Identity, Politics, and Influence in online K-Pop Communities

全球K-pop粉丝群体是高度多元文化和多语言的，粉丝们跨越文化和地理距离形成了社会纽带。随着个人文化背景与全球化社区的对抗，成员们如何在这个复杂的民族、语言和文化的混合体中宣称自己的粉丝身份是一个有趣的问题。先前的研究表明，韩国流行音乐粉丝群体是复杂的，涉及等级制度，某些粉丝被视为团体领袖，协调大规模行动。例如，在2020年初，K-pop粉丝积极参与了“黑人的命也是命”在线抗议活动，标志着社区的重大变化。粉丝们不仅通过音乐和风格来表达自己的身份，还通过与BLM等组织分享意识形态立场来表达自己的身份。目前还不清楚粉丝们是如何协调这些激进活动的，是什么赋予了某些粉丝指示其他人参与“黑人的命也是命”（Black Lives Matter）等运动的权力，以及与韩国流行音乐无关的问题的观点如何对粉丝的身份产生了重要影响。这项研究将调查K-pop粉丝如何使用他们的在线帖子和对话来创建和展示一种身份（并与不受欢迎的身份保持距离），以及进一步研究看似无关的意识形态如何被纳入这些身份并成为中心。为此，该项目将进行一项数字人种学研究，观察粉丝在线上、线下以及一系列在线平台上的行为。该项目将采用多模式的方法，不仅研究Twitter等网站上基于文本的帖子，还研究跨多个平台的图片、视频、动图和其他形式的丰富交流。在线社区几乎不断地结合这些工具；将它们作为社会意义的综合平台进行研究，是捕捉在线社会和政治生活的关键。随着我们的社会生活越来越多地进入虚拟领域，该项目旨在推进个人如何嵌入在线社会结构的研究。

The global K-pop fan community is highly multicultural and multilingual, and fans form social bonds across large cultural and geographical distances. How members stake a claim to their fan identity amidst this complex mix of nationalities, languages and cultures is of interest, as individual cultural backgrounds come up against a globalised community. Previous studies have shown that the K-pop fan community is complex and involves hierarchies where certain fans are seen as group leaders, coordinating large-scale actions. For example, in early 2020 K-pop fans participated actively in Black Lives Matter online protests, marking a major change for the community. Fans expressed their identity not only through music and style but also through shared ideological positions with organisations such as BLM. It is unclear how fans coordinated these activism activities, what gives certain fans the authority to instruct others to participate in movements like Black Lives Matter, and how opinions about issues unrelated to K-pop became important to fans' identities. This study will investigate how K-pop fans use their online posts and conversations to create and project an identity (and to distance themselves from disfavoured identities), and further how seemingly unrelated ideologies come to be incorporated and central in those identities. To do this, this project will conduct a digital ethnography, observing fan practice both online and offline and on a range of online platforms. The project will take a multimodal approach, studying not only text-based posts on websites like Twitter, but also pictures, videos, GIFs, and other forms of rich communication across several platforms. Online communities combine these tools almost constantly; studying them as an integrated platform for social meaning is key to capturing social and political life online. This project aims to advance the study of how individuals come to be embedded in online social structures, as our social lives increasingly move into the virtual sphere.