Campus Access Only
All rights reserved. This publication is intended for use solely by faculty, students, and staff of University of the Pacific. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, now known or later developed, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author or the publisher.
Date of Award
2015
Document Type
Thesis - Pacific Access Restricted
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Department
Communication
First Advisor
Teresa Bergman
First Committee Member
Marlin Bates
Second Committee Member
Heather Hether
Abstract
The following study examined identity construction and community formation within the comic book fan community on the social media website, Twitter It had three objectives It investigated how comic book fans constructed their respective identities on Twitter, explored how fans came to identify with the comic book community and why it formed, and aimed to discover how the community was maintained and expanded The study applied an ethnographic method that relied on the analysis of dialogue Ten comic book fans (five males, five females) that frequently used Twitter to communicate with other fans were video interviewed It was found that comic book fans constructed their identities using their Twitter biography and profile picture and they all believed they were communicating their true and genuine selves The biography, profile picture, and tweets reinforced the rhetoric of what it meant to be a comic book fan It was this visual and written rhetoric that enabled comic book fans to identify with one another and bring the community into being Without this rhetoric, there is no community The community maintained itself through the continued reinforcement of this rhetoric It expanded itself by bringing comic book fans from different backgrounds, locations, and nationalities together online around a shared interest The study also found that the relationships formed within the community could develop into real friendships, the same caliber of friendship that individuals would normally have with those they knew and met in real life.
Pages
85
ISBN
9781321714326
Recommended Citation
Hong, Laura. (2015). Twitter and the comic book fan community: Building identities and relationships in 140 characters. University of the Pacific, Thesis - Pacific Access Restricted. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/201
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
To access this thesis/dissertation you must have a valid pacific.edu email address and log-in to Scholarly Commons.
Find in PacificSearch Find in ProQuestIf you are the author and would like to grant permission to make your work openly accessible, please email
Rights Statement
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
