has gained new relevance in a context of technological development and the emergence of Web 2.0 (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010). From the new technological possibilities of virtual interaction, mainly through social networks, consumers begin to engage more intensively with the products they consume and start to produce content related to them (Boulaire, Hervet, & Graf, 2010; Ritzer, Dean, & Jurgenson, 2012).
One of the most productive acts from fans, which contributes to the consolidation of fan culture, is the creation of fanvideos (Jenkins, 1992). In the 1970s, this practice of content production has become possible due to the development of video production, editing, and distribution techniques. Nowadays, it is becoming increasingly relevant, due to Web 2.0 and the digital technologies (Freund, 2016; Stein & Busse, 2009), as well as the possibility of online sharing, with YouTube being the main disclosure vehicle used by fans (Hilderbrand, 2007).
A recurring practice in fanvideos is its use for meme production, a phenomenon of the modern internet based on the creation of materials whose purpose is the generation of humor. Despite a conceptual overlap between memes and fanvideos, both are autonomous categories (Guadagno, Rempala, Murphy, & Okdie, 2013; Shifman, 2012, 2014). The first is a type of video making developed by fans, mostly for fans, who may or may not intend to spread it on the web (Freund, 2016). Memes, on the other hand, are materials based on irony, produced from several sources (i.e., images, videos, audios) in order to go viral (Mina, 2019; Phillips, 2019).
Inserted in the logic of participatory digital culture, memes became popular for their contagious, public, and continuous propagation aspect (Guadagno et al., 2013; Shifman, 2012, 2014). Memes exemplify a process of transformation and democratization of the relationship of fans with media texts, which are re-signified in an appropriate environment for a rapid spread of creative content (Wang & Wang, 2015).
Shiffman (2012) argued that memes are one of the cultural manifestations that allow us to understand the relationship between society and contemporary digital culture. It is a genre that presents the social positioning of parodies and is aligned to participatory cultures' developments, since individuals naturalize their lives using technologies (Jenkins, 2009; Wiggins & Bowers, 2014). In this sense, we agree with Morreale (2013) about the importance of the memetic production on fanvideos by fans of popular culture, posted online on YouTube. Fanvideos are one of several fannish practices that exemplify how they engage to demonstrate their relationship with the cultural objects (Jenkins, 1992).
According to Kozinets (2001), this relationship provides a range of fannish possibilities, such as positive role models, exploration of moral issues, knowledge and ideas, explorations of erotic desire, and feelings of communities, which works as utopias that unite impossibility and dream, representing a deep motivational power and desire. These desires are reflected in the expression of personal and political particularities that fans usually carry out in their creation and modification of franchise content (Neville, 2018).
Based on this, this research aims to analyze how fans express themselves through memes produced in fanvideos, based on media texts related to successful popular culture franchises. Thus, the investigation assesses how the production of memes by fans reveals their desire to participate in the meaning making of the media texts to which they link. In order to fulfill this purpose, our study has the following specific objectives: (a) describe the production process of the meme fanvideos; (b) identify the meanings presented in the meme fanvideos; and (c) interpret theoretically the meme fanvideos production. For this purpose, the work assumes a partially inductive character, insofar as we use theoretical foundation as a means of providing the study with a lens to both ground and interpret the phenomenon (Leao, Mello, & Vieira, 2009; Timmermans & Tavory, 2012), without such theoretical conceptions having been previously established as constructs.
The growing relevance of popular culture, associated with engaged fan practices, indicates the pertinence of investigation of this phenomenon by consumer culture theory (CCT), a consumer research field circumscribed in marketing discipline. Specifically, the creation of memes by productive consumers has gained prominence in researches of fan culture (e.g., Papailias, 2018; Shifman, 2012; Wu & Ardley, 2007). In addition, understanding fan action as prosumption (Souza-Leao & Costa, 2018) results in a comprehension of their role under a market productivity logic (Chen, 2011; Collins, 2010). This set of possibilities indicates a potential for interdisciplinary theoretical contribution to the research field, as well as practical implications, based on the singular phenomenon investigated.
THEORETICAL BASIS FOR THE STUDY
As developed in the elaboration of the research problem, the present study focuses on the production of meme fanvideos. To this end, the research assumes the fan as a prosumer who produces fanvideos as user-generated content in a context of participatory culture, as shown in Figure 1. The sections below articulate these connections.
The prosumerist face of the fans
Due to the level of engagement with the products they consume, fans distinguish themselves from ordinary consumers by seeking to consolidate and validate the values that make them stand together. Besides, they contribute to the enthusiasm in the consumption (Hills, 2013), and assign unique meanings to media texts (Busse & Gray, 2011; Hackley & Hackley, 2018). Thanks to the social interactions they form among themselves, they have established an effective exchange with the media products (Guschwan, 2012; Jenkins, 2006). On the other hand, they usually reverberate the media products through reinterpretations, new meanings, and even new materials, becoming natural content producers (Hills, 2002). Since fans are productive consumers, we follow Souza-Leao and Costa (2018) in the understanding that they can be considered prosumers.
The sense of prosumer was originally presented by Toffler (1980), based on the assumption that the consumers, by becoming part of the production process, are no longer only consumers. This sense had a fast entrance on marketing literature promoted by Kotler (1986), but it was not widely used until Ritzer (2014) reconceptualized it, arguing that the division between production and consumption never really existed; it was the industrialization process that shaped this split. From this argument, he proposes the understanding of the relationship between production and consumption as a continuum, at whose extremes are the positions of prosumer-as-producer and prosumer-as-consumer.
Thus, what was once called simply consumer could now be understood as a prosumer (i.e., prosumer-as-consumer) since, in addition to consuming, s/he performs functions that previously belonged exclusively to the production system (Cova, Dalli, & Zwick, 2011; Ritzer, 2014). Such attributions can be associated by producers to consumers as compulsory and objective, as conceptualized by Toffler (1980) and alluded by Ritzer (2014); however, they can also be performed spontaneously and subjectively (Cova & Cova, 2012; Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010), aligned to what we introduced as productive consumption of fans.
Consumer productivity has been stimulated through new information and communication technologies, mainly through the interactions on the internet (Chen, 2018; Sugihartati, 2020), boosted by the Web 2.0 (Collins, 2010; Laughey, 2010). Due to this scenario, Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010) name contemporary productive consumers as Web 2.0 prosumers--people who demonstrate a unique productive competence, being able to modify the productive process of what they consume, as well as influence it by elevating the degree of awareness of products and services. This process is elaborated in the context of virtual environments, especially through the intense access to social media (Ritzer, et al., 2012; Zajc, 2015).
More than performing an operational productive role in consumption, Web 2.0 prosumers become specialized consumers and act as co-producers of their own consumer experiences (Ritzer, 2014; Stuart-Menteth, Wilson, & Baker, 2006). This usually occurs jointly and engaged (Morreale, 2013; Sugihartati, 2020), through dialogic relations (Hartmann, 2015; Ritzer, 2014), when they are responsible for sharing content and materials related do the consumer products (Collins, 2010; Ritzer et al., 2012).
This process takes place through a...
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