Pandemic to “Fandomic:” The Revival of Fandom Publics in the Digital Space of Latin American K-Pop Fandom

The coronavirus has changed our daily lives dramatically, driving us to spend time in the virus-free digital world, providing an imagined community in which we can be reborn. In this study, I highlight an interesting intersection of three phenomena in virtual spaces: the culturally hybrid content of the Korean Wave, or Hallyu;participatory culture of fandom;and a new kind of public defined by emotion. I show how Hallyu fandom becomes a fandom public using digital media by exploring the voluntary practices of Chilean fans in the production of the 2018 KBS Music Bank World Tour in Chile. Chilean K-pop fans form a Latin American fandom community in a digital space where they act as a fandom public based on affective intimacy, thereby influencing wider society. This finding offers insights to determine the capabilities of Hallyu fandom as a public. © 2022 Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies.

Affinity Spaces as an Analytical Lens for Attending to Temporality in Critical Data Studies: The Case of COVID-19-Related, Educational Twitter Communication

This chapter is based on an analysis of Germany’s biggest education-related Twitter hashtag before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We study the reconfiguration of the central actors and topics along the #twlz hashtag to trace the change in pandemic-related communication about education. Specifically, we focus on two arguments developed by education scholars as responses to the COVID-19 crisis: educational technology providers and political actors increasingly turn to social media to mediate their COVID-19 crisis management;at the same time, educational technologies are increasingly being positioned as solutions to the educational challenges posed by the pandemic. Using an analytical framework of affinity spaces, we extend on the hashtag studies and understand the #twlz hashtag as an ongoing process of associating various actors, topics, and things. Through a mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis, we addressed questions of how educational technology providers and political actors reconfigured the #twlz affinity space and how suitable the concept of affinity space is for studying crisis through Twitter hashtags. We identify shifts in topics and actors central to the #twlz affinity space as a reaction to the national and regional educational crisis management over time and trace the practices through which these shifts unfold. With our empirical investigation of educational Twitter communication as practices of reconfiguration rather than content redistribution, we contribute to new perspectives for critical data studies (in education) conceptually and methodologically. © 2022, The Author(s).