Fandom and identity construction: an analysis of Thai fans' engagement with Twitter

The study situates fandom as a growing, global, and digitally mediated cultural phenomenon and examines Thai fans’ practices on Twitter. Drawing on media and fan studies (e.g., Hall’s encoding/decoding, Jenkins’ convergence culture), the paper argues that fans actively interpret and produce meaning, often through online platforms. The research addresses two questions: (1) How is the source text portrayed and rewritten in fan tweets? (2) How does fandom relate to identity construction among Thai online media users? Given the visibility of fan activity in Thailand across transnational media (K-pop, Chinese TV, Western franchises, Thai dramas), the study seeks to illuminate how Thai fans use tweets as fan texts and how language and signs in these texts perform identity. The work is important for understanding contemporary mediated identities, local-global cultural flows, and how social media platforms shape fan expression in the Thai context.

The paper reviews theories of media reception and discourse, emphasizing Hall’s encoding/decoding model and constructivist views of media meaning-making. It traces fan studies from early portrayals of fans as pathological to Jenkins’ concept of participatory culture and convergence culture, where audiences co-produce and circulate meanings. De Certeau’s textual poaching and the expansion of fan textual productivity online (including tweets) frame fan texts as active reinterpretations. The review highlights identity as central in fan studies, incorporating Butler’s performativity and fandom’s role in exploring gender/sexuality (e.g., slash fiction, role-playing). Semiotics (Barthes’ denotation/connotation; myth) and intertextuality (Bakhtin, Kristeva) underpin how fan texts are produced and read across cultural references. The paper contrasts Western emphases on resistance with East Asian fandom’s intimacy (Yano), and introduces transcultural fandom (Chin & Morimoto) to explain cross-border affinities. In Thailand, scholarship has focused on music and K-pop fandoms, with limited analysis of broader media fan practices, motivating this study.

Design and data: The study analyzes 100 Thai fan tweets (25 per source text) retrieved as top/recent tweets on June 13, 2018, via Twitter hashtags. Four source texts representing diverse fandoms were selected: Wanna One (Korean boy band), Buppae Sunniwas/Love Destiny (Thai drama), Idol Producer (Chinese survival show), and Marvel’s The Avengers (Western franchise). Hashtags used included #Avengers, #Idolproducer, #Linhoon, #Nielong, #เดื่ อเกด/#Duerkade, and #บุพเพสันนิวาส. Tweets included linguistic text and images (including fan art). Analytical approach: - RQ1 (portrayal/rewriting): Qualitative content analysis following Krippendorff and Lune & Berg. Units coded as concepts (clusters around ideas such as affection) and themes (latent meanings). Inductive coding developed categories and subcategories from the data, sorting materials to identify recurring patterns. - RQ2 (identity construction): Semiotic analysis focusing on signs and narratives in tweets, using Barthes’ denotation/connotation, myth, and intertextuality to interpret identity performances and cultural references. Rationale and procedures: Content analysis steps included data collection, inductive coding, theme formation, sorting, pattern identification, and theorization. Sample size (100 tweets) was deemed adequate for exploratory qualitative analysis. Semiotic reading examined how language, images, hashtags, and culture-specific codes signal identities (e.g., shipping positions, kinship pronouns, Thai cultural references). Ethical note: The study follows institutional ethical standards; data include original works and photos; datasets available on reasonable request with restrictions.

- Five tweet types identified: (1) Hypothetical interpretation (25 tweets): fans infer or assert implied relationships or meanings in source images/videos (e.g., reading unspoken romantic gestures in Wanna One pairings like #Linhoon, #Nielong; assigning ‘king/queen’ roles signaling masculine/feminine positions). (2) Fan art (11 tweets): hand-drawn/digital art and edited images, often depicting ships (e.g., Daniel–Ong, Kuanlin–Jihoon, Captain America–Black Widow), accompanied by fandom-specific captions. (3) Narrative of a personal anecdote regarding the source text: brief stories of fans’ experiences and references that require fandom knowledge (e.g., quoting “I don’t feel so good” from Infinity War to a non-fan teacher). (4) Expression of personal opinions and feelings (43 tweets): intense affective reactions (love, desire, humor) to characters/scenes, often with exaggeration and slang (e.g., repeated assertions of “Thor is handsome,” escalating emphasis). (5) Fan parody (7 tweets): humorous, often exaggerated visual/verbal parodies (e.g., Thor likened to Toothless; Thai fans calling Chris Hemsworth ‘bear’; Thai-style offerings to Thor/Loki as mock worship). - Characteristics of fan tweets: Predominantly humorous tone; heavy use of internet language (slang, emoticons, emojis, hashtags). Tweets tend to reinterpret or restate rather than rewrite plotlines (unlike fan fiction). - Identity-related findings: • Heteronormativity cues in same-sex shipping: assigning ‘dominant/submissive’ positions based on masculine/feminine presentation (e.g., ‘king’ vs ‘queen’ in #Nielong). • Fan talk (shared lexicon): fandom-specific nicknames, codes, shipping tag order implying roles (e.g., #Nielong vs #Ongniel), and stylistic registers (e.g., Buppae Sunniwas fans mixing archaic Ayutthaya-period Thai with modern Thai: ‘ออเจ้า’, ‘เจ้าคะ’). Fan talk fosters in-group bonding and can exclude non-fans. • Relational positioning: fans adopt kinship/friend pronouns to address idols/characters (e.g., ‘พี่’, ‘น้อง’, ‘ลูก’), signaling intimacy and social positioning. • Transcultural elements: fans incorporate source languages (Korean, Chinese) in hashtags/captions and ‘Thai-ifize’ content by blending Thai locality (language puns, beliefs, norms) and humor with global media texts (e.g., renaming Avengers with Thai-sounding mundane names; parodying Thai worship practices with Thor/Loki). - Platform implication: Twitter functions more as an expressive bulletin board than a structured community space in this dataset, foregrounding personal expression and humor.

The findings address RQ1 by showing Thai fans engage with source texts mainly through reinterpretation and restatement across five tweet types, privileging brief, affect-rich expressions and humor over narrative replotting typical of fan fiction. This underscores Twitter’s affordances for rapid, visible, low-barrier participation and multimodal remixing (text, images, video). For RQ2, semiotic and intertextual readings reveal identity performances through: (a) fan talk that encodes insider knowledge and solidarity while demarcating boundaries from non-fans; (b) relational pronouns and familial terms that construct intimacy with idols/characters; (c) gendered shipping conventions reflecting broader societal heteronormative norms by mapping masculine/feminine roles onto same-sex pairings; and (d) transcultural hybridity as Thai fans both appropriate source languages/cultural cues and embed local Thai cultural references and humor (“Thai-ifize” practices). These results highlight how local cultural sensibilities (notably humor and kinship address) shape global fandom expressions, reinforcing the importance of cultural context in digital fan practices. The humorous tone pervasive across types may stem from Twitter’s culture, Thai humor norms, or fan culture generally, aligning with the platform’s role as a space for playful identity work and communal signaling rather than deep narrative production.

The study contributes by (1) expanding the notion of fan text to include fan tweets and identifying five prevalent engagement types on Thai Twitter; (2) demonstrating how Thai fans construct identities through shared lexicons (fan talk), relational positioning, and gendered shipping conventions; and (3) evidencing transcultural hybridity and humor in Thai fan productions, including the “Thai-ifize” blending of local culture with global media. It underscores Twitter’s function as an expressive outlet for fans’ affect, interpretation, and cultural play. Future research could examine larger or comparative datasets across platforms, explore causal factors behind humor prevalence and tweet popularity, and analyze differences across fandoms, demographics, or temporal periods to deepen understanding of transcultural identity practices online.

The study notes uncertainty about why humor is so prevalent in fan tweets and whether this is attributable to Twitter’s nature, Thai cultural norms, fan culture, or a combination. Reasons for the popularity of fan tweets are also not clear. The dataset comprises selected top/recent tweets from a single day and four source texts; datasets are not publicly available due to restrictions, though available on request, which may limit replication.