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Online Fandom

Here in the Internet Rules Lab, one of our areas of research is transformative fandom as an online community, with a focus on platforms, social norms, computational learning, and privacy and safety. This work spans from Fiesler’s dissertation research on copyright norms in fandom to our current NSF-funded project (led by Dym) that examines computational projects in fandom as a path towards broadening participation in computing and community empowerment.

Researchers: Professor Casey Fiesler, PhD student Brianna Dym, undergraduate research assistants Namita Pasupuleti and Cole Rockwood

 Most Recent

Publication: Brianna Dym, Namita Pasupuleti, and Casey Fiesler. "Building a Pillowfort: Political Tensions in Platform Design and Policy." Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 6, no. GROUP (2022): 1-23.

Video Essay: The Life and Death of Fandom Platforms

Publication: Casey Fiesler and Brianna Dym. Moving Across Lands: Online Platform Migration in Fandom Communities. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, CSCW, 2020.

Publication: Dym, Brianna, Namita Pasupuleti, Cole Rockwood, and Casey Fiesler. "You don’t do your hobby as a job”: Stereotypes of Computational Labor and their Implications for CS Education. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2021.

Press Coverage:  On K-Pop Fans, Political Activism, and the Nature of Nuance , Teen Vogue, 24 June 2020.

Press Coverage: Fanfiction Rising, The Coloradan, 1 February 2020.

Bibliography

Dym, Brianna, Namita Pasupuleti, and Casey Fiesler. "Building a Pillowfort: Political Tensions in Platform Design and Policy." Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 6, no. GROUP (2022): 1-23.

Dym, Brianna, Namita Pasupuleti, Cole Rockwood, and Casey Fiesler. "You don’t do your hobby as a job”: Stereotypes of Computational Labor and their Implications for CS Education. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2021.

Dym, Brianna and Casey Fiesler. Social Norm Vulnerability and Its Consequences for Privacy and Safety in an Online Community. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, CSCW, 2020. [Blogged]

Fiesler, Casey and Brianna Dym. Moving Across Lands: Online Platform Migration in Fandom Communities. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, CSCW, 2020. [Video Essay]

Dym, Brianna and Casey Fiesler. “First Rule of Fandom”: Ethical and Privacy Considerations for Research Using Online Fandom Data. Transformative Works and Cultures, 2020. [Blogged]

Fiesler, Casey and Amy Bruckman. Creativity, Copyright, and Close-Knit Communities: A Case Study of Social Norm Formation and EnforcementProceedings of the ACM: Human-Computer Interaction, GROUP, 2020.

Dym, Brianna, Jed Brubaker, Casey Fiesler, and Bryan Semaan. “Coming Out Okay”: Community Narratives for LGBTQ Identity Recovery WorkProceedings of the ACM: Human-Computer Interaction, CSCW, 2019. [Blogged]

Dym, Brianna, Jed Brubaker, and Casey Fiesler. ““theyre all trans sharon”: Authoring Gender in Video Game Fan Fiction.” Game Studies 18, no. 3 (special issue on Queerness and Video Games) (2018).

Dym, Brianna, and Casey Fiesler. “Vulnerable and Online: Fandom’s Case for Stronger Privacy Norms and Tools.” In Companion of the 2018 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, pp. 329-332. ACM, 2018.

Fiesler, Casey. “Owning the servers: A design fiction exploring the transformation of fandom into” our own”.” Transformative Works and Cultures 28 (2018).

Dym, Brianna, and Casey Fiesler. “Generations, migrations, and the future of fandom’s private spaces.” Transformative Works and Cultures 28 (2018).

Fiesler, Casey, Shannon Morrison, R. Benjamin Shapiro, and Amy S. Bruckman. “Growing Their Own: Legitimate Peripheral Participation for Computational Learning in an Online Fandom Community.” In CSCW, pp. 1375-1386. 2017.

Samson, Christine, Casey Fiesler, and Shaun K. Kane. “Holy Starches Batman!! We are Getting Walloped!: Crowdsourcing Comic Book Transcriptions.” In Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, pp. 289-290. ACM, 2016.

Fiesler, Casey, Shannon Morrison, and Amy S. Bruckman. “An archive of their own: a case study of feminist HCI and values in design.” In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2574-2585. ACM, 2016. [Best Paper Honorable Mention] [Blogged]

Fiesler, Casey, Cliff Lampe, and Amy S. Bruckman. “Reality and perception of copyright terms of service for online content creation.” In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, pp. 1450-1461. ACM, 2016. [Blogged

Fiesler, Casey. “The role of copyright in online creative communities: law, norms, and policy.” PhD diss., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015.

Fiesler, Casey, Jessica L. Feuston, and Amy S. Bruckman. “Understanding copyright law in online creative communities.” In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, pp. 116-129. ACM, 2015. [Best Paper Award] [Blogged] [Press: Escapist]

Fiesler, Casey, Jessica Feuston, and Amy S. Bruckman. “I Am Not a Lawyer: Copyright Q&A in Online Creative Communities.” In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Supporting Group Work (Poster), pp. 291-294. ACM, 2014.

Fiesler, Casey, and Amy Bruckman. “Copyright terms in online creative communities.” In CHI’14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2551-2556. ACM, 2014. [Press: EngadgetNY Times]

Fiesler, Casey, and Amy S. Bruckman. “Remixers’ understandings of fair use online.” In Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing, pp. 1023-1032. ACM, 2014.

Fiesler, Casey. “The chilling tale of copyright law in online creative communities.” XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students 19, no. 4 (2013): 26-29.

Fiesler, Casey. “Pretending Without a License: Intellectual Property and Gender Implications in Online Games.” Buff. Intell. Prop. LJ 9 (2013): 1.

Fiesler, Casey. “Everything I need to know I learned from fandom: How existing social norms can help shape the next generation of user-generated content.” Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. L. 10 (2007): 729. [Burton Award for Legal Writing]

Public Writing

First Rule of Fandom: Don’t Talk About Fandom by Brianna Dym. Medium, 2020.

Using public data for research? Consider the ethical implications with these insights from fandom by Brianna Dym. Medium, 2020.

The Missing Stakeholder of DMCA 512: Non-Infringing Users. Authors Alliance, 30 June 2020. (with Corian Zacher)

Transformative Spaces: How Fandom Creates Communities of Support for LGBTQ PeopleMedium. November 5, 2019.

Why Archive of Our Own’s Surprise Hugo Nomination is Such a Big DealSlate. April 9, 2019.

Fandom’s Fate is Not Tied to Tumblr’sSlate. December 5, 2018. (With Brianna Dym)

Bring on the Queer Killer Bees: How Marvel Completely Misses the Value of FanfictionMedium. December 29, 2017.

What I Learned About the Internet From the Babysitters Club. Slate. February 1, 2017.

#Serial: Fandom Community Meets Armchair LawMedium. December 19, 2014.

Fair Use Barbie: Changing the Narrative and the Legality of Remix. CaseyFiesler.com. November 27, 2014.

Press Coverage

On K-Pop Fans, Political Activism, and the Nature of Nuance . Teen Vogue . June 24, 2020.

Fanfiction Rising. The Coloradan. 1 February 2020.

Fans Are Better Than Tech at Organizing Information OnlineWired. June 11, 2019.

Despite the looming fear of social media exodus, many fandom Tumblr users will staunchly remain on the platformPolygon. December 10, 2018.

Tumblr’s porn ban is another internet blackout for sex workersWired. December 7, 2018.

Tumblr’s Porn Ban Could Be Its Downfall – After All, It Happened to LiveJournalThe Verge. December 6, 2018.

Before Tumblr announced plan to ban adult content, it was a safe space for exploring identityThe Washington Post. December 4, 2018.

How Tumblr’s adult content crackdown could alienate usersCNN. December 3, 2018.

Why did fans flee LiveJournal, and where will they go after Tumblr? Slate. March 29, 2018.

Interviews and Talks

Growing Their Own: Lessons from Community-Driven, Feminist Technology Design. Eastern Connecticut University. 2021.

Growing Their Own: Lessons from the Community-Driven Development of Archive of Our Own. Mozilla. 2019. 

Casey Fiesler. Fansplaining. 2019.

Growing Their Own: Building an Archive and a Community for Fanfiction. Open Repositories 2018 Keynote. 2018.

Death and the Fangirl. Fansplaining. 2016.

How Copyright and the Internet Fuel Creativity. TEDxCU Talk. 2016.