COMPLETION REPORT

Sites, Subjectivities and Narrative-worlds:
An Ethnography of Media Fans and their Production in Japan and Singapore
Mr. Kam Thiam Huat
Doctoral Candidate
School of Communication and Information, The State University of New Jersey<USA>
This research project employs primarily ethnographic methods to explore media fans’ practices in the production ofartifacts and values that constitute everyday culture in the contexts of Singapore and Japan. Over the summer of 2015,
I conducted a number of semi-structured interviews with 10 fans in Singapore and 7 fans in Japan, as well as participant
observations at major fans’ events, such as the Anime Expo and Cosfest in Singapore and the Comic Market 88. These
ethnographic methods allow me to highlight the following (inter-related) themes.
First, specific concrete sites are pivotal to the affects and thoughts of fans. Fans experience the sharing of passion andinterests with fellow fans at events. As people, publications, and goods congregate at these events to generate a particularform of atmosphere, some fans feel the diversity of ideas that make them think deeply and differently. At the same time,these very sites are potentially generative of anger and animosity, as fans clash over their shared liking for the samecharacters. Or as one fan puts it, people gather to have fun at these sites, but when they have too much fun, they start toget angry with each other. These sites hence constitute arenas of cultural expressions that exhibit both camaraderie andconflicts. Sites that serve as destinations for fans’ “pilgrimages,” in that they are purportedly used as settings for works ofmanga and anime, play a vital role in strengthening fans’ attachment to and love for these works.
Second, through their encounters with works, characters, and fans’ sites, fans develop not only the skills in creating fanfiction and original works, but also certain outlooks with regards to their objects of interest in relation to the world ingeneral. Works could be intellectually enhancing as they prompt fans to move beyond the pleasure of leisure andentertainment to gain deeper knowledge on topics such as climate and economics.
Third, my research demonstrates the continuing relevance of Ōtsuka Eiji’s concept of “narrative-world” inunderstanding fans’ practices. Observations at manga specialty stores and fans’ events do point towards the popularity ofcharacters with distinctive visual characteristics (e.g., blonde hair) and ways of speaking and acting (e.g., using Englishwords). They hence corroborate with Azuma Hiroki’s argument that fans are motivated by what he calls moe-elementsthat agglomerate into a cultural database. Nonetheless, fans I spoke with relate their attraction to particular works andcharacters to the settings, i.e., what Ōtsuka calls narrative-worlds, and what could be done with them. Fans respect otherfans who can expand such worlds. In fact, the less concrete “official” settings a media franchise establishes, the more it isable to capture the attention and attraction of fans, the more prominent examples being Tōhō Project and KantaiCollection. This is because fans feel that they are given a sandbox to play with.
Part of this research was used a poster presentation at the Rutgers University’s School of Communication andInformation. This research laid a solid foundation for a longer-term dissertation project, which I will be undertaking overthe coming year. I also intend to present some of the findings at future conferences and journal articles.

Publication of the Results of Research Project:
Verbal Presentation (Date, Venue, Name of Conference, Title of Presentation, Presenter, etc.)
Kam, Thiam Huat. Producing and Consuming Narrative-worlds. Poster presentation at Rutgers University’s
School of Communication and Information, New Brunswick, April 27, 2016.
Thesis (Name of Journal and its Date, Title and Author of Thesis, etc.)
Book (Publisher and Date of the Book, Title and Author of the Book, etc.)