Fandom and digital media

This chapter explores how digital fan communities express, challenge, and reshape ideas of gender and sexual identity. It begins by situating fandom within historical and scholarly contexts, outlining key debates and tracing the gendered divisions within fan cultures—especially between male-dominated and female/queer spaces. The chapter discusses the four waves of fan studies, focusing on their evolving approaches to gender. Special attention is given to fourth-wave fan studies and their ties to fourth-wave feminism, highlighting how digital fandom fosters feminist activism and reflects shifting fan demographics. The second half examines fandom as a space where gender is creatively constructed, with a focus on practices like shipping and slash fiction, through which queerness becomes normalised and gender is actively performed and reimagined. The chapter then explores how digital fan practices subvert traditional gender norms and how platforms like Tumblr become sites for users to explore and articulate their own gender identities, sexualities, and feminist commitments. Following the chapter, the author reflects on their doctoral research, analysing how slash fanfiction—particularly in Star Trek—reconfigures queer desire and representations of the male body.