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Article published In: Media Language and Discourse in Cultural China
Edited by Doreen D. Wu, Ming Liu and David C.S. Li
[Chinese Language and Discourse 13:1] 2022
► pp. 28–57

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Doing participatory fandom through trans‑scripting

The case of multilingual K-pop fans on Chinese social media

ORCiD logo with link | Fudan University
ORCiD logo with link | Fudan University
Published online: 29 March 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cld.21003.son
Abstract
This article examines trans-scripting in transnational, multilingual fandom on Sina Weibo, the largest Chinese microblogging site. Taking one of the most popular Korean pop music (K-pop) bands named BTS as a case study, 741 instances of trans-scripting were manually selected from a total of 18,243 comments under the official Weibo account of the largest BTS fan club in China. Combining online observation and corpus-based analysis, our study draws on the notions of engaged audience and affinity space to reveal how multiple patterns of trans-scripting are heavily mobilized by K-pop fans in translingual idol naming, the transcultural maintenance of fan-idol kinship, and the intertextual confirmation of shared media consumption experiences. We argue that trans-scripting is an under-explored linguistic strategy used by transnational pop-culture fans, providing an analytical lens for research on fan identity and fan-communal membership. Theoretically, trans-scripting can serve as a useful lens to analyze networked multilingual fandom.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Trans-scripting in digital communication
  • Fans, engaged audience, and affinity space
  • K-pop fandom on Sina Weibo
  • Research background and methods
    • Research background
    • Data collection
    • Data analysis
  • Findings
    • Trans-scripting as translingual idol-naming strategies
    • Trans-scripting as affective confirmation of shared media consumption
    • Trans-scripting as reflexive judgment of proper idol-fan kinship
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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