I\u27M YOUR BIGGEST FAN (I’LL FOLLOW YOU UNTIL YOU LOVE ME)”: SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES, FANS, AND AFFECT

ABSTRACT This thesis explores the way that music fandom has changed on sites like Twitter. It establishes a framework for understanding changes in the relationship between fan and performer, and introduces the term “dynamic fandom” to describe new ; possibilities for online fandom. My approach is influenced by Eve Sedgwick\u27s discussion o f paranoid and reparative reading positions, and affect studies more generally. I demonstrate scholars\u27 tendencies to read the fan/performer relationship in a paranoid way, and illuminate the problems with this approach. Through discussion of fan/performer interaction on Twitter, I illustrate the benefits of reading this relationship reparatively. I synthesize my observations to develop the idea of a fannish feedback loop: a mechanism with which fans process their affective relationships with performers. With this concept, I determine that an important difference between dynamic fandom and earlier modes of fandom resides in a change in fans\u27 affective responses to performers