Fandom Formation Double Issue: A Fandom Primer and Lessons From Real Housewives of Politics
Dive deep into pluralist fandom formation—a topic so full of hot info and insights that we had to divide it into two parts!
Today, a Fandom 101 primer and an interview with Nelini Stamp, organizer and founder of Real Housewives of Politics. Tomorrow, a fantastic roundtable discusses the impact of Renaissance, Beyoncé’s groundbreaking album, tour and soon-to-premiere concert documentary on our field and her fandom; and lessons for fandom formation strategies—why the superhero film Blue Beetle’s fandom didn’t fly.
Introducing Your Fandom 101 Primer
THE BIG TAKEAWAY: Pop culture fandoms are powerful narrative organizing environments that can orient millions of people towards pluralist OR toxic beliefs and behaviors. Working with and within pop culture fandoms is a critical evolution of the pop culture narrative change field’s work. So Pop Culture Collaborative Chief Strategy Officer Tracy Van Slyke, and Jeff Yang, the Collaborative’s Senior Advisor, Digital and Narrative Intelligence, have created the below Fandom 101 primer. Print it out here. Discuss with your team.
Let’s start with a shared definition. What are pop culture fandoms?
POP CULTURE COLLABORATIVE SAYS: Pop culture fandoms are comprised of individuals that self-organize into active communities around a shared pop passion—such as a television show, a cinematic universe, a favorite musician, a social media influencer or celebrity, a book series, a sports team, and more.
How big of a deal are fandoms?
Check out these stats. They speak for themselves.
Why are fandoms important to narrative change and movement-building strategy?
As Pop Culture Collaborative’s CEO, Bridgit Antoinette Evans, writes:
“Every person moves through their lives immersed in ‘narrative oceans’ composed largely of ideas, narrative archetypes, cultural norms, and stories. These narrative oceans shape people’s identities—including how they feel, think and act about themselves, other people, and the world around them.”
Over the last four years, the Collaborative has invested in supporting research, learning tools, and exploratory grantmaking around pop culture fandoms, and other types of digital communities.
Based on this work, our key learning: Per Tracy, “Pop culture fandoms are where transformational narrative immersion and mass organizing strategies meet.”
So what impact do fandoms really have?
As Jeff has documented, trust in media and government institutions has eroded and identify formation has diminished along the lines of nationality, faith, family, or racial community. Millions of people are looking for new ways to find truth, forge trust, and create identity. And that’s where fandoms come in:
Fandoms offer meaning. They give people a way to organize their lives, form community and meet new people.
Fandoms form identity. Over time, deep immersion within fandoms informs and transforms people’s social identities. This ultimately impacts who they believe belongs in our country—and who doesn't.
Fandoms impact people’s behaviors in the real world. The activities and behaviors in pop culture fandoms carry over into civic behavior: protesting, voting, and—on the toxic side—sometimes even violent actions.
As Tracy says,
“Fandoms are where beliefs are shaped, behaviors are practiced, and a sense of belonging is forged.”
And as Jeff says,
“Fandoms are a petri dish for larger civil society.”
What makes a fandom different from any other community?
Jeff has created a rubric to document what makes a fandom unique from other self-organized communities. Fandoms are rooted in a collaboratively created culture most strongly marked by the following “fan tropes.”
A shared lore, which includes the origin stories, meaningful milestones, and rites of passage frequently created by the fans themselves
Insider jargon used to communicate with other fans
External symbols used by fans identify themselves to each other and outsiders
A common code of behavior that defines how fans interact with one another and with nonfans
These elements are helpful in both spotting emerging fandoms AND providing the basics for forming a fandom.
Need some examples of fandom impact in the real world? Here you go.
The Harry Potter community has been known as one of the most powerful progressive fandoms in the world. Fandom Forward, formerly known as the Harry Potter Alliance, dedicated its founding years to building fan-activists within this fandom. And now, a large swath of Harry Potter fans have organized to reject creator JK Rowling because of her transphobic beliefs.
On the toxic side, Star Wars is one of the best known storyworlds of good defeating evil. Star Wars fandoms are legendary and multi-cultural, but a vocal minority are known for vicious racist and sexist attacks online every time a new non-white, non-male character rises in prominence.
Fans of the wildly famous genre of K-Pop music out of South Korea rose to reject the toxicity of the Trump presidency during the 2020 election and organized together to buy out the tickets to a stadium during a campaign speech, leaving it virtually empty when he arrived.
Okay, I’m intrigued. How do I learn more about fandoms?
Mobilizing pop culture fandoms is an under-tapped strategy for the pop culture narrative change field. But we can change that. At the Collaborative, we believe that the field can expand efforts that cultivate the digital communities—especially pop culture fandoms—that help of millions of people embody pluralist beliefs and behaviors. In the process, we can dilute the impact of rising White Nationalist and pro-authoritarian fandoms. Knowledge is power. Read and explore.
“The Best Organizing You’ve Never Heard Of,” from the Fan Organizer Coalition.
Senior Advisor Shawn Taylor’s call to action, “We the Fans: How Our Powers Can Change the World”
Past Digital Waves issues
Experimental Tool: Start to explore the fandoms around you
Download this beta Fandom Elements Identification Worksheet that Jeff developed. This will help you to identify and analyze emerging and existing fandoms as part of your narrative and organizing strategies.
Fan Organizing Lessons with The Real Housewives of Politics
THE BIG QUESTION: We know the organizing power and potential of fandoms. But how do we prepare movement organizers to partner with fandoms to harness that power? Nelini Stamp, National Organizing Director at the Working Families Party and founder of Real Housewives of Politics (RHWOP), a fandom dedicated to activating Real Housewives fans around civic engagement, shares her learnings.
The following conversation between Fandom Forward Executive Director and Digital Waves Curator Katie Bowers and Nelini Stamp has been lightly edited for clarity.
Katie Bowers: Tell me a little bit about Real Housewives of Politics. What is it, and who is the community engaging with it?
Nelini Stamp: Real Housewives of Politics started as a project of the Working Families Party to reach Bravo TV fans. Bravo is the most watched network for women in the U.S. ages 18-49, which is huge. That is millions of people.
Our goal is to teach politics via iconic Housewives moments and cast members. We primarily use Instagram and we host watch parties, while engaging fans to get out the vote. So far, we’ve hosted watch parties in New York City, San Antonio, and Philadelphia and they have all been well attended and really fun.
What inspired you to start this project/community?
My entry point into the Real Housewives fandom was Real Housewives of New Jersey. My favorite Housewife is Heather Dubrow from Orange County. People think fans, especially Real Housewives fans, are shallow, but in the fandom, I found levity, grace, humor, camp, and community.
I was already a fan, I knew the fandom culture, and we knew that people in the fandom would respond to something like this. We want to be where those millions of fans are. People engage with what they love, and we need to meet people there.
In setting up RHWOP, I thought a lot about the Hawaii Longshoremen’s union efforts. To grow the union membership, they recruited Little League coaches. These are figures in the community that people trust—they coached kids, they talked to families, they were at the center of a type of sports fandom, a community, and they could influence others to join the union. And it worked!
We have a team of people working to develop resources, content, and manage the community: myself, three content creators, and in-person event organizers. All of us working on the project were Real Housewives fans first.
Honestly, being part of the fandom feels like church, or what I was taught that church is supposed to be. We have a weekly ritual. We gather together to watch. We have gospel discussion, where we talk about the stories and meaning of the most recent episode, and our values come out in that discussion. I’m talking about Real Housewives, but that’s true for most fandoms.
What are you finding is the experience level of people in the community? Are you speaking to existing activists, newly politically engaged people, or something in the middle?
We’re not finding a lot of people who are super-engaged with politics and electoral organizing. Most Americans aren’t, and Bravo’s audience reflects that. What most people do have are values, but they don’t know how to engage beyond that. So we provide an opportunity to engage those values and get people talking — about the Housewives, but also about politics.
At RHWOP, we want our account to be both mainstream enough to bring people in, and counterculture enough to shift fans’ beliefs. And fans are connecting with that. For instance, we had tons of good conversation and debate [around reality stars organizing] and fans really showed that they get it, and that they support the unions and want them to win.
Do you ever find yourself having to engage with detractors?
Fox News ran a hit piece. We always have detractors—it’s the internet—but that segment really inspired the far right to come after us and try and tell us to get politics out of Real Housewives. But the Housewives are responding to the real world. There is a Real Housewives episode where they talk about the Black Lives Matter movement, teaching a lot of people about the movement, more than the news does. We’re not putting politics into Housewives, it’s already there.
Wow, a whole hit piece. Is there anything you’re doing consciously to safeguard your community from white supremacists and other bad actors?
One of the cool things about Real Housewives fandom is that no place is “safe.” It’s not super politically correct. The ethos in the community is just be authentic and own your stuff. Years ago, there was a cast member who was anti-Palestine. Our account used that as an opportunity to speak out against anti-semitism, but also about the practices of the Israeli government and the cast member’s statement. We were a part of the fandom that was able to add nuance to the discussion and being able to add context and nuance to those conversations is important to us.
In a lot of ways, fandom is ahead of the curve on a lot of cultural issues. When I went to New York Comic Con and Dragon Con back in 2014, I saw tons of signs about “Cosplay is not Consent.” Fans are serious about a culture of consent.
Oh, definitely. It feels like cons and fandom were ahead of a lot of spaces—schools, workplaces, all that. You’ve already hit on this in a few places, but why do fandoms and movements need to work together more?
As organizers, we are taught to meet people where they’re at. With the internet, billions of people are in fandoms now. I think a lot about the book Everything I Need, I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet. Fandom powers the internet, it shapes people’s careers, it creates culture. In an economy where a lot of people no longer feel or can afford ownership, fandom gives people a sense of ownership.
Our movement is behind the right wing on this, and time is of the essence. We need to be in these communities and talking authentically about the issues that fans are already talking about. We’ve had a lot of success talking about class consciousness. Real Housewives is showcasing wealthy lifestyles, and fans are aware of the gap between what they see on screen and their own lives, and even the lives of crew who work on the show. We provide a place to talk about that, to learn about that, and Real Housewives fans get it, they debate, they engage.
Organizers need to be doing this everywhere—meeting fans where they are, in fandom.
On that topic—what recommendations would you make to organizers that want to work with fandoms?
NS: It’s really important to understand fandom rituals, the community norms, the shared language and traditions. It’s just like trying to organize a neighborhood: Don’t go in thinking you will be the teacher and the leader. Just go in and engage with and learn from the community. Don’t think too hard about it—it’s digital, it’s fandom, but it’s just organizing like anywhere else. Dive in and get to know the neighborhood.
Also, don’t underestimate things. Like memes—the good ones use a community language, a shared sense of humor, a history. Hire people who know the culture, who are fans, and who can make them well. Memes are done by regular people, and when they aren’t, they don’t feel authentic, they don’t reach people.
Is there anything special that organizers need to do to support fandom communities?
Every fandom is a little different. With RHWOP, it’s important to stay current. Watch the most recent episodes, follow the community conversations, the gossip. But also know the history of the show and the fandom. It’s like movements. You need to know the history to understand what’s happening now.
Questions for the field:
How should content creators think about how they want their fans to engage with movements?
How can organizations engage with fandoms with integrity? Are there examples of when organizations should not engage in this type of work?
LEARNING TOOL: How can we learn more about the culture of specific fandoms and understand which ones offer opportunities for pluralist organizing? For a starting point, come back to our fandom overview above and the corresponding Fandom Elements Identification Worksheet.