Much has been written about the youth experience of literacy learning when they create and share fanfiction online. Previous features on
Reading Today Online have outlined what learning looks like for adolescent participants in
Hunger Games fan spaces and have shed light on the particular writing practices recruited by sites like Fanfiction.net. However, less is known about the nature of
teaching in these online, fan-based, informal learning environments. How do online spaces teach fans the expectations of digital literacy practices such as writing fanfiction? What pedagogical tools establish the curriculum, teaching, evaluation, and social norms of an online fanfiction space?
I explored similar questions in a study published in Learning, Media and Technology about the nature of pedagogy in an online fanfiction space. In particular, I studied adolescent literacy in an online forum called The Sims Writers’ Hangout (The Hangout has since disappeared, but evidence of the group’s creative work still appears on Flickr and elsewhere online). The Hangout was an online space for fans of the videogame The Sims to gather and support each other’s writing of Sims fanfiction—multimodal, digital texts that pair images taken in the video game with narratives authors write (see examples of Sims fanfiction created with The Sims 3). Over its five-year existence, The Hangout had more than 12,000 members, mostly adolescent females, from all over the world who posted over 660,000 messages on a variety of Sims-related and community-building topics to establish an online network of readers and writers.
To better understand the pedagogy of The Hangout, I drew from data collected over two years spent documenting the space through the participation of eight young women (ages 15 - 23) from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Through analysis of virtual interviews, Hangout posts, and the Sims fanfiction my informants shared and the readers’ responses they received, I came to the following understandings about the nature of literacy pedagogy in this online fanfiction space:
- Attention paid to creating social order. Moderators, who themselves were adolescents, wrote numerous posts detailing The Hangout’s expectations. As members join and begin to explore the site’s Welcome area, they are immediately instructed to follow the rules with posts that read, “By reading the rules, you will prove to everyone that you’re an intelligent asset to this community.” Those rules, for example, provided expectations about showing respect and posting in the correct sub-forum. They also detail the following consequences for breaking rules: “First offense: Warning PM from staff. Second offense: Suspension of variable length, dependent on offense. Third offense: Permanent ban.” Throughout The Hangout, members received repeated messages establishing the social norms of this informal learning environment.
- Contests serve as a form of pedagogy. To teach members how to design high-quality images, The Hangout ran contests such as The Hangout’s Next Top Model—a multi-round contest based on the similarly named reality television show. Each round required participants to place their “model” in a different scene and post an image for member voting. The image published with this piece represents a submission for a round which asked contestants to style their model after an iconic actor/actress of their choice. The multimodal combination of images and written narratives is an important feature of Sims fanfiction, and The Hangout communicated expectations for quality in digital image editing in part through contests within the space.
- All reader feedback instructs writers.As with other online writing spaces, The Hangout readers posted comments and reviews of Sims fanfiction shared in the space. Some such posts included specific praise or constructive feedback about an author’s writing or images, as this comment received by one participant: “I liked it Eve, the dancing and the kiss in the rain was brilliant! ...I thought maybe some more description could have been added...” However, most reader response took on a form known as “fangirl” comments. Such comments offered gushing, unspecific praise that left one of my participants wondering, “well okay, but what was good about it?” when she received such comments. Though, all of the Sims fanfiction writers I spoke to shared the opinion that even fangirl comments provide motivation to keep writing. In these ways, all reader feedback instructs writers and encourages them to share.
Moderators who established and enforced social norms, activities that communicated expectations for quality Sims fanfiction, and readers who provided constructive and motivating feedback to writers constructed pedagogy in The Hangout. As literacy educators continue to question how interest-based online spaces can inform classrooms, the case of The Hangout shows us that pedagogy within these sites might be closer to our classroom instruction than we think.
Jayne C. Lammers is an assistant professor and director of the secondary English teacher preparation program at the University of Rochester. She can be reached at jlammers@warner.rochester.edu or on Twitter at @URocProf.