Censorship and Creative Communities: Fragility and Change of Fanfiction Writing in China

Research on cultural production has recognized that artistic creation, especially fandom subcultures, depends on social interaction within artworlds. Yet less research has examined how creative production functions when exogenous social forces disrupt key forms of interaction. This study leverages t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Qualitative sociology 2024-12, Vol.47 (4), p.667-689
Main Author: Wang, Ran
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Censorship
Community
Conventions
Cross Cultural Psychology
Disruption
Fan fiction
Fandom
Gift giving
Personality and Social Psychology
Scholarship
Social forces
Social interaction
Social Sciences
Sociology
Subcultures
Visibility
Vulnerability
Writers
Writing
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Summary:Research on cultural production has recognized that artistic creation, especially fandom subcultures, depends on social interaction within artworlds. Yet less research has examined how creative production functions when exogenous social forces disrupt key forms of interaction. This study leverages the case of Chinese fanfiction writers’ response when state censorship interrupts and threatens fanfiction writing to better understand the vulnerability of creative communities. Based on interviews with Chinese fanfiction writers who experienced an unexpected intensification of online censorship in 2020, and following fandom studies in understanding fanfiction as rooted in a gift economy, I show how censorship discouraged writing by destabilizing interaction and interfering with gift exchanges. I find that censorship transformed cultural production by (1) reorganizing and fragmenting networks, (2) reshaping the meaning of visibility, and (3) opening up new opportunities in a disintegrated community. As this study argues, we need to go beyond asking whether censorship is effectively destructive or not. While creative communities are vulnerable to outside disruption, especially in online space, the pressure of censorship leads to new conventions, networks, and fields for artistic creation as censorship does not simply strangle creativity.
ISSN:0162-0436
1573-7837
DOI:10.1007/s11133-024-09567-9