“The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.” [1] Chances are, you remember quite well when and where you read this sentence for the first time. It might have marked the end of the Harry Potter-era, but started a seemingly endless supply of fix-it fic: fanfiction that addresses a – according to the author – unfathomable error in the original work and tries to set it straight. Especially the final Harry Potter book has lead to an innumerable amount of such works. Yet, Harry Potter is far from the only franchise inspiring fanfiction writers all over the world to fix their predecessor’s errors. How has this genre developed over the years?
Read moreBirds of a Feather: How TV Fandoms End up as Twitter Echo Chambers
In today’s social media dominated world, platforms like Twitter are not only there to allow users to express themselves in 280 characters. On a scale achievable only by a multi-billion company, people can now turn to tweeting as a way of connecting over-shared preferences for their favourite media, with television emerging as the winner. Here is where we see the emergence of a golden rule: fans of the same TV programs prefer opinions which support their own (4). This phenomenon, known as opinion homophily or echo chambers, deserves attention as the number of fandoms increases in this triumphant TV era of content streaming platforms like Netflix. But why exactly do TV fandoms on Twitter have a tendency to form homophilic echo chambers?
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