briannadym

[briannadym]

[UPDATE: SURVEY CLOSED] I need you to take this survey!

Update: Thanks to everyone’s hard work, we collected 1,030 responses. The survey is now closed!

My name is Brianna Dym, and I’m an aca-fan at the University of Colorado Boulder researching everyday practices in transformative fandom. To do this, I have a survey linked here that asks about some day-to-day things you may or may not do as part of your involvement in fandom. If you are at least 18 years old and hang out in fan communities where people read and write fanfic and create and share fanworks, then this survey is for you! Please, take this survey and share it with your fandom friends! It takes roughly 15 minutes to complete. I want to reach a wide range of different kinds of folks in fandom, so your answers are important!

Take the survey now! [link removed]

[briannadym]

[Update - RECRUITMENT CLOSED] Calling All Activists in Fandom!

We are no longer recruiting for this study. We’ll circulate research once it’s published!

Hello everyone! My name is Brianna Dym, and I’m a researcher with the Internet Rules Lab at CU Boulder. This summer, I want to talk to people about participating in activism as part of a fandom!

I would love to interview you if...

1. You are involved in fandom in some way, even if it’s just lurking. By fandom, we mean online communities where people are creating and sharing fanworks like fanart, fanfiction, cosplays, things like that.

2. You have participated in some kind of activism as part of your involvement in fandom! This might look like getting involved in a hashtag campaign, raising awareness for specific issues, getting involved with a non-profit that grew from fandom, giving to or organizing donation drives or charity campaigns. There’s a lot of examples, so if you’re not sure your experience qualifies please reach out through the google form linked below!

We can conduct the interview on any platform you want – either text-based chat or voice. Interviews typically last one hour. You will be compensated with a $20 gift card for your participation. Whether you participate or not, please consider sharing this call for participants with your social networks! And if you’d like to find out more about previous research I’ve conducted with fan communities, check out these published articles: https://briannadym.com/research-publications/

To volunteer to participate (or if you have any questions), please fill out this google form [link removed]. I would absolutely love to speak with you.

Sincerely,

Brianna Dym

[briannadym]

Published Research We Made With Fandom’s Help!

Hey! As you all know, I often use this blogs to make posts recruiting participants from fandom. Here’s a post rounding up some of the publications I’ve made over the years with everyone’s help (in case folks don’t stalk my google scholar, like most normal people). Links all go to open access copies of the papers.

Coming Out Okay: Community Narratives for LGBTQ Identity Recovery Work

“Theyre All Trans, Sharon”: Authoring Gender in Videogame Fan Fiction

Moving Across Lands: Online Platform Migration in Fandom Communities

Ethical and Privacy Considerations for Research Using Online Fandom Data

Social Norm Vulnerability and its Consequences for Privacy and Safety in an Online Community

“You don’t do your hobby as a job”: Stereotypes of Computational Labor and their Implications for CS Education

Wow. I’ve done a lot in 4 years! Anyways, here’s the PDFs/hyperlinks if anyone should ever need them.

[briannadym]

[Recruitment Completed, Call for Participants Closed]

tl;dr - I’m interviewing people about computational projects they get involved with in fandom, including activism, data science, modding, or website building. I want to talk with more BIPOC and other minority fans in the US to represent a broad range of experiences and uplift your voices as best I can. Fill out this google form if you want to talk! https://forms.gle/CGYSXiiwFQNf1Ca2A

The Full Explanation: My name is Brianna Dym, and I am a PhD student at CU Boulder researching ways to broaden participation in computing (I’m also a longterm member of fandom and still contribute under my pseud). Fandom is a really cool community where people rely on complex technical skills to participate! Sometimes people learn to code, do data science, or other fun things in order to work on a project in fandom. If you are able to, I’d love to hear from you about your experiences working on computational projects in fandom. What is a computational project? It could be building a webpage, customizing templates, running a data advocacy project, helping out with activism efforts using social media campaigns, modding a video game, designing your own video game, or any other nerdy kind of technical thing!

I’ve been running interviews since February and have talked to a lot of fabulous people already. However, a lot has happened since February and we’ve all been focusing on causes far more important than research for the time being. If you’re able to spare some time, consider lending your voice to this study.

To participate, fill out this google form and I’ll contact you with follow-up if you’re a good fit for the study. This study features one interview that typically runs from 30 minutes to an hour. You will be compensated with a $20 gift card for your time. All interviews are fully anonymized, and you will have access to any research write-ups during the publication process.

[briannadym]

[Recruitment Complete, Call for Participants Closed]

Hi! I’m Brianna Dym, a researcher and aca-fan at the University of Colorado Boulder. I am inviting folks in fandom to participate in a research study on computational projects in fandom. In particular, I’m excited to talk to people of color, women, and members of the LGBTQ community who might be working on projects that impact their community in some way. Whether you started your own project or are working on something with a friend, I would love to schedule a time to talk with you about your experiences. What is a computational project? Why, it could be modding a video game, making web plug-ins, working on a social media site, building indie video games and visual novels. If it involves making or coding, we want to talk to you. Ultimately, we hope to understand the different ways people use projects like these to make their communities a better place.

If you agree to be in the study, you will participate in an interview with a researcher which should last between 30 and 90 minutes and will be conducted remotely via voice, video chat, or instant messaging according to your preferences.

To participate in this research study, please fill out this Google Form.

Whether you participate or not, please consider sharing this study with people who might be interested! Also, if you would like to learn more about this research study and our research in general, please check out our research page online: https://caseyfiesler.com/research/ You can email me at brianna.dym@colorado.edu if you have any questions or comments.

[briannadym]

[Recruitment Complete, Call for Participants Closed]

Hi! We’re Brianna Dym and Casey Fiesler, researchers and aca-fans at the University of Colorado Boulder. We want to talk to folks in fandom about modding video games! In particular, we’re excited to talk to people who are modding video games to be more inclusive. For example, you might be modding a game to have more accessibility features, or to do away with those pesky “heterosexual only” romances. We want to hear from you about what you are working on and the details of how your project relates back to fandom and your fan community.

To participate in this research study, please fill out this Google Form.

We’ll follow up with you and let you know if you’re a good fit for the study! If you agree to participate, you will interview with a researcher, which should last between 30 and 90 minutes and will be conducted remotely via voice, video chat, or instant messaging according to your preferences.

Whether you participate or not, please consider sharing this study with people who might be interested! Also, if you would like to learn more about this research study and our research in general, please check out our research page online: https://caseyfiesler.com/fandom/. You can email me at brianna.dym@colorado.edu if you have any questions or comments.

[briannadym]

Update: We are done recruiting for the moment. If you filled out the survey or contacted us in another method, we will reach out to you and let you know 1) if we would like to interview you or 2) if we are no longer accepting interviews.

If you do not receive an email from us, it is because you marked that you are younger than 18 and are therefore ineligible for this study.

Thank you so much everyone for spreading this around and I’m absolutely honored by the response we got. So many amazing volunteers! You’re wonderful people.

Results will be shared first to participants, and then we will try to disseminate key findings to the public as soon as we are able.

Call for LGBTQ Participants!

Hello everyone! My name is Brianna Dym, and I’m working with the BITS Lab at Syracuse University. This summer, lead researcher Dr. Bryan Semaan and I want to talk to people about being part of LGBTQ communities involved in creative writing, fandom, or both! As you may know, I’m also a proud member of the LGBTQ community and a long-time creative writer both in and out of fandom. I want to hear other people’s experiences in what has been such an important online community for me.

We would love to interview you if…

You are part of the LGBTQ community

You are involved in fandom as a fan fiction writer, or write original fiction in online communities, but we are also interested in talking to fan artists and cosplayers

You have moved to, joined, or even created your own online community spaces while in fandom. These spaces might look like discord channels, google docs, or even communities on Tumblr.

We can conduct the interview in the medium of your choice – either text-based chat or voice. You also don’t have to answer questions you don’t want to, and can stop at any time. We will ask for some basic demographics (any of which you can decline to answer), but won’t require any identifying information. If you feel comfortable with it, we might also ask you to share a few of your fan works with us. We expect this interview to take approximately one hour. You will be compensated with a $20 Amazon gift card for your participation in the study.

Whether you participate or not, please consider sharing this call for participants with your social networks!  And if you’d like to find out more about previous research I’ve conducted with fan communities, see this Tumblr post.

You can sign up to participate using this google form, if you want. Otherwise, to volunteer to participate (or if you have any questions), please email brianna.dym@colorado.edu or bsemaan@syr.edu. We would absolutely love to speak with you. This study will help us not only understand your experiences, but will also help us identify ways to help members of the LGBTQ community.

Sincerely,

The BITS Lab @ Syracuse University Brianna Dym and Dr. Bryan Semaan

[briannadym]

TWC No. 27: Tumblr and Fandom

Image by Hannah Craig (2014)

Vol 27 (2018): Tumblr and Fandom, Edited by Lori Morimoto and Louisa Ellen Stein

Editorial

Lori Morimoto and Louisa Ellen Stein, Tumblr and fandom

Theory

Evan Hayles Gledhill, Bricolage and the culture of the margins in the romantic era and the digital age

Bo Allesøe Christensen & Thessa Jensen, The JohnLock Conspiracy, fandom eschatology, and longing to belong

Christopher M. Cox, “Ms. Marvel,” Tumblr, and the industrial logics of identity in digital spaces

Praxis

Tosha R. Taylor, Digital Space and Walking Dead fandom’s Team Delusional

Rebecca Williams, Tumblr’s GIF culture and the infinite image: Lone fandom, ruptures, and working throu­ gh on a microblogging platform

Indira Neill Hoch, Content, conduct, and apologies in Tumblr fandom tags

Natalie Chew, Tumblr as counterpublic space for fan mobilization

Jessica Hautsch, Tumblr’s Supernatural fandom and the rhetorical affordance of GIFs

Symposium

Lily Winterwood, Discourse is the new wank: A reflection on linguistic change in fandom

Elizabeth M. Downey, Sheryl Lyn Bundy, Connie K. Shih, Emily Hamilton-Honey, A “Glee”-ful collaboration: Academic networking in the Tumblr world

Daisy Pignett, “Remember a week ago when Tom Hiddleston could do no wrong?” Tumblr reactions to the loss of an Internet boyfriendi

Judith May Fathallah, Polyphony on Tumblr: Reading the hate blog as pastiche

Paul J. Booth, Tumbling or stumbling? Misadventures with Tumblr in the fan studies classroom

Mélanie Bourdaa, Tumblr as a methodological tool for data archiving: The case of a Calzona Tumblr

Lori Morimoto, Roundtable: Tumblr and fandom

Book review

Anne Jamison, “Rogue archives: Digital cultural memory and media fandom,” by Abigail De Kosnik

Samantha Anne Close, “Cult media, fandom, and textiles,” by Brigid Cherry

Hye-Kyung Lee, “Transnational audiences: Media reception on a global scale,” by Adrian Athique

Kathryn Hemmann, “Manga in America: Transnational book publishing and the domestication of Japanese comics,” by Casey Brienza

[briannadym]

Just an FYI, if you’re sending me discord usernames, it doesn’t work unless you include the #0000 after your username!

Call for LGBTQ Participants!

Hello everyone! My name is Brianna Dym, and I’m working with the BITS Lab at Syracuse University. This summer, lead researcher Dr. Bryan Semaan and I want to talk to people about being part of LGBTQ communities involved in creative writing, fandom, or both! As you may know, I’m also a proud member of the LGBTQ community and a long-time creative writer both in and out of fandom. I want to hear other people’s experiences in what has been such an important online community for me.

We would love to interview you if…

You are part of the LGBTQ community

You are involved in fandom as a fan fiction writer, or write original fiction in online communities, but we are also interested in talking to fan artists and cosplayers

You have moved to, joined, or even created your own online community spaces while in fandom. These spaces might look like discord channels, google docs, or even communities on Tumblr.

We can conduct the interview in the medium of your choice – either text-based chat or voice. You also don’t have to answer questions you don’t want to, and can stop at any time. We will ask for some basic demographics (any of which you can decline to answer), but won’t require any identifying information. If you feel comfortable with it, we might also ask you to share a few of your fan works with us. We expect this interview to take approximately one hour. You will be compensated with a $20 Amazon gift card for your participation in the study.

Whether you participate or not, please consider sharing this call for participants with your social networks!  And if you’d like to find out more about previous research I’ve conducted with fan communities, see this Tumblr post.

You can sign up to participate using this google form, if you want. Otherwise, to volunteer to participate (or if you have any questions), please email brianna.dym@colorado.edu or bsemaan@syr.edu. We would absolutely love to speak with you. This study will help us not only understand your experiences, but will also help us identify ways to help members of the LGBTQ community.

Sincerely,

The BITS Lab @ Syracuse University Brianna Dym and Dr. Bryan Semaan

[briannadym]

[Edit: Study Closed] Call for LGBTQ Participants!

Hello everyone! My name is Brianna Dym, and I’m working with the BITS Lab at Syracuse University. This summer, lead researcher Dr. Bryan Semaan and I want to talk to people about being part of LGBTQ communities involved in creative writing, fandom, or both! As you may know, I’m also a proud member of the LGBTQ community and a long-time creative writer both in and out of fandom. I want to hear other people’s experiences in what has been such an important online community for me.

We would love to interview you if...

You are part of the LGBTQ community

You are involved in fandom as a fan fiction writer, or write original fiction in online communities, but we are also interested in talking to fan artists and cosplayers

You have moved to, joined, or even created your own online community spaces while in fandom. These spaces might look like discord channels, google docs, or even communities on Tumblr.

We can conduct the interview in the medium of your choice – either text-based chat or voice. You also don’t have to answer questions you don’t want to, and can stop at any time. We will ask for some basic demographics (any of which you can decline to answer), but won’t require any identifying information. If you feel comfortable with it, we might also ask you to share a few of your fan works with us. We expect this interview to take approximately one hour. You will be compensated with a $20 Amazon gift card for your participation in the study.

Whether you participate or not, please consider sharing this call for participants with your social networks!  And if you’d like to find out more about previous research I’ve conducted with fan communities, see this Tumblr post.

You can sign up to participate using this google form, if you want. Otherwise, to volunteer to participate (or if you have any questions), please email brianna.dym@colorado.edu or bsemaan@syr.edu. We would absolutely love to speak with you. This study will help us not only understand your experiences, but will also help us identify ways to help members of the LGBTQ community.

Sincerely,

The BITS Lab @ Syracuse University Brianna Dym and Dr. Bryan Semaan

[briannadym]

[briannadym]

Call for Participants: 2 Studies

Hey everyone! A couple friends of mine are running some studies and are having a really, really hard time finding people to talk to them! Consider taking a look at both of these and reaching out to them if you can help? If not, a reblog would go a long way :) And feel free to share the text of this post with anyone you think would be great but is not on tumblr.

The contact info for the first study is: fbbreakupstudy@gmail.com

The second study is recruiting anyone who is or was a moderator on Reddit! (not a lot of overlap here, I know) If you’re a or were moderator over there or know someone who is a moderator who could help out, send them the info!

“I'm doing a study on how Reddit mods create and change rules! If you have been a Reddit moderator, you are invited to participate in this research. We would love to schedule a time to talk with you about your experiences in creating and changing rules on a subreddit as a moderator. Ultimately, we hope to use this knowledge to better understand moderation and governance on Reddit.You will be compensated with a $20 Amazon Gift Card for your time.If you agree to be in the study, you will participate in an interview with a researcher which should last between 30 and 90 minutes and will be conducted remotely via voice or video chat according to your preferences.If you are interested or have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at aaron.jiang@colorado.edu. Also please share this with your friends!”

Once again, the contact info for the second study is: aaron.jiang@colorado.edu

[briannadym]

We’re taking steps to protect against future interference in our political conversation by state-sponsored propaganda campaigns

Hi Tumblr,

We’re all grappling with the influence that state-sponsored disinformation campaigns can have on our political conversations—and how wide-spread that interference turned out to be. So please take a moment to read this, think about it, and talk about it.

Last fall, we uncovered 84 Tumblr accounts linked to the Russian government through the Internet Research Agency, or IRA. These accounts were being used as part of a disinformation campaign leading up to the 2016 U.S. election. After uncovering the activity, we notified law enforcement, terminated the accounts, and deleted their original posts. Behind the scenes, we worked with the Department of Justice, and the information we provided helped indict 13 people who worked for the IRA.

Now that the investigations are done, we want to let you know how we’re going to help protect Tumblr in the future and what you can do to help.

Here’s what we know about these accounts

The IRA employs more than 1,000 people who engage in electronic disinformation and propaganda campaigns around the world using phony social media accounts. Their goal is to sow division and discontent in the countries they target. What makes them so difficult to spot is that they’re not spambots. They’re real people who get trained and paid to spread propaganda.

As far as we can tell, the IRA-linked accounts were only focused on spreading disinformation in the U.S., and they only posted organic content. We didn’t find any indication that they ran ads.

Remember, the IRA and other state-sponsored disinformation campaigns play off our zero-sum politics. They want to drive a wedge between us so that we spend our time fighting with each other instead of building towards the future. We’ll be watching for signs of future activity, but the best defense is knowing how they operate and how to judge the content you see.

What we’re doing in response to the interference

First, we’ll be emailing anyone who liked, reblogged, replied to, or followed an IRA-linked account with the list of usernames they engaged with.

Second, we’re going to start keeping a public record of usernames we’ve linked to the IRA or other state-sponsored disinformation campaigns. We’re committed to transparency and want you to know everything that we know.

We’ve decided to leave up any reblog chains that might be on your Tumblrs—you can choose to leave them or delete them. We’re letting you decide because the reblog chains contain posts created by real Tumblr users, often challenging or debunking the false and incideniary claims in the IRA-linked original post. Removing those authentic posts without your consent would encroach on your free speech—and there have been enough disruptions to our conversations as it is.

What we’re doing to stop future disinformation campaigns

You’ve probably read that U.S. intelligence officials expect foreign agents to try similar propaganda campaigns in the future. We’ll be monitoring Tumblr for signs of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, and if we see anything we will…

Terminate the accounts and remove their original posts.

Notify you if we determine that you’ve liked, reblogged, replied to, or followed a propaganda account.

Add the username to the public record.

Alert law enforcement.

There are also things you can do to help stop the spread of disinformation and propaganda.

Be aware that people want to manipulate the conversation. Knowing that disinformation and propaganda accounts are out there makes it harder for them to operate. The News Literacy Project has this handy checklist for spotting their tricks.

Be skeptical of things you read. Disinformation campaigns work because they know people don’t fact check. Look for reliable sources, and double-check that the source really says the same thing as the post. You can also check Snopes and Politifact. Both are award-winning resources and usually have the latest viral claim fact checked on the front page. 

Correct the record. When you see people spreading misinformation—even unintentionally—politely say something in a reblog or reply. If it’s your friend, send them a message to let them know.

One last note: Please vote.

Transparency won’t mean a thing if we don’t participate in the process. Whatever your political stance, voting ensures a government that represents your interests. For our U.S. users: You can register online or by mail, and many states are holding primaries right now.

[briannadym]

Call for Participants: Exploring Fandom Privacy and Ethics

Do you ever think about the issues of privacy in fandom? Have you or a friend ever been “outed” as a fan? How do you feel about academic research on fandom? Do you just have a lot of feelings about ethics in fandom? Most importantly, do you want to talk about these critical topics?

My name is Brianna Dym, longtime fan community member, and also researcher in the Department of Information Science at University of Colorado Boulder. I’m looking for people interested in talking about privacy and ethics in fandom! If you’ve been involved in fandom for a while, I would love to have you participate!

We can conduct the interview in the medium of your choice – either text-based chat or voice. You also don’t have to answer questions you don’t want to, and can stop at any time. We will ask for some basic demographics (any of which you can decline to answer), but won’t require any identifying information.

Whether you participate or not, please consider sharing this call for participants with your social networks!  And if you’d like to find out more about previous research our lab has conducted about fandom, see this Tumblr post: http://cfiesler.tumblr.com/post/171831912875/survey-results-fan-platform-use-over-time

To volunteer to participate (or if you have any questions), please email brianna.dym@colorado.edu!

[briannadym]

Hey, check out this thing we did!

Survey Results: Fan Platform Use over Time

Particularly for those who were kind enough to participate in our survey last week, or to share it even after we halted data collection (because we received so many responses so quickly!), I wanted to give you something interesting right away. As you know, the academic writing and publishing process can be lengthy, so who knows when you might get a full paper from us! But in the meantime, this was the analysis I did this weekend.

The survey asked for participants to indicate what platforms they use/used from a given list, and also to indicate a date range (e.g., Tumblr 2006-2018). I parsed those date ranges in order to determine for a given platform how many of our participants were active in a given year. (This actually gave me an excuse to write some code for the first time in years. Jupyter Notebooks are super cool.)

(Click on the image above for full resolution!)

The Y axis is number of survey participants who indicated using the platform during a given time, and the X axis is year. (This starts at 1990, though I’ll note there were 10-ish participants who indicated using usenet, email lists, and/or messageboards in the 1980s.)

Some interesting things to note: (1) See how fanfiction.net has a spike where there was a big drop off but then it stabilized? That’s around the time that they cracked down on adult content. (2) I expected to see Livejournal decline drastically sooner, but it actually continued to climb a bit after Strikethrough and related things, until Tumblr and AO3 both started getting very popular. Based on what I’ve seen qualitatively so far, I do think that people were starting to leave, but that there had to be critical mass elsewhere in order for that leaving to start going en masse. There were also a lot of people who continued using Livejournal while they picked up other platforms as well. (3) As my PhD student collaborator Brianna said, we have “a beautiful arc of AO3 and Tumblr being besties forever.” (This makes sense to me based on some findings from my previous work about AO3, and how Tumblr filled in the gap of social interaction left by Livejournal.)

In the “other” category of fan platforms used, the most popular was Discord. This doesn’t surprise me! For the most part, participants had only been active in it for the past couple of years, which is why it didn’t show up specifically in the survey (which was constructed based on interview data we already had). We also saw less frequent mentions of Facebook, reddit, delicious/pinboard, and IRC.

Digging into the qualitative data will give this data much more explanatory power, but I think this is very interesting! We also asked participants what their primary fandom was for each platform they used. Based on a pretty simple analysis (most popular words!), here are the top five fandoms from each platform: Usenet: Star Trek, Buffy, X-Files, Star Wars, Sailor Moon

Email Lists: Harry Potter, Star Trek, Buffy, X-Files, Gundam Wing

Messageboards: Harry Potter, Buffy, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Sailor Moon

Fandom-Specific Archives: Harry Potter, Buffy, Stargate, X-Files, Doctor Who

Fanfiction.net:  Harry Potter, Naruto, Buffy, Star Wars, Gundam Wing

Livejournal: Harry Potter, Supernatural, Stargate, Doctor Who, Merlin

DeviantArt: Harry Potter, Naruto, Kingdom Hearts, Supernatural, Final Fantasy

Dreamwidth: Harry Potter, Supernatural, Marvel, Stargate, RPF

Archive of Our Own: Marvel, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Supernatural, Teen Wolf

Tumblr: Marvel, Star Wars, Supernatural, Harry Potter, Teen Wolf

Twitter: Star Wars, Supernatural, Marvel, RPF, Yuri on Ice

Note that this is NOT necessarily representative of the overall popularity of certain fandoms on these platforms. Our survey, because it was targeting research questions about fandom migration, asked for participants who had been in fandom for 10+ years. This means that our results skewed older (mean 31; median 30; SD 8.6). And of course, most of the participants are currently in fandom, which means that it also misses people who have left fandom.

It is interesting to see the change across platforms and over time though! My favorite tidbit is how Star Wars was popular, dropped off, and then came back with gusto.

This is only the tip of the iceberg on this data analysis! If there’s anything else that is easily shared as we do this analysis, I’ll continue to do so. Otherwise, wish us luck and I’ll eventually share a completed analysis if/when (fingers crossed!) we publish on this.

I have a list of emails from everyone who participated and wanted to give us that info to share the results. If you’d like to be added to that list, send me an email at casey.fiesler@colorado.edu. Or just feel free to follow me here, or myself and Brianna on Twitter.