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Alternative citizenship models: from online participatory cultures to participatory politics

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ALTERNATIVE CITIZENSHIP MODELS:

FROM ONLINE PARTICIPATORY CULTURES TO PARTICIPATORY POLITICS

by

Neta Kligler-Vilenchik

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)

August 2015

Copyright 2015 Neta Kligler-Vilenchik
ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest gratitude goes to the members of my dissertation committee, whose
influence seeps into every page of this dissertation. First and foremost, to my advisor,
Henry Jenkins. I can’t begin to thank you enough for the mentoring and support that you
have provided me all along the way. I have learned so much from you—starting with the
key ideas that build up this project—but going so much beyond that, to writing style,
teaching, building relationships, conceiving of small and large scale projects, and
thinking about my role and responsibility as an academic and intellectual. To Kjerstin
Thorson, our conversations around youth engagement have been profoundly formative to
my thinking about this space. Working with you helped me understand the key questions
I’m interested in, and finding the ways to connect—and sometimes, translate—these into
existing academic conversations. On a personal level, your support and friendship have
been invaluable to me. Paul Lichterman, so much that I have learned from you has
shaped this project and I am extremely grateful for your always insightful feedback. Your
contribution to this work has been far-reaching—thank you for helping me set myself a
higher bar in terms of methodological and theoretical rigor and honesty. A huge thank
you also to my qualifying exam committee members, Larry Gross and Viet Nguyen, who
have provided insightful feedback that has helped shape this project.
The MacArthur Research Network on Youth & Participatory Politics has provided
both funding and, much more profoundly, intellectual grounding to this project. I am
deeply grateful to Joseph Kahne, chair of the network and source of never-ending good
cheer; to Mimi Ito, who supported this project from its early stages and whose work with
the Connected Learning Network has been central to my thinking; and to Lissa Soep, a
iii
source of inspiration for writing to, and not only about, youth. Thank you also to Danielle
Allen, Cathy Cohen, Jennifer Earl, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, Howard Gardner and Ethan
Zuckerman—witnessing all of you in conversation about the state of youth engagement is
a true testament to the value of interdisciplinary collaboration. Early research on this
project has also been supported by a research grant from the Spencer Foundation.
This work has been deeply rooted in my membership in the Civic Paths research
group at USC. Sangita Shresthova, your encouragement and guidance in the early stages
of this project was paramount—I couldn’t have done it without you! Liana Gamber-
Thompson, thank you for your friendship and for all the ways you’ve supported me, from
writing advice to celebratory meals. Other members of Civic Paths along the years have
contributed to the ideas here—thank you in particular to Samantha Close, Kevin Driscoll,
Alex Leavitt, Diana Lee, Lori Lopez, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Raffi Sarkisian, Andrew
Schrock, Ben Stokes, Lana Swartz and Christina Weitbrecht. Thank you also to the
Civics and Social Media cluster at USC, a wonderful group in which to think through
these questions, and particularly to Mike Ananny and Nina Eliasoph.
The Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism has been a wonderful
home for my graduate education, and I am very grateful for the support I’ve received
throughout these years from Annenberg and the Graduate School, and the ability to thrive
as a budding scholar. Thank you to Sarah Banet-Weiser, Tom Goodnight, Andrea
Hollingshead, Lynn Miller, and Peter Monge. Thank you also to Sandra Ball-Rokeach for
my years with the Metamorphosis project. Being at the Annenberg School also gave me
the opportunity to discuss this project with a range of impressive scholars along the years,
who have made their mark on this work—thank you to Nancy Baym, W. Lance Bennett,
iv
Nick Couldry, Dan Kreiss, Patricia Lange, Sonia Livingstone, Zizi Papacharissi, Janice
Radway, and Dhavan Shah. Along the years, many colleagues at Annenberg have been a
source of advice, encouragement and inspiration—thank you in particular to Meryl Alper,
Melissa Brough, Laurel Felt, Carmen Gonzalez, Ioana Literat, Ritesh Mehta, Katya
Ognyanova, Minhee Son, Nathan Walter and Nan Zhao. Thank you also to my mentors at
my former institution, the University of Haifa, Israel, particularly Jonathan Cohen, Oren
Meyers and Yariv Tsfati, and I am deeply indebted to Elihu Katz for helping me make
USC Annenberg my academic home for my graduate education. I look forward to
continue thinking through these questions and their implications with future colleagues at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
In many ways, this project seeks to learn from the case studies it examines. I am
in awe of the people doing this work, and am deeply grateful for their continuous support
of this project. The Harry Potter Alliance has prompted my thinking about how popular
culture and fan enthusiasms inspire youth civic engagement. I am immensely grateful to
Andrew Slack for our open conversations, and his willingness to share both his vision
and his challenges, and to Jackson Bird, who was always willing to read drafts, discuss
aspects of the research, and provide me with valuable insights. Thank you to the local
HPA chapters on both the East and West coast who welcomed me to their events. On the
Nerdfighter front, I sincerely thank Hank and John Green for supporting this research,
and particularly thank John for giving his time in interview. Thank you to Valerie Barr, to
all members of Catitude, and to the local OC Nerdfighters. My biggest gratitude goes to
all Nerdfighters, HPA members, and Imagine Better supporters, who have talked to me in
interviews, during Quidditch games, while waiting in line in fan conventions, or while
v
strolling through the Occupy Los Angeles encampments—your experiences are at the
core of this endeavor.
Last, but absolutely not least, I would like to thank my family, my source of
strength, inspiration, and daily joy and gratitude. To my parents, who have instilled in me
intellectual curiosity and an observant eye. To my children, Daniel and Mattan, seeing
you grow into the wonderful human beings that you are is my most gratifying experience.
Most of all, to Yasha, my life partner in the deepest sense of the term. Seeing myself
through your loving eyes gives me the strength to do it all.

vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ii
List of Tables ix
List of Figures x
Abstract xi
Chapter One: Introduction 1
Chapter Two: Alternative Citizenship Models 11
Models of citizenship 11
Good citizenship – A construct in flux 15
Dominant models of citizenship and their ideological power 17
The informed citizen 17
The dutiful citizen 19
Beyond the legacy models 20
The civic and the political 21
Alternative citizenship models – current suggestions 26
Democratic effects and their trade-offs – what are we trying to achieve? 39
Contextualizing the current project 44
Where young people are: New media, participatory culture and
fandom 46

Chapter Three: Case studies and method 53
The case studies 53
The Harry Potter Alliance 53
Nerdfighters 55
Imagine Better 58
Comparing across the groups 61
The groups as cases of alternative citizenship 63
Method 64
Interviews 66
Participant observation 69
Media analysis 70

Chapter Four: Mechanisms of Translation 72
Participatory culture – from origins to consequential connections 73
Mechanisms of translation as a framework 78
Three mechanisms of translation 81
Tapping content worlds and communities 81
Creative production 93
Forming opinions, discussion and diversity 114
Conclusion: The wider applicability of mechanisms of translation 135
vii
Chapter Five: Fan Activism and Content Worlds 143
Fan activism – fan enthusiasm gone civic 143
Pre-figuring fan activism
Fan activism as a continuum: From fannish civics to cultural
acupuncture 151
Hunger is Not a Game: A lesson in extending fannish civics 154
The Odds in Our Favor: Engaging through cultural acupuncture 159
The glue that holds a community together – content worlds and taste
communities 165
Public spheres of the imagination in action 165
Beyond content worlds: Fan activism emanating from a “taste
community” 170
Some implications of content worlds 174
Conclusion 177

Chapter Six: Political Talk in Fan Spaces 182
The different genres of political talk 184
Political talk and its challenges 186
Political talk for the self-actualizing citizen - and the fan 188
Method 189
“Scaling up”: Making connections to real worlds issues 191
Broadening the “political” 198
Mobilization - where does action fit in? 202
Conclusion 207

Chapter Seven: Reassessing Alternative Citizenship Models 212
Alternative citizenship models and democratic effects – a brief reminder 214
Alternative citizenship as mobilized civic communities 216
The nature of ties and their role in enabling groups to cultivate
civic and political skills 216
Mobilizing structures 231
Civic hybridity – the many shades of the civic 247
Concluding thoughts – alternative citizenship and models of democracy 267
Limitations and future directions 270

Bibliography 276

Appendices
Appendix A: Interview Guide – Round 1 Interviews 300
Appendix B: Summary of participants – Round 1 Interviews 304
Appendix C: Interview Guide – Round 2 Interviews 306
Appendix D: Summary of participants – Round 2 Interviews 317

viii
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Alternative citizenship models – Comparison across the 36
emerging paradigm

Table 2: Overview of the three case studies 62

Table 3: Mechanisms of translation facilitating participatory politics
outcomes 139

Table 4: Forms of civic hybridity 248

Table 5: Summary of participants in Round 1 Interviews 304

Table 6: Summary of participants in Round 2 Interviews 317
ix
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: HPA Chapter Organizer Meeting 54

Figure 2: A local Nerdfighter group 56

Figure 3: The Imagine Better Logo 59

Figure 4: Dimensions of comparison across the groups 63

Figure 5: Mechanisms of translation – Diagram 79

Figure 6: “Five Unknown Nerds” – an example of a Nerdfighter
collab channel 97

Figure 7: The PortKey channel on Livestream 107

Figure 8: Screenshot of “Why I can’t go to Leakycon” 110

Figure 9: Screenshot of “I HATE PENNIES!!!!”– example of digging
in the data 118

Figure 10: “Human Sexuality is Complicated” – Vlogbrother video
about gender and sexual identity 133

Figure 11: Matrix of engagement 164

Figure 12: Fan-art of a black Hermione 177

Figure 13: Map of local Nerdfighter groups in the U.S. 223

Figure 14: A “Don’t vote” stand 258

Figure 15: Mechanisms of translation – diagram 272 278

x
ABSTRACT

Youth engagement in public life is generally acknowledged to be vital both for
the development of young people themselves, and for sustaining democracy and
enhancing political equality. Expectations about what “good citizenship” should look like
are often anchored in conceptions of the informed citizen or dutiful citizen. Evaluated
through the expectations set by such models, some are worried about a “crisis” of
democratic engagement of young people. A different perspective on the state of youth
engagement comes from those suggesting that what we may be seeing is not a decline in
youth civic engagement, but rather a change in its nature. According to this argument,
young people today are attracted towards a different model of citizenship, one that values
self-expression, creativity, and connection to existing cultural interests and social
connections.
In this dissertation, I suggest considering a range of arguments about changing
forms of citizenship as an emerging paradigm of alternative citizenship models, reflecting
not only new modes and practices of participation, but also different perceptions of what
it means to be a good citizen. Conceptualizing alternative citizenship as an emerging
paradigm helps us not only to notice common threads, but also to identify gaps and
weaknesses in the paradigm as a whole, including a paucity of empirical examination of
manifestations of alternative citizenship and a lack of focused attention on the role played
by the changing media environment.
This dissertation seeks to address these gaps through an in-depth empirical
examination, conducted over the course of four years, of three case studies representing
xi
alternative citizenship enacted within a group context. I focus on groups directed at
young people, which bridge cultural participation in popular culture fan communities
with civic and political goals. These groups—the Nerdfighters, the Harry Potter Alliance
and Imagine Better—share a key characteristic: they encourage young people’s
participation and achieve civic and political goals, yet they do so through a language,
style, and form that is deeply rooted in members’ cultural practices—a style that may
seem whimsical or even bizarre to the outside viewer. These groups’ success at
encouraging young people’s engagement with participatory politics by building on their
rooting within participatory culture helps us get at the underlying mechanisms and
processes that need to be in place in order to achieve such a connection. Through
empirical investigation of these case studies, the aim of this project is to improve on
alternative citizenship models, in order to allow for a more robust understanding of the
changing nature of young people’s participation today.

1
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
In a warm day on October of 2011, as part of my early fieldwork for this project, I
attended the temporary encampments set outside of Los Angeles City Hall for Occupy
L.A. I was accompanying a small group of participants from the Los Angeles Order of
the Phoenix (LAOP)
1
, a local chapter of the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), a national
nonprofit organization using metaphors from the popular series of books and movies to
mobilize fans for social good. The Occupy movement was often characterized as a “big
tent” movement, accommodating a range of activists with a range of causes, yet even
among this wide range, the group I attended with was distinct. Some of them donning
Harry Potter Alliance t-shirts and Gryffindor ties
2
, these members of the HPA—in this
case, a group of three participants in their late teens and early twenties and myself—
came, as explained in the Facebook invitation to the event, to “check out what’s
happening” at the Occupy encampment and to join “people trying to ‘imagine better’”
3
.
The event had been organized through the initiative of Erin, a strong-minded and
highly politically active twenty-year-old, whom we’ll encounter several more times
across this project. Erin had attended the first night of the Occupy L.A. encampments,
and was planning another excursion there the next day, where she was to lead a group of
members of her progressive, social justice-minded church. When she’ll grow up, Erin

1
Individual and local group names are pseudonyms.
2
Hogwarts, the school of magic in the Harry Potter narratives, is divided into four
schools, each with different character traits. Gryffindors are generally characterized by
bravery, determination, and chivalry. Fans often identify with certain houses, a statement
that reveals much about their own self-identity.
3
“Imagine better” is a phrase used by J.K. Rowling in her Harvard commencement
speech, and also the name of an off-shoot project of the Harry Potter Alliance that is one
of the case studies for this project.
2
tells me later in her interview, she wants to be a priest. Natalie, the second of our group,
is a college student. This is the first LAOP event Natalie had attended, so far she had
mostly been an active player with the group’s affiliated Quidditch team
4
. Natalie tells us
that she didn’t know anything about Occupy because she doesn’t follow the news (Erin
interjects, “it wasn’t on the news anyway”), but her mother mentioned it so when she saw
the event announcement on Facebook she decided to come. Jo, the third participant, tells
us we’ll recognize her by her very pink hair. For Jo, this is also a first LAOP event. She
had found out about the group through the Nerdfighters, an informal community of fans
of two YouTube vloggers, John and Hank Green.
Our stroll through Occupy L.A. that day was part social hangout, part “supportive
tourism.” The three young women did not know each other beforehand (I had only met
Erin a few days earlier) but had a comfortable conversation that ranged from their
respective Hogwarts houses (Erin and Jo are Gryffindors, Natalie is a Hufflepuff) to ways
of finding out about current events (Erin doesn’t trust the news and prefers to learn from
other people who are very informed, Jo and Natalie get informed through social media).
As we observed the different signs posted around the Occupy encampments, we
discussed the notions of “corporations are not people,” whether Occupy was indeed a
leaderless movement and what this means, and who is and is not represented in the
movement. After a few hours, as we parted, we talked about how the different Hogwarts
houses relate to activism. Explaining her identification as a Gryffindor rather than a

4
Quidditch is a real-world sport inspired by the Harry Potter narratives, that has become
quite popular in high schools and colleges and includes team structures and tournaments.
3
Hufflepuff, Erin says: “I love the books to death, but if Voldemort
5
was attacking I
wouldn’t read a book, I would go fight him.”
This event—one of the earliest fieldwork excursions I’ve done for this project—
encapsulates many of the themes we will keep encountering, and try to make sense of, in
this project. These young women are part of a generation often stigmatized as apathetic
or out-of-touch with the political world. Indeed, they did not follow the news and did not
trust it, and, besides Erin, it would be hard to characterize them as very politically
informed. Yet here they were, observing an emerging political movement, educating each
other, seeking to make up their own mind about Occupy rather than accepting what the
mainstream media narrative said. I was struck that day by the sense of connection
between these participants who had never met each other, how this connection was built
on their shared passion to the world of Harry Potter, and the way they used that popular
text both to identify themselves as “certain kinds of people” and to discuss ways of
engaging with the world. These young women were, to me, far from apathetic, but their
ways of connecting to the political world did not conform to easily recognizable patterns
of engagement. They sought a connection that would resonate for them, and they sought
it collectively through their social relationships with each other, and the relationship each
of them had built with a mainstream popular culture text.
The kinds of connection these members of the HPA were trying to make to the
political world are difficult to recognize when examined through the lens of traditionally
accepted notions of what a “good citizen” looks like. As Michael Schudson (1999)
persuasively describes, since the progressive era, the U.S. has been witnessing the rise of

5
Voldemort is the villain in the narratives.
4
the informed citizen as the dominant expected model of citizenship. This “citizenship by
virtue of informed competence” (Schudson, p. 173) demanded of the citizen to put aside
emotional political allegiance, and instead to educate himself around policies and
issues—a notion still prevailing today (see, e.g. Delli Karpini & Keeter, 1996). Closely
related to this, W. Lance Bennett’s work (Bennett, 2007, 2008) characterizes the good
citizen of the past century as the dutiful citizen, whose civic participation—knowing how
government and political institutions work, being informed about current affairs, and
voting “responsibly”—emerges from a sense of duty or obligation.
Evaluated through the expectations set by such models, some are worried about a
“crisis” of democratic engagement of young people (e.g. Galston, 2001; Putnam, 2000).
Citing data such as low voting rates, decreasing levels of trust in politicians, and
decreased consumption of news, scholars and pundits are concerned about a
disengagement of young people, particularly from traditional political institutions. In its
popular version, such concerns take the form of a decline narrative (Bennett, 2008),
lamenting that young people today are less engaged than in the past. This narrative is not
new, and is often entangled with generational differences and long-held stereotypes and
anxieties toward young people (e.g. Shelleff, 1976).
A different perspective on the state of youth engagement comes from those
suggesting that what we may be seeing is not a decline in youth civic engagement, but
rather a change in its nature. According to this argument, young people today are
attracted towards a different model of citizenship. In contrast to legacy citizenship
models, such as the dutiful citizen or the informed citizen, young people are increasingly
acting according to different scripts for citizenship, ones that values self-expression,
5
creativity, and connection to existing cultural interests and social connections. This idea,
that citizenship is not declining but rather changing in style, has been suggested by a host
of different theorists, each with their own focus or “flavor” (e.g. Bennett, 2008; Cohen &
Kahne, 2012; Dalton, 2009; Inglehart, 1997; McFarland, 2009; Norris, 1999; Zuckerman,
2014). Moderating a conversation among scholars for the MacArthur Foundation around
youth citizenship online, Bennett (2008) has identified a group of scholars as representing
a paradigm of Engaged Youth. Building on this work, I suggest considering a broader
range of arguments about changing forms of citizenship as an emerging paradigm of
“alternative citizenship models,” reflecting not only new modes and practices of
participation, but also different perceptions of what it means to be a “good citizen.”
Alternative citizenship models can be seen as the result of two concurrent
processes (Jenkins et al., forthcoming). On the one hand, there is a dissatisfaction, on an
almost global level, with “politics as usual.” Partisan politics is often seen as ineffective,
as divisive, as dirty, as stuck in gridlock. Young people in particular often feel
disconnected from traditional political institutions, feeling that they are inaccessible to
them (e.g. Henn, Weinstein & Forrest, 2005; O’Toole, 2003; White, Bruce & Ritchie,
2000). Interviewing young people about their relation to politics, Buckingham (2002)
found they often felt like politicians were speaking a different language. Given this
dissatisfaction, we can interpret the disconnect from traditional politics in a different
light. As Zuckerman (2014, p. 155) claims: “Here’s an unhappy, but plausible,
explanation for the shifting engagement in civics: it’s not that people aren’t interested in
civic participation. They’re simply not interested in feeling ineffectual or helpless.”
6
The second process is a socio-technological one. In the context of the digital
media environment, we are seeing increased opportunities for young people to create and
produce a myriad of content expressing their interests, their social relations, and their
views on the world—in the words of Henry Jenkins and colleagues, we are witnessing an
increasingly participatory culture (Jenkins et al., 2006; Jenkins, Ito & boyd,
forthcoming). The internet and social media function as domains in which youth play out
many of the negotiations over knowledge, identity and power that have characterized
previous generations, but do so in ways that are distinctively shaped by the new media
context (Ito et al., 2009).
Through digital media, we are also seeing young people engaging in new and
different forms of civic and political engagement, including what has been termed
participatory politics (Cohen & Kahne, 2012; Kahne, Middaugh & Allen, 2014; Soep,
2014). Participatory politics perceives of political engagement as enacted not only “top-
down,” from elites to citizens, but also “bottom-up,” in the context of citizens’ everyday
participation. Participatory politics focuses on digitally enabled practices that allow
citizens, particularly young people, to exercise agency and intervene in public affairs
(Soep, 2014). Online, many young people feel empowered to exert their voice and
agency. The sense of empowerment that they gain in the context of digital participation
may push these youth to prefer alternative modes of political participation, ones that may
give them a similar sense of satisfaction.
Ideas around alternative citizenship have been explored by many theorists, who
have not always been in conversation with each other. Tying these various suggestions
together and conceptualizing it as a paradigm of alternative citizenship models helps us
7
not only to notice the common threads that can be lost through the various terminologies,
but also to notice gaps and weaknesses in the emerging paradigm as a whole. Some of the
key weaknesses in this paradigm, as I will further argue in Chapter 2, have been a paucity
of empirical examination of manifestations of alternative citizenship, as well as focused
attention on the role played by the changing media environment. In particular, my work
points at the key role of group contexts (online and offline) in shaping both norms and
practices of alternative citizenship. This is evident in the example of the HPA members
walking through Occupy L.A. and collectively making sense of the political message of
the movement—we’ll see this many more times across this project. Just as legacy
citizenship models were engrained over time through role-models and institutionalization,
group contexts, I argue, are necessary for young people to learn to value and enact
alternative ways of engaging as a good citizen.
This dissertation seeks to address these gaps through an in-depth empirical
examination, conducted over the course of four years, of three case studies representing
alternative citizenship enacted within a group context. Alternative citizenship is
characterized by linkages between citizenship on the one hand and self-expression,
creativity, and existing cultural interests and social connections on the other.
Accordingly, I focus on groups directed at young people, which bridge cultural
participation in popular culture fan communities with civic and political goals. These
groups—the Nerdfighters, the Harry Potter Alliance and Imagine Better—share a key
characteristic: they are successful at encouraging young people’s participation and
achieving some civic and political goals, yet they do so through a language, style, and
form that is deeply rooted in members’ cultural practices—a style that may seem
8
whimsical or even bizarre to the outside viewer. My examination of these groups asks:
Why do these groups resonate with youth? How can we assess their contribution in terms
of both traditional and emerging forms of participation? What may we learn from these
groups about engaging young people, and what are their weaknesses? Importantly,
though these groups have collective civic and political goals, I am less interested in
evaluating their success in achieving these goals writ large. Rather, throughout this work,
my focus will be on how these groups prepare their young members toward participation
in civic life (see Warren, 2001).
This work speaks both to those concerned about a crisis in democracy, and to
those encouraged by new directions in youth engagement. Rooted in the emerging
paradigm of alternative citizenship models, in which youth engagement is characterized
by change rather than decline, this work adds empirical insight on what these new forms
of participation look and feel like in practice, adding concreteness to what have often
been vague suggestions. The research offers insight on the strengths of alternative forms
of participation and why they resonate with youth. Analytically, I use empirical
observation to improve on existing theorizations around alternative citizenship models,
by clarifying and explicating their underlying processes and mechanisms. Viewed
through the lens of legacy citizenship models, the value of this work lies in suggesting an
alternative route for the political socialization of young people, given the decrease in
some forms of traditional engagement that these models points to. At the same time, this
project carefully questions which forms of participation alternative citizenship
encourages, identifies points of disconnect between alternative and traditional forms of
participation, and considers how these may be bridged.
9
My argument proceeds as following.
Chapter 2 offers a theoretical context to the concept of alternative citizenship
models. The chapter begins with a conceptualization of models of citizenship, introduces
some dominant models of citizenship and the process of changing citizenship styles. I
examine a range of suggestions that I consider within the paradigm of alternative
citizenship models, considering their similarities and their gaps. After introducing a
framework for examining democratic effects and the possible trade-offs between them
(Warren, 2001), this chapter contextualizes the current project by elaborating on the
concept of participatory politics and pointing to the role of engagement through digital
media and participatory culture.
Chapter 3 introduces the three case studies underlying this project, considers them
as forms of alternative citizenship, and explains how they can be used to improve on the
existing conceptualizations around alternative citizenship. In this chapter I discuss the
method of investigation and analysis, informed by the logic of Michael Burawoy’s (1991)
extended case method.
Chapter 4 introduces the concept of mechanisms of translation, which describes
how the same practices that are honed in the context of online participatory cultures can
serve to extend participatory politics. Considering a translation process from cultural to
civic and political engagement helps us examine which types of participation these
groups are more successful at encouraging, and where the process of translation may
break down.
Chapter 5 charts the ways the case studies connect popular culture investments
with participatory politics, through the lens of two concepts: fan activism and content
10
worlds. Considering these concepts across the three case studies helps elucidate how
alternative citizenship models harness young people’s popular culture enthusiasm
towards their conception of themselves as civic agents.
Chapter 6 investigates how cultural participation may foster informal political
discussion, by focusing on a face-to-face small-group context: a six-week study-group
aimed at connecting the narratives of Harry Potter to real-world issues. An in-depth
empirical observation of this group considers how fictional worlds can be conducive
towards, and sometimes obstruct, political talk.
Chapter 7 ties together the findings from the previous content chapters to ask how
these case studies can contribute to the emerging paradigm of alternative citizenship
models. This chapter uses the empirical cases to address underlying mechanisms that
alternative citizenship models have overlooked. Focusing on the role of the group context
in socializing young people—like Erin, Natalie and Jo—into alternative citizenship, this
chapter argues for the importance of social ties, mobilizing structures and civic hybridity
as key processes in the ways these groups enact alternative citizenship.

11
CHAPTER TWO: ALTERNATIVE CITIZENSHIP MODELS
This chapter offers a theoretical and historical context to the concept of alternative
citizenship models, and a framework through which to examine the case studies of this
project.
Models of citizenship
What are “models of citizenship”? At the very basic level, they are theories, or a
“systematic set of ideas that can help make sense of a phenomenon, guide action or
predict a consequence” (McQuail 2000, p. 13). Peter Dahlgren (2009) builds on this
definition to discuss theory’s function in intellectual research:
It serves to orient us, to pull together sets of facts and assumptions, and it offers
normative dispositions. It helps to provide significance to that which we observe,
and to suggest the implications of various types of actions or interventions. (p. 4)
Citizenship models serve similar functions. They help us make sense of the
abstract concept of citizenship by determining which perceptions or behaviors cluster
together, and how they should be interpreted. Importantly in Dahlgren’s definition,
theories—of which citizenship models are a sub-type—have both descriptive and
normative aspects. Descriptively, they “pull together sets of facts and assumptions.” For
example, citizenship models may include a description of the current voting turn-outs, or
data about young people’s political knowledge. Yet these facts are always closely
connected to normative assumptions: What should a “good citizen” know? How should a
“good citizen” act? In that they provide “significance to what which we observe”
(Dahlgren, 2009, p. 4), citizenship models are highly normative.
12
A normative claim that is often proudly expressed by scholars is one arguing for
the crucial role of citizen engagement. For example, in A New Engagement?: Political
Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen (2006), Cliff Zukin and
colleagues profess: “Let us state a clear bias at the outset: we believe citizen engagement
matters. We believe it is better to be involved than not” (p. vii). While this normative
stance is easy to accept, we must also consider an important point that is often
disregarded in political theory. For the majority of people, their identity as citizens is not
the foremost important aspect of their self-conceptualization, and in fact, it may be very
far from it. As Dahlgren (2009) provocatively asks:
To what extent is it realistic to expect that more citizens will participate more in
public life? (…) ever since the ideal of the responsible and engaged citizen
became entrenched in the early twentieth century, its proponents have been
shaking their finger at ordinary people for not sufficiently shouldering their civic
obligation. (pp. 67-8)
When asking this question, we acknowledge the myriad social-structural reasons,
as well as features of the everyday lives of citizens, which may present barriers for their
civic participation. Surveying the relevant literature, Dahlgren (2009) lists feelings of
powerlessness or cynicism; everyday economic realities (see Bennett, 1998); political
talk deemed inappropriate in different settings (Eliasoph, 1998); feelings of lack of
competence to participate (see Thorson, 2010), and more.
Beyond the question of what we can realistically expect from the citizen lies
another: the perceived desired role of the citizen differs according to the model of
democracy we employ. Models of democracy are an underlying layer of theory, lending
13
content and shape to different citizenship models. The conception of good citizenship in
an elitist model of democracy, for example, would stress very different behaviors than
that underlying a communitarian or republican model. The task of making sense of
citizenship models is made more difficult when underlying models of democracy are not
specified (see Strömbäck, 2005).
When drawing on different models of democracy and different conceptions of
citizenship, scholars come to different conclusions. In the introduction to the anthology
Civic Life Online, Bennett (2008) considers the debate between the engaged youth
paradigm, a group of scholars who stress youth creativity and production, much of it
online, and the disengaged youth paradigm, which stresses decreasing rates of political
participation. Bennett traces these differences in perspective to different normative views
of the good citizen. As Peter Levine argues, we cannot determine whether recent trends in
engagement are good or bad, important or meaningless, “without developing a full-blown
political theory” (MacArthur Online Discussions, 2006, p. 16). Elsewhere, Levine (2007)
claims that it’s precisely the lack of clear definition for the concept of “civic
engagement” that accounts for its popularity: “It is a Rorschach blot within which anyone
can find her own priorities” (p. 1).
If this vague conceptualization of civic engagement is not satisfactory, then it is
the role of citizenship models to help us decide what our priorities are and which
behaviors we value. We should be aware, though, of the exclusionary implications of
such a decision. Historically, citizenship models have been used to exclude some people
from participation, for example when literacy tests where set as a pre-requirement to
voting, disenfranchising many poor citizens in the Progressive era (Schudson, 1999).
14
Unlike most academic theories, citizenship models are thought to reside not only
in the ivory tower, but to also to organize individuals’ perceptions. This leads us to the
second aspect of citizenship models: everyday people’s perceptions of what being a good
citizen entails. Russell Dalton (2009, p. 21), for example, defines citizenship as “a set of
norms of what people think they should do as a good citizen.” Schudson (1999) also
implies that citizenship models are “carried around in the head,” when he defines
citizenship as “the political expectations and aspirations people inherit and internalize”
(p. 6). This notion of citizenship models as a set or cluster of ideas implies a degree of
coherency, one we would expect of a good theory. Yet the way that ideas about
citizenship are organized in people’s heads seems to be far from the coherence suggested
by such notions.
For example, when Kjerstin Thorson (2010, 2012) interviewed young college
students about their civic and political lives, she gives the following description about
trying to assign in-depth interview respondents’ statements to different citizenship
models: “During a number of my interviews, initial responses to questions about
citizenship elicited what I’ve heard teachers grading short answer tests refer to as a ‘word
salad,’ a seemingly jumbled up mess of top of mind responses” (Thorson, 2010, p. 75).
Despite the fact that citizenship models don’t exist in people’s heads in a coherent
fashion, or that people haven’t necessarily given concentrated thought to who a good
citizen is, such models may exert considerable ideological power (Schudson, 1999;
Kligler-Vilenchik and Thorson, 2015). Citizenship models—particularly dominant
ones—may serve as an “inner critic,” defining for people what good citizenship should
look like, and leading them to evaluate their own behavior based on this standard. At a
15
time in which citizenship is changing in practice, citizenship models that are rigid and
unchanging may hinder young people in recognizing their own forms of civic activity.
Good citizenship - A construct in flux
Notions of “good citizenship” often seem, at a certain historic point in time, self-
evident. Yet, looking back at the past reveals to what extent good citizenship is a
malleable social construction, subject to changes over time, and often shaped by
dominant political forces.
Michael Schudson’s The good citizen: A history of American civic life (1999)
powerfully manifests changing notions of good citizenship in the context of American
history. Schudson argues that the ways in which political systems function teach citizens
about the behaviors expected from them. As the political rules of the game have
fundamentally changed over the course of American history, he argues, so have
conceptions of the good citizen.
Schudson (1999) exemplifies this by detailing four historical eras, each
characterized by a different set of knowledge required to be a good citizen. The first era,
that of the Founders, was characterized by a politics of assent. Citizens’ main job was to
select representatives out of the local candidates for office, men known to them and to the
community. The required knowledge was judging virtue in local gentlemen. The second
era, with the eve of the 19
th
century, was characterized by allegiance to the new mass-
based political parties, a politics of affiliation. Parties represented sources of
identification among voters, the connection to the party deriving “not from a strong sense
that it offers better public policies but that your party is your party, just as, in our own
day, your high school is your high school” (p. 6). As the “second party system”
16
developed in the 1820s, cementing the opposition of Democrats vs. Republicans, political
campaigns flourished, “frenetic and fun-filled rituals of solidarity” (p. 115). The
enthusiastic party politics was a form of entertainment, and the late 19
th
century, while
often seen as an age of corruption (e.g., the common practice of buying votes), was also
the time of the highest voter turnout in history.
Progressive era reformers were disgusted by the corruption of party politics, as
well as what they saw as excessive emotional enthusiasm. In the effort to remove
emotion from the political scene, they made politics in the third era of citizenship “a good
deal less fun and more puritanical in practice and ideal” (p. 137). Reformers created a
new kind of political experience: “a performance of individualism oriented to the nation”
(p. 173). Changes to the political experience included increased demands on the citizen,
with individuals expected to choose leaders based on their stance on political issues. This
new requirement of a citizenship of “intelligence” (p. 182) was also a means to exclude
people from voting through literacy tests, disenfranchising almost all blacks and many
poor whites. As the ideal of the informed citizen was cemented, citizens began retreating
from political activity and voter turnout dropped precipitously.
Schudson’s contribution is valuable to thinking about changing citizenship
models in several ways. First, Schudson points to the ways conceptions of citizenship are
strongly shaped by the political rules of the game, although he acknowledges that
changing social conditions are key as well (see, e.g., p. 174). In addition, the very range
of citizenship models he describes exemplifies how variable notions of citizenship are.
This opens us to the possibility that current models, too, are not set in stone, but may, and
in fact are likely to, be changing with evolving social conditions. In the following section
17
I first describe the models of citizenship that have been dominant in the past century,
before considering a range of arguments contributing to the idea that new conceptions of
citizenship are underway.
Dominant models of citizenship and their ideological power
To understand alternative citizenship models as an emerging paradigm, it is first
essential to delineate what they are an alternative to. Two legacy citizenship models that
have dominated many academic and lay ideas of what good citizenship means in the past
century include the informed citizen (e.g. Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996) and the dutiful
citizen (Bennett, 2007, 2008)—two constructs that are also closely linked. Importantly,
these models should not be seen as an empirical description of historical reality—what
citizenship “really” looked like in the past. Rather, they describe an ideal type—though
accounts of the past may sometimes mix ideal with reality.
The informed citizen
When current political science scholarship considers the notion of citizen
knowledge, they often refer to Michael Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter’s (1996) What
Americans Know about Politics and why it Matters. While often cited mostly to make the
claim that Americans are uninformed, this book provides a clear notion of the concept of
the informed citizen, and a strong case for why this form of citizenship is necessary.
Delli Carpini and Keeter’s basic claim is that, for modern democracy to insure the
benefit of the people, citizens are required, at a minimum, to be competent as voters. In
‘thicker’ conceptions of citizenship, they should also be knowledgeable participants in
several aspects of political life (e.g. selection of party nominees, public deliberation
around campaigns, being potential candidates for political office). Thus, by any
18
democratic model employed, only informed citizens can enable a healthy democracy. The
problem of citizen knowledge, they claim, is exacerbated when some segments of society
are consistently more informed than others: “For citizens who are the most informed,
democracy works much as intended, while for those who are the most uninformed,
democracy is a tragedy or a farce.” (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996, p. 60).
While the arguments in favor of the informed citizen are powerful, they mask the
ways in which the informed citizen is a model of citizenship that values certain kinds of
civic information and behaviors over others. Here comes into play the ideological power
of this model: its dominance shapes the very definition of what good citizenship is,
making alternatives almost unimaginable.
The ideal informed citizen is above all an evaluator of information. The informed
citizen is imagined to process information through rational decision making, deliberating
over all alternatives to make informed choices (Graber, 2006). While a lot of work has
been done on the use of heuristics and cues in political life, including cues based on
affect and social identification, these are generally dismissed as detracting from the
notion of informed citizenship, rendering intuition, social identification, and emotion as
irrelevant to “proper” political decision-making.
Furthermore, the type of knowledge the informed citizen is expected to have is
closely tied to certain styles of information acquisition. Within this paradigm, informed
citizenship is often measured through ‘Civics IQ’ quizzes, which are built upon an
expectation that citizens hold in their heads facts about the workings of government, as
well as knowledge on a wide range of current affairs. These measurements do not
necessarily capture the more specialized forms of knowledge that citizens may come to
19
hold on particular issues that are of importance to them
6
, or alternative forms of learning
and knowledge acquisition, for example, ones that rely on a collective mode of
intelligence (Jenkins et al., 2006; Levy, 1999). Finally, the notion of the informed citizen
mostly focuses on political action within formal institutions, with voting receiving most
of the attention.
The ideological power of the informed citizen model assists its continued
dominance. Measures like the Civics IQ tests, which are rooted in the assumptions of this
model, are routinely used to lament the current state of political knowledge, particularly
for young citizens. Political participation is also predominantly measured through the lens
of this model, with voting and news media consumption as key variables. Such notions
shape not only elite understandings of what it means to be a good citizen, but also,
through their circulation in mass media and public discourse, conceptions of citizens
themselves.
The Dutiful Citizen
Closely related to the informed citizen is Bennett’s model of Dutiful Citizenship
(DC) (Bennett, 2007, 2008; Bennett, Wells & Rank, 2009; Bennett, Freelon & Wells,
2010; Bennett, Wells, & Freelon, 2011). In contrast to Delli Carpini & Keeter’s approach
towards the informed citizen, these scholars do not advocate for the dutiful citizen
normatively, instead highlighting the powerful ideological dominance of the dutiful

6
Delli-Carpini & Keeter (1996) do pay attention to the notion of knowledge on specific
political issues (specialists) vs. general political knowledge (generalists). Empirically,
they find that generalists are more common – people who are knowledgeable tend to be
so across several domains, rather than functioning as specialist ‘issue-publics’, however
this finding may need to be re-examined in light of the current media environment, in
which the possibility of selectively educating oneself within specialized issue-domains is
much more accessible.
20
citizen notion, that functions, for example, through civic education or civically-oriented
websites (Bennett, 2007; Bennett, Wells, & Rank, 2009; Bennett, Wells, & Freelon,
2011).
The minimum expectations for the dutiful citizen are comparable to those of the
informed citizen—understanding how government and political institutions work, staying
informed about current affairs and, voting responsibly (Bennett, 2007). The route to
become informed is regular mainstream news consumption, where information is
transmitted through authoritative sources and media gatekeepers (Bennett, Freelon &
Wells, 2010). Yet beyond these commonalities, there are important differences between
the two dominant models. The dutiful citizen diverges from the individual-rational focus
of the informed citizen, in that her involvement in politics is based on a sense of personal
duty or obligation to defined social groups
7
. This involves a more significant role for
affective belonging, implying notions of loyalty and social identification that are absent
from the idealized informed voter. The latter is perceived as making her own rational
decisions, without basing on cues of group-based identification (Schudson, 1999, p. 173).
Collective life is a more significant component for the dutiful citizen than for the
informed citizen—her ideal participation goes beyond voting, and includes taking part in
local civic life through organized groups. The actual political action, however, is still
largely limited to providing input to government.
Beyond the Legacy Models
The oft-heard claims that citizenship is in decline, particularly for young people,

7
A possible critique of the dutiful citizenship model is that such defined social groups
often consist of homogeneous others, making this a model that is not well equipped to
deal with diversity.
21
are often based on the forms of participation we would expect based on these legacy
models, including decrease in voting levels, trust in politicians, following mainstream
news. Part of the problem may lie in the fact that we are comparing the participation
trends of today to an imagined participation of the past—the informed and dutiful citizen
are too often seen as empirical reality rather than an ideal model. An alternative way to
understand the current trends of participation is that what we are observing is not
citizenship declining from a previous high bar, but rather changing its form—an
interpretation I will soon consider as an emerging paradigm of “alternative citizenship
models.”
Underlying many of the contradicting claims around the current state of youth
engagement lies the relation to the distinction between the civic and the political—a
relation that’s helpful to clarify before reviewing the different proposals around
alternative citizenship.
The civic and the political
The term civic derives from the Greek civitas, or city-states, and the Latin word
for citizen, civcus. Civic is connected to notions of public, “in the sense of being visible,
relevant for, and in some way accessible to many people” (Dahlgren, 2009, p. 58). In
implying engagement in public life, it is seen as distinct from the private, intimate
domain. In addition to implying the public, the civic also has an additional meaning,
signifying the public good, in the sense of civic virtue. Here the term conveys the notion
of the altruistic, or doing good for others.
Most discussions of the civic in the American context are rooted in the work of
Alexis de Tocqueville (1835/2004). Within American democracy, Tocqueville found
22
several contradictions and challenges, but he was impressed with the ways in which these
tensions were balanced. One worrying tendency he observed was that of individualism:
A reflective and tranquil sentiment that disposes each citizen to cut himself off
from the mass of his fellow men and withdraw into the circle of family and
friends, so that, having created a little society for his own use, he gladly leaves the
larger society to take care of itself. (Tocqueville, 1835/2004, p. 585)
To combat the penchant toward individualism, Tocqueville stressed the
importance of associations, not only political ones but also “associations that form in civil
life and whose purpose is in no sense political” (p. 595). Tocqueville was astounded by
the amount and breadth of civic associations in America, “some religious, some moral,
some grave, some trivial, some quite general and others quite particular, some huge and
others tiny” (p. 595). He theorized that in the process of interaction within these civic
groups, in the “reciprocal action of human beings on one another” (p. 598), people would
learn to see beyond their immediate good and counter-balance their private pursuits with
renewed feelings and ideas and an “expanded” heart. In his well-known statement,
Tocqueville notes: “nothing, in my view, is more worthy of our attention than America’s
intellectual and moral associations” (p. 599). Tocqueville attributed a wide range of
beneficial effects to civil associations: beyond offering a counter-balance to the
inclination toward individualism and creating wider social connections with others, they
would also gain social power that would enable keeping a tab on government and
preventing despotism.
Academic attention to civic life in the U.S. was strongly reinvigorated at the end
of the previous century with the publication of Robert Putnam’s highly influential
23
Bowling Alone (2000). In his earlier work on democracy in the local regions of Italy,
Putnam (1993) examined the underlying reasons for the thriving political culture in
Northern Italy, versus the stagnant political culture of the South. His analysis suggested
as a key explaining variable the notion of social capital: “features of social organizations,
such as trust, norms, and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by
facilitating coordinated actions” (p. 167). Social capital functions as a lubricant for
society, ensuring the efficiency of social institutions. It can be built, in turn, through
norms of reciprocity and networks of civic engagement. When referring to civic
engagement, Putnam considers a wide definition of “civic associations,” to include
“neighborhood associations, choral societies, cooperatives, sports clubs, mass-based
parties, and the like” (p. 173). The famous bowling leagues are of course also included
here. Importantly, these are face-to-face associations where members meet each other
regularly. Membership in such civic associations is thought to increase social capital by
fostering norms of reciprocity, facilitating communication, and embodying past success
at collaboration.
In the political science and political communication literature, the civic is mostly
defined in its relationship, and its potential contribution to, the political sphere. An
influential contribution is Verba, Schlozman and Brady’s Voice and Equality (1995). The
central outcome of interest for these authors is equal political representation of different
groups in society. A key concern for them is participatory distortion, the situation in
which any group of activists “is unrepresentative of the public with respect to some
politically relevant characteristic” (p. 15). Political participation is clearly delineated as
“activity that has the intent or effect of influencing government action—either directly by
24
affecting the making or implementation of public policy or indirectly by influencing the
selection of people who make those policies” (p. 38). Due to this focus on political
representation, these authors’ interest in civic engagement is mostly limited to its
potential contribution to the political sphere. Civic participation may contribute to the
political by honing political resources, such as civic skills, and by functioning as a
network for political recruitment. Examining places as diverse as the workplace,
voluntary associations and churches (p. 309), they focus on possible skills that can be
learned in these contexts, which are seen as valuable to political life.
Contrasting the civic and political domains is also central in the work of Zukin
and his colleagues. Focusing on young people’s modes of engagement, Zukin et al.
(2006) offer the distinction between the civic and political as key to understand where
youth are and aren’t meaningfully involved. Defining civic engagement as “organized
voluntary activity focused on problem solving and helping others” (7), they find—
contrary to Putnam’s claims—that young people match and even surpass their elders in
this measure. Even young people who eschew voting are involved in an impressive
variety of civic activities. Zukin et al. see civic engagement as having merit of its own,
and not only as a possible gateway toward political participation. At the same time, they
maintain the importance of this distinction, claiming that civic engagement cannot
substitute for political participation:
We are not arguing that this new version of participation substitutes seamlessly
for the old. Indeed, we believe that active participation in elections remains one of
the most important venues for citizen input, and in this arena younger Americans
still lag behind. (Zukin et al, 2006, p. 4).
25
It is important to note that the definition of the ‘civic’ as used by these scholars is
a relatively wide one. A more narrow definition is proposed by Paul Lichterman and Nina
Eliasoph (2014, p. 12) who focus on civic action: “In civic action, participants are
coordinating action to improve some aspect of common life in society, as they imagine
society.” According to this definition, civic action is coordinated, ongoing problem
solving characterized by self-organizing. As Lichterman and Eliasoph claim, “an
individual’s isolated act, or a one-time event with no expectation of follow-up, would fall
outside the view of our theoretical lens”—the example given being a plug-in volunteer at
a beach cleanup.
Following political science scholars, this project generally adopts a broader
definition, which does include one-time acts such as volunteering your time or resources
(e.g. by donating money to charity). Particularly in the context of online groups, some of
the action that happens is not coordinated with others but takes a more one-off nature.
Based on my conversations with young people, such ‘one-off’ acts may have value as
entry points into further participation, and are thus included in my purview. Building on
the definition suggested by Lichterman (2012) as well as some of the characteristics
suggested by Zukin et al. (2006), my working definition of civic engagement is of
“voluntary participation with the goal of helping others or benefiting a wider
community.”
While some scholars argue for analytical separation between the civic and the
political, others opt for more encompassing definitions. For example, James Youniss et
al. (2002) discuss empirical findings that are similar to those of Zukin et al. in their
overview of global patterns of youth civic and political engagement: Levels of interest
26
and involvement in the formal political system show general apathy and disengagement.
However, looking beyond involvement in formal political engagement, youth are seen as
highly engaged in leadership of social movements and non-traditional protests, in
mobilizing for certain issues that are of priority to them (such as net neutrality or the
environment), or in high levels of youth service and volunteering. Youniss et al. (2002)
summarize:
The general picture that emerges is one of apathy toward traditional politics, but
interest in a range of nonmainstream forms of civil involvement that can become
mobilized. Apathy toward formal politics may be partly explained by the large-
scale and global political order, in which decisions that affect people are often
made in distant places through obscure processes. (p. 128)
Rather than further underlining the distinction between the civic and political,
Youniss et al. argue for more encompassing definitions that combine the two. As they are
quick to note, this approach “muddies the boundary between clearly political behaviors
such as voting, and less obvious political actions such as community service” (p. 124).
However, they claim, the distinction between the two spheres isn’t clear, and so they
should be understood as a continuum of possible civic participation. Many models of
alternative citizenship likewise suggest a rethinking of the clear civic/political distinction,
or at least a consideration of the ways in which the civic can lead into and encourage the
political—an inclination shared by this project.
Alternative Citizenship Models – Current Suggestions
I offer the concept of “alternative citizenship models” to identify an emerging
paradigm of arguments suggesting that we are currently witnessing a change in
27
conceptions of citizenship. The way to understand these changes, according to this
paradigm, is not simply as a decline of existing models of citizenship, but as the rise of
new ones. Underlying this paradigm is the notion that citizenship models are not a
constant but instead evolve over time, alongside social transformation (Schudson,
1999)—thus, the radical social and technological changes in the past several decades are
bound to have an effect on citizenship models as well.
Many of these models build, directly or indirectly, on a broad argument which
theorizes a move away from cohesive social models, in which important aspects of the
identity—including political ideology—were mostly ascribed by the social grouping one
was born into, acquired through processes of socialization and indoctrination. As Giddens
(1991) argues, in our era of high modernity, we are undergoing a process of
disembedding of the social institutions that have previously defined many of our life
choices (see also Inglehart, 1997). As tradition loses its hold, individuals are forced to
negotiate lifestyle choices among a diversity of options, including the choice of
constructing their key affiliations. Beck (2007/2009) sees the process of individualization
as a structural process. Institutions have stopped targeting groups, and instead speak to
individuals, so that the nature of institutions (such as the family, for example) becomes a
matter of choice, rather than being socially dictated. The theorized outcome is the decline
of cohesive, “hard to leave” social groupings. Instead, in an era of much more flexible
social group membership, self-identity is perceived as a reflexive project (Giddens,
1991). Each individual is thus required to “invent themselves,” to shape and form who
they are and what they believe in—as well as how to enact their citizenship.
28
Tying the various following suggestions together under the heading of alternative
citizenship models is helpful analytically, as it helps us to identify a strong common
thread that is otherwise easily missed when different theorists and disciplines employ
different terminology. It also enables us to notice gaps and weaknesses in the paradigm as
a whole. In what follows, I survey a range of these suggestions from across various
academic perspectives (see Table 1). Briefly considering these suggestions one by one
helps us identify their commonalities and differences, as well as their collective
shortcomings.
Self-actualizing citizenship – Bennett. One of the central ideas I will be
engaging with in this project is the work of W. Lance Bennett and his colleagues on
changing citizenship styles, from the dutiful citizen to the (self)-actualizing citizen
(Bennett, 1998; Bennett, 2007, 2008; Bennett, Wells, & Rank, 2009; Bennett, Freelon, &
Wells, 2010; Bennett, Wells, & Freelon, 2011). In contrast to the dutiful model of
citizenship, described before as one of the dominant citizenship models, Bennett and
colleagues suggest that increasing numbers of people, mostly younger populations,
exemplify a model of Actualizing Citizenship (AC), in which motivations for
participation arise from expressive politics, and in which information and action are
promoted within a set of trusted peer-to-peer relationships. The model of Actualizing
Citizenship is seen as rooted in self-actualization through social expression, where
personal interests are shared through loosely tied networks. The modes of civic action
differ accordingly, taking up multiple forms of “creative civic expression” (Bennett,
Freelon, & Wells, 2010, p. 398), including consumer politics (boycotts and buycotts),
transnational activism, community volunteering, as well as creative expression online
29
(e.g. writing blogs or creating of political videos). Such civic actions are often seen by
participants as more meaningful than voting. The self-actualizing citizen is characterized
by a mistrust of institutions, including both government and mass media. Due to this, she
prefers to receive her information through crowd-sourcing or from trusted peer networks.
As mentioned before, Bennett’s work has also been helpful to this project in its
conception of two paradigms of youth engagement, an engaged youth paradigm and a
disengaged youth paradigm. This project’s conception of alternative citizenship models
as an emerging paradigm builds on this work, but broadens the scope of suggestions that
are conceptualized within this model, beyond the scope of the participants in the
MacArthur Foundation conversations (2006). Within this paradigm are arguments
reflecting not only new modes and practices of participation, but also different
perceptions of what it means to be a “good citizen.”
Bennett’s work has been very productive for this project. However, the concept of
the self-actualizing citizen is mostly derived from theoretical inference, building on
notions such as Giddens’ (1991) reflexive project of the self and Inglehart’s (1997) work
on post-materialist values. The dutiful and self-actualizing citizen categories have been
applied empirically to categorizing styles of civic websites (Bennett, Wells & Freelon,
2011), yet they haven’t been grounded in empirical examination in young people’s
conceptions of citizenship or modes of engagement. This project builds on the
conceptualization of the self-actualizing citizen but examines the extent to which this
model is sufficient to describe and explain the mode of participation of “alternative
citizens” within group contexts.
30
Engaged citizenship – Dalton. While Bennett’s work examines changing
citizenship styles, Russell Dalton’s focus in The good citizen: How a younger generation
is reshaping American politics (2009) is on changing norms of good citizenship. This
work is a particularly vehement representation of the position that young people’s
citizenship is not only in decline, but rather is changing in positive ways. Drawing mostly
on cross-sectional survey data, Dalton attempts to show an empirical generational shift in
citizenship norms. Older generations widely endorse norms of “duty-based citizenship,”
which Dalton sees as “a constrained model of citizenship, which reinforces the existing
political order and existing authority patterns” (31). Duty-based citizenship includes
privileging behaviors such as voting, obeying the law, serving in the military, and never
evading taxes, as the most important behaviors of a good citizen. Among younger
generations, endorsement of these norms is dropping, leading to popular concern about
declining citizenship. However, Dalton claims, these generations increasingly endorse
“engaged citizenship,” a more expansive set of citizen norms, including a moral and
empathetic element of citizenship. “Engaged citizens” endorse being active in
association/politics, being active in voluntary groups, helping people who are worse off,
and independently forming one’s own opinions.
Dalton focuses on norms rather than patterns of participation. However, he does
not offer a clear link between endorsing norms and acting on them (Thorson, 2010).
Dalton’s focus is on active vs. passive forms of participation. According to his argument,
the reason for the decline in voting among young people isn’t disengagement from
government politics, but rather is because “voting is a form of action for those with
limited skills, resources and motivations” (67). As political skills and resources expand,
31
citizens are dissatisfied with the limited political influence that voting enables them, and
instead participate through activities that are citizen-initiated, policy-oriented, less
constrained, and directly linked to government.
While Dalton’s claim is derived empirically, methodological problems limit his
argument. Dalton arrives at his “two faces of citizenship” (duty-based vs. engaged
citizenship) through a factor analysis of responses to the question what behaviors are
most important for a good citizen (see p. 27). However, Thorson (2010) critiques
Dalton’s methodology on several levels. First, all civic norms are endorsed at quite high
levels among the whole population. Second, there is a weak relationship between age and
endorsement of engaged citizenship norms (r=.08). The relationship is stronger between
age and endorsement of duty-based norms (r=-.21), particularly due to older generations’
wider affirmation of the importance of voting and the willingness to serve in the army.
However, this relationship in fact underwrites the decline narrative more than the
argument of changing citizenship norms. As Thorson (2010) summarizes, “the
appearance of norm shift is more a function of young people moving away from the duty
model (…) rather than moving toward the engaged citizen model” (p. 58).
Participatory civics – Zuckerman. For Ethan Zuckerman (2014), the notion of
changing citizenship is strongly connected to a new media context, as well as to different
theories of change, or “levers of change.” Based on an examination of activists
predominantly from the non-Western context, Zuckerman seeks to understand new forms
of civic engagement online, as well as to recognize their shortcomings. He describes
these forms of activism as “participatory civics”: using tools of participatory media, and
relying on theories of change beyond influencing representative governments. The
32
“theories of change” aspect of Zuckerman’s model pays attention to the alternative forms
of power that online activism seeks to exert: in addition to exerting power on
governments, change can be sought through code, markets and norms.
Critical citizens – Norris. Pippa Norris (1999) uses the notion of “critical
citizens” to challenge arguments that, due to the growing cynicism of the electorate,
democracy is in crisis. Instead, she calls to interpret the declining support for government
institutions and increasing mistrust of politicians as the emergence of more critical
citizens “who adhere strongly to democratic values but who find the existing structures of
representative government (…) to be wanting” (p. 3). Based on empirical survey results
across several countries, she offers a framework distinguishing between different forms
of political support: this data finds that while support for the political community and the
principles of democracy is high, there is lower satisfaction with regime performance,
confidence in government institutions, and trust in political actors. Within this
framework, Norris claims, criticism does not necessarily imply disengagement, but rather
may be a healthy reaction to dissatisfaction with government performance.
Counter-democracy – Rosanvallon. Like Norris, Pierre Rosanvallon’s (2008)
framework of “counter-democracy” also focuses on the question of trust, and sees
democratic value in distrust: “its purpose is to make sure elected officials keep their
promise and to find ways of maintaining pressure on the government to serve the
common good.” Rosanvallon supports the changing citizenship thesis, claiming that:
For some time now, political scientists have tried to identify unconventional
forms of participation, which may have increased in number as the rate of
participation in elections declined. The number of people participating in strikes
33
or demonstrations, signing petitions and expressing collective solidarity in other
ways suggests that the age is not one of political apathy and that the notion that
people are increasingly withdrawing into the private sphere is not correct. It is
better to say that citizenship has changed in nature rather than declined. There has
been a simultaneous diversification of the range, forms, and targets of political
expression. As political parties eroded, various types of advocacy groups and
associations developed. Major institutions of representation and bargaining saw
their roles diminish as ad hoc organizations proliferated. Citizens now have many
more ways of expressing their grievances and complaints other than voting.” (p.
19)
The flavor of changing citizenship that Rosanvallon focuses on is called Counter-
democracy: the organization of democratic distrust, through oversight, prevention, and
testing of judgments. In this framework, vigilance is also a mode of action (p. 34).
Monitorial citizenship – Schudson. Rosanvallon’s concept of vigilance connects
to Schudson’s model of the ‘monitorial citizen.’ In the conclusion to The Good Citizen,
Schudson critiques the notion of the informed citizen as demanding of citizens to be full-
time political “backpackers,” who supply all their needs themselves—an unrealistic
demand. Schudson suggests a modification to the model of informed citizen, by
understanding it as a monitorial obligation. Citizens can “scan (rather than read) the
informational environment in a way so that they may be alerted on a wide variety of
issues for a very wide variety of ends and may be mobilized around those issues in a
large variety of ways” (Schudson, 1999, p. 310). Hurwitz (2003) discusses the monitorial
model as one where politics comes to life when there is great dissatisfaction with a
34
current state of affairs. The citizen is called to action by concerned others who foresee a
crisis and believe that action must be taken in response. Mobilization to action can
happen through lobbying, petition drives or protest meetings, and the internet is a
powerful tool for such democratic action.
Personalized politics – Lichterman. Predating many of the other theorists
described here, the work of Paul Lichterman (1995, 1996) focuses on a possible shift in
the roots on which political activism is based. For scholars in the communitarian activism
paradigm, political activism should be rooted in obligation to a community. In this
paradigm, individualism and the culture of self-fulfillment are seen as sabotaging public
commitment, in a form of “seesaw model”—it is an either/or. Yet based on his
ethnographic examination of activists, Lichterman claims that personalism—seeking self-
fulfillment, individualized expression and growth in personal development—does not
always hinder public commitment, but can actually build the roots for committed public-
minded activism. For some people, their individualism supports rather than sabotages
political commitments. Personalism thus represents not a decline of communitarian
activism, but rather a different way to envision activist commitment.
Alter-activism – Juris and Pleyers. Other claims about changing citizenship
models focus specifically on young people. In their ethnography of young global justice
activists, Jeffrey Juris and Geoffrey Pleyers (2009) describe their particular mode of
participation, including use of creative, spectacular direct action and the tendency toward
temporary ad-hoc coalitions. They term this mode of participation “alter-activism”, “an
alternative form of democratic participation, which is at once cultural and political, a new
mode of global citizenship and an emerging form of transnational (sub-)cultural practice”
35
(p. 61). Rather than seeing it as an “immature mode of political commitment” (p. 72) that
will evolve into traditional political engagement as the young political actors grow, they
call to see it as an alternative form of citizenship.
Creative participation – McFarland. In some of the alternative citizenship
models, the focus is on changing organizational forms. These models pay attention to the
ways that action can be sought outside the frame of traditional organizations. The concept
of creative political participation (McFarland, 2009) focuses on “scattered individuals”
seeking public action toward a common goal but lacking established political institutions.
For such individuals to pursue goals, they must engage in creative political participation,
creating new vehicles for cooperation to undo the scattering. Creative participation is a
type of civic innovation – “organizing new modes of cooperation to obtain a public good,
a benefit for everyone within some civic boundary” (p. 19).
Summarizing Current Suggestions and identifying Gaps
For the past two decades, the notion of citizenship as being in a process of change
is resounding across different academic paradigms, taking on different flavors and using
different terms. Offering the title of “alternative citizenship models” to this emerging
paradigm has the theoretical significance of tying together these distinct claims, parsing
out their commonalities and differences, and allowing us to further develop and refine
them. The suggestions discussed here are by no means an exhaustive account of all
conceptions around alternative citizenship. Rather, I’ve sought to offer a lay of the land,
to identify a broad paradigm to which the current work wishes to contribute.

36
Table 1. Alternative Citizenship models – Comparison across the emerging paradigm

Model Theorist Empirically
derived?
Explicit
Connection
to new
media
Focus
on
young
people?
Focus
Self-
actualizing
citizenship
Bennett No. Has
been applied
to
categorizing
websites
Yes Yes Changing
Citizenship styles
Engaged
Citizenship
Dalton Yes – based
on survey
findings
No Yes Changing
citizenship Norms
Participatory
civics
Zuckerman Partially Yes No Use of
participatory
media and
different theories
of change
Critical
citizens
Norris Yes – based
on survey
findings
No No Critical
perspectives
towards
government
Counter-
democracy
Rosanvallon No No No Organization of
democratic distrust
Monitorial
citizenship
Schudson No No No Citizenship as
‘monitorial’: scan
the environment
and be alerted as
needed
Personalized
politics
Lichterman Yes No No Individualism is
not opposed to
public
commitment
Alter-
activism
Juris &
Pleyers
Yes No Yes Young global
justice activists
participating
through creative,
spectacular direct
action
Creative
participation
McFarland Yes

No No Individuals’ public
action without
reliance on
political
institutions

37
Citizen as
Fan
Van Zoonen No No No Parallels between
the activities of
fans and political
constituencies
Participatory
politics
Cohen &
Kahne, YPP
Network
Yes – based
on survey
findings and
qualitative
case studies
Yes Yes Young people
exerting voice and
agency, often
through digital
media

Table 1 summarizes some of the tenets of the different suggestions around
alternative citizenship. One of the recurring notions in these suggestions is the theme of
declining participation of one kind (voting, participation through government,
participation through formal organizations) alongside the rise of other forms of
participation (individual, self-expressive, loosely organized). Some theorists focus more
on changing forms of action, others more on changing norms. Yet these ideas around
changing citizenship models, while promising in many ways, can be seen as wanting in
the following ways:
1. Empirical/theoretical – many of the key suggestions around alternative citizenship
are not based on empirical observation but rather are theoretically derived from
claims about social processes (e.g., Bennett, Schudson, Rosanvallon). These
theoretical suggestions are very valuable, and provide us with many of the
concepts and ideas underlying this research. This project seeks to improve on this
paradigm through empirical discovery (Burawoy, 1991).
2. Quantitative/Qualitative-ethnographic – several of the suggestions around
alternative citizenship are based on quantitative findings, particularly survey
findings (e.g. Dalton, Norris). These suggestions have an important contribution
as they rely on large samples (in the case of Norris, transnational ones) and can be
38
generalized to wider populations. At the same time, if indeed we are arguing that
citizenship is in a process of change, and that young people pursue new, emergent
forms of citizenship, then we are limiting ourselves when we rely on pre-existing
measures and a pre-formed understanding of civic and political participation. This
project will employ qualitative-ethnographic methods that are valuable in eliciting
the ways that young people in these groups define, understand, and enact their
participation, in ways that the researcher cannot anticipate ahead of time, and
even in ways that seem to outside observers strange or illegible.
3. Role of the media – Beginning with Anderson’s arguments about the role of the
daily newspaper in creating the national imagined community (1983), the media
has always played important roles in conceptions of citizenship. In legacy
conceptions of citizenship, ones aligned with the informed or dutiful citizen, the
role of the media was mostly as a source of information; while gaining civic
awareness through it was a routine, habitual process (Bennett, Freelon & Wells,
2010). With the advent of digital media, new forms of media play increasingly
important parts in citizens’ active civic participation, while at the same time, it
can also enable young people who are not civically-inclined to easily sequester
themselves from public life (Prior, 2005). Few of the alternative citizenship
models described here allow a significant role for the changing media
environment. Bennett, Freelon & Wells (2010) examine how new media
environments may enable individuals to build more vibrant civic cultures, for
example through forms of “creative civic expression” (Bennett, Freelon, & Wells,
2010, p. 398). Zuckerman’s participatory civics model focuses on new forms of
39
civic engagement online, including uses of “hashtag activism” and similar
techniques. What is almost completely missing from the picture is the
consideration of the role of popular culture in relation to citizenship models (see
Delli Carpini, 2013). Van Zoonen (2004) considers the idea of the citizen-as-fan,
describing parallels between the practices of fans and those of political
constituents, yet this comparison does not amount to a model of citizenship as it
does not include actual civic/political participation. This project will foreground
popular culture and the role of participation in the new media environment by
focusing on some of the young people who are most engaged and innovative in
this new media environment—popular culture fans, who seek to connect their
participation towards civic and political goals.
This dissertation project will thus use empirical qualitative/ethnographic methods,
with a focus on the new media context and the role of popular culture, to address some of
the existing gaps in our conceptions of alternative citizenship models. To support my
discussion of what this project’s case studies contribute to alternative citizenship models,
I will use the work of Mark E. Warren (2001) on the nature of associations and their
democratic effects as a guiding framework.
Democratic effects and their trade-offs – what are we trying to achieve?
The case study groups underlying this project—the Harry Potter Alliance, the
Nerdfighters, and Imagine Better—are difficult to characterize. As we continue, I will be
alternatively conceptualizing them as participatory cultures, as fan communities, as civic
organizations. On a more basic level, these groups can be understood through the
sociological lens of associations, in the sense of “attachments we choose for a specific
40
purpose—to further a cause, form a family, play a sport, work through a problem of
identity or meaning, get ahead in a career, or resolve a neighborhood problem” (Warren,
2001, p. 39).
An interest in associations is what underlies the famous work of Robert Putnam
(1993, 2000) and his concern about decreasing group membership rates as a decline of
American civic life. This view is rooted in a neo-Tocquevillian paradigm (see
Lichterman, 2012; Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014; Warren, 2001), attributing a host of
positive effects to membership in associations, ranging from civic virtues, to positive
effects on character, to reciprocity and trust that enables collective action (Tocqueville,
1835/2004). However, expecting civic groups to be able to produce all these varying
outcomes, or democratic effects, puts them at an impossible task (Warren, 2001).
In his theoretical analysis of associational life, Mark E. Warren (2001) argues that
there are always trade-offs among the different possible democratic functions an
association can achieve. He explains: “Not every kind of association can perform every
kind of function. To the contrary, there are trade-offs: associations that are able to
perform one kind of function may, for that very reason, be unable to perform another” (p.
12). Putnam’s (2000) famous bowling leagues, for example, may increase social trust
among homogenous members, but don’t offer members political representation. Divisive
interest groups may achieve political goals, but in the process may alienate members, and
incur the exit of some. Heterogeneous groups may be good at fostering a diverse public
sphere with a range of opinions; but homogenous groups are often better at creating an
atmosphere of trust and civility.
41
Warren offers a useful typology of three ways in which associations can produce
democratic effects:
1. Developmental effects – contribute to the capacities of democratic citizens,
including a sense of efficacy, information, political skills, civic virtues (such as
reciprocity and trust) and the capacities for deliberative judgment. Even within the
category of developmental effects, Warren claims, no associational venue can, or
should be expected, to contribute to all of them.
2. Public sphere effects – contribute to the formation of public opinion. Different
associations may create different aspects of public spheres: public communication
and deliberation, representation of difference, or representation of commonality.
3. Institutional effects – the effects of associations on collective decision-making
and collective action, through representation, resistance, coordination and
cooperation, and democratic legitimation.
Warren continues his analysis to predict what kinds of associations are mostly
likely to produce which democratic effects, based on characteristics such as their
voluntary nature and the ease of exit, the constitutive media of association (e.g., is the
association based on social relations vs. on economic exchange), and their constitutive
good (the purpose they are trying to achieve).
This work makes a valuable contribution in reminding analysts of civic life to
specify what kind of democratic effects they’re looking for, and to realize that no one
association will ever be able to achieve all effects. Warren’s analysis is also very useful
in suggesting the ways that democratic effects are related to structural characteristics of
the association. At the same time, what this analysis misses is the way that civic culture is
42
created not only through structural conditions of the nature of the association, but also
through the interaction within the group (Lichterman, 2012).
Warren’s break-down of the various democratic effects provides a helpful
framework to make sense of our case studies. In many ways, the case studies of this
project differ from the kinds of groups usually discussed as civic associations. Yet
Warren’s approach accommodates an examination of a range of associations. As he
claims (2001, p. 40), the assumption that voluntary associations are only beneficial when
based on face to face relations is too limiting. The groups discussed in this project stretch
his definitions in additional ways. They are aimed mostly at young people; they live
mostly online, with varying local manifestations; and their main basis for affiliation is not
based on identity or partisan affiliations but rather revolves around shared popular culture
affinities, which—for fans—are turned into a form of social identity (see Dayan, 2005).
As we’ll see, these characteristics can have implications for our consideration of these
groups’ democratic effects.
One way to consider the value of this breakdown of democratic effects is by
offering a fresh view to a hotly contested debate around online politics: the ‘slacktivism’
debate. The term ‘slacktivism,’ referring to easy, symbolic actions that arguably have
little practical effect, has often been attributed to online campaigns, and has been widely
debated in political activist circles (Morozov, 2009). Malcolm Gladwell’s (2010) article
critiquing the notion of a ‘Twitter revolution’ caused a renewed explosion of the debate
around online action, with scholars questioning whether online forms of political action
might be replacing other “on the ground” forms of participation (Christensen, 2011), and
43
whether they are beneficial only for the good feeling of the person undertaking the action
(see Vie, 2014; Penney, 2014 for some counter-arguments).
Viewed through the lens of Warren’s work on the various possible democratic
effects of organizations, this question can be seen in a different light—particularly when
relating to young citizens. At a time when many young people are disenchanted with the
political process and perceive that they have little ability to change the political world
around them, the “good feeling” that they may gain by taking online action can be re-
conceived as a positive democratic effect of increasing a sense of political efficacy and an
identity as civic agents. Institutional effects are not the only possible democratic effect an
association can have—developmental effects and public sphere effects, the kind we’ll see
in many ways across this project—are a democratic benefit as well. This does not mean
we shouldn’t ask of groups to achieve political goals. Yet, as Earl & Kimport (2011)
argue, our criticism of the efficacy of digitally enabled social change is often reliant on an
unrealistic assumption that all off-line action is necessarily effective in achieving its
goals.
This means that in evaluating these case studies, we need to be clear about what it
is we want of them. Yes, we are hoping that these groups as civic organizations will have
institutional effects and will be able to make tangible change in the areas they’re active
in. But, at least for analytic purposes, I choose to put the question of these groups’
institutional effects on the back-burner. When dealing with youth, who are at a time in
which they are creating their habits of civic participation (Jennings & Niemi, 1981), and
given the many barriers to youth’s political socialization, making progress within
developmental effects and public sphere effects is a worthwhile achievement on its own
44
ground, independent of institutional effects on governments (see also Livingstone’s
[2009] related distinction between civic education and civic participation). Nick Couldry
(2010) makes a passionate argument about the rarity of spaces where people are given
voice, where they are allowed to think of themselves as having agency, and where they
are listened to by others. Many contexts in modern life strip people of their agency—this
is particularly true for many of the contexts young people belong to (e.g. schools), where
they have very little choice over where and how to spend their time, not to speak of other,
more significant life decisions. Against this backdrop, cultivating young people’s civic
agency is not a small feat, and thus our subsequent examination and evaluation of these
groups will focus less on institutional effects—how effective these groups are at getting
bills passed or policies changed—and more on their cultivation of citizens.
Contextualizing the current project
The research underlying this dissertation project began as part of the MacArthur
Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics (YPP), and the dissertation
employs the key concept suggested by the network—“participatory politics.”
“Participatory politics” (Cohen & Kahne, 2012) can be seen as an additional
suggestion within alternative citizenship models. Participatory politics is defined as
“interactive, peer-based acts through which individuals and groups seek to exert both
voice and influence on issues of public concern.” (Cohen & Kahne, 2012, p. vi).
“Participatory politics” is distinguished from “institutional politics,” with the key factor
being the degree to which the act is performed by deference to elites or formal
institutions. As an analytical term, “participatory politics” brings together practices
traditionally distinguished between as ‘civic’ and ‘political.’
45
The work on participatory politics helps address some of the gaps we have
identified in other alternative citizenship models. It is based on extensive empirical
research (including a two-wave survey of nearly 3000 respondents as well as in-depth
qualitative case studies), and it foregrounds the role of the new media environment. Yet
the bulk of the work undertaken within the network focuses on traditional forms of
activism, taking place in traditional contexts.
Focusing on more innovative forms of civic engagement, some of the research
underlying this dissertation project was conducted as part of the Media, Activism &
Participatory Politics (MAPP) project at the University of Southern California, a sub-
project of YPP. The MAPP team developed a series of case studies focused on networks
and organizations that employ innovative uses of new media towards participatory
politics, including young American-Muslims, DREAM activists, and participants in the
Students for Liberty movement (Zimmerman, 2012; Gamber-Thompson, 2012;
Shresthova, 2013; Jenkins et al., forthcoming). These qualitative projects—including the
project that is part of this dissertation (Kligler-Vilenchik, 2013)—provide emergent
description and analysis of the ways that citizenship is perceived and enacted upon by
young people today.
Most of the research on youth civic engagement, particularly the ‘declinist’
approach, begins from a benchmark of defining what participation should look like
(usually according to the previously described legacy models), and searching for this
participation in the normative spaces where it’s expected to be found (e.g., political
parties or local community organizations). An alternative approach is to look at what
young people are passionately engaged in, and ask: What are the characteristics of this
46
participation? What we may learn from it about ways to engage young people in civic
endeavors? This is what the current project attempts to do.
Where young people are: New media, participatory culture and fandom
As Mimi Ito and her colleagues (2008) argue, the internet, and particularly social
media, function as domains in which youth play out many of the negotiations over
knowledge and identity that have characterized previous generations, but do so in ways
that are distinctively shaped by the new media context. In their extensive ethnographic
account, Ito et al. (2009) suggest three genres of participation that characterize young
people’s modes of engagement with new media. “Hanging out” is the most common
online behavior, constructing spaces for lightweight social contact through new media.
This “friendship-driven” mode of engagement is highly attractive for teens and young
adults, to whom engaging with peers over identity formation and social status are key
endeavors. “Messing around” represents the beginning of a more intensive engagement
with new media, in which youth experiment with the affordances of the medium, for
example, by producing some media of their own. The third genre is “geeking out”, an
intense commitment or engagement with media or technology. Geeking out is
characterized as “interest-driven”, that is, a specialized activity or interest is the central
motivation for participation. At the same time, geeking out often occurs in social
contexts, within which practices such as acquiring in-depth information and sharing it
with the group or producing high quality productions are valued. While the least common
of the modes of participation, geeking out is one that is associated with heightened
potentials for learning and empowerment for young people.
47
In an attempt to link two similar notions, we can view “geeking out” as often
occurring within the contexts of “participatory cultures” (Jenkins et al., 2006, p. 7).
Participatory culture is defined as one:
“1. With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
2. With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
3. With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most
experienced is passed along to novices
4. Where members believe that their contributions matter
5. Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least
they care what other people think about what they have created).”
Participatory cultures provide spaces in which people create and participate
together, while at the same time different members can decide how deeply they want to
engage. In the introduction to the “Participatory Cultures Handbook”, Delwiche and
Henderson (2012) chart three types of participatory cultures: creative cultures, where
people create and distribute content to promote personal and political interests;
knowledge cultures, where people work together to classify, organize and build
information; and economic and political cultures, such as the work of citizen journalists.
Importantly, however, the community itself provides strong incentives for active
participation. Participatory cultures are not limited to digital environments and in fact, the
concept came out of Jenkins’ early work with pre-internet fan communities (1992, p. 23)
and is inspired by Seymour Papert’s work on more traditional folk communities such as
Samba schools (Jenkins, 2011). At the same time, the technological developments of the
48
last decades have been crucial in making participatory cultures more accessible to
participants, as well as more visible to researchers.
The concept of participatory culture is currently in a state of being explicated,
expanded, and examined. In conversation with Nico Carpentier (Jenkins & Carpentier,
2013), Henry Jenkins discusses participatory culture as an ideal to strive to:
“Participatory culture, in any absolute sense, may be a utopian goal, meaningful in the
ways that it motivates our struggles to achieve it and provides yardsticks to measure what
we’ve achieved. More and more, I am talking about ‘a more participatory culture’
precisely to acknowledge this key principle” (p. 2). More recently, Ito, boyd and Jenkins
(forthcoming) have discussed ways that the concept of participatory culture can and
should be broadened beyond the kinds of “subcultural participation” (fans, geeks) it has
often been centered around, to include “’ordinary’ forms of participatory culture,” (n.p.)
including practices such as taking selfies or participation in online forums. While I’ll
return to this distinction in the conclusion, most of this dissertation focuses on
participatory culture more narrowly as referring to subcultures with shared norms and
practices.
In previous work, Sangita Shresthova and I have suggested a model combining
participatory culture with civic engagement: Participatory Culture Civics (Kligler-
Vilenchik & Shresthova, 2012, 2014). Here, we refer to groups and organizations with
civic goals, which build on top and harness the practices of participatory cultures as
previously defined. These groups are not bound together primarily by civic/political
goals, but rather by their shared interests and passion (for example, for a popular culture
text), with the cultural bond fueling civic participation. In this way, and given the
49
decrease in some forms of political participation, creative participatory cultures may
function as a doorway enabling young people to find new entry points into civic life.
Participatory cultures, as previously stated, may take different forms. In this
project, the focus is on participatory politics that is pursued from within fan communities
(fandoms) of young people revolving around popular culture. Beginning with several key
works in the early 1990s (Bacon-Smith, 1992; Jenkins, 1992; Penley, 1991), the field of
fan studies has emerged in many ways as a reaction to popular (and academic!)
stereotypes and misconceptions of fans as “cultural dupes,” isolated and socially ill
adjusted individuals who willingly accept (and buy) whatever is offered to them by the
culture industries. An important distinction (whose alleged value judgments are being re-
examined by fan scholars, see Grey, Sandvoss & Harrington, 2007; Hills, 2002) has been
that between individuals fans, and fans who participate in fan cultures, understood as
complex social and cultural communities (Jenkins, 1992, p. 23). Within such grassroots
communities, fans aren’t simply audiences for popular texts but are active participants in
the production, construction and circulation of meaning and content. Over the past two
decades, the field of fan studies has established fandoms as active, social communities,
documenting them as spaces for identity negotiation, construction of friendships and
productive creativity (e.g., Baym, 2000; Gray, Sandvoss & Harrington, 2007; Hellekson
& Busse, 2006, 2014).
A strand of research of interest to this project is that of the political potentials of
fandom. The bulk of attention has been around negotiation of politicized identities within
fan communities. For example, slash fan fiction (fan-authored fiction centered around
same-sex relationships among characters) has raised much academic interest, and has
50
been central to discussions around gender, sex and sexuality (Hellekson & Busse, 2014).
Increasingly, scholars have been interested in ways that fandom also connects to those
areas of engagement traditionally envisioned as civic and political.
The examination of the relationship between fandom and civic engagement has
benefited from the release of a special issue of The Journal of Transformative Works &
Culture, dedicated to fan activism, understood as “Forms of civic engagement and
political participation that emerge from within fan culture itself” (Jenkins, 2012, [1.8]). I
will further consider and elaborate on fan activism as a term in Chapter 5.
Jenkins (2012) offers a useful history of fan activism that helps place current fan
mobilization efforts in perspective. The concept of fans as active first came into play in
the literature looking at cultural resistance, with the argument that fans are active in their
meaning-making processes. But at the same time, fans were also collectively asserting
their rights in different ways. Early examples include fans’ efforts to defend their series
from cancellation, such as the “save Star Trek” effort of 1969 (see Scardaville, 2005, for
another example). Jenkins points out that while political scientists may recognize some
forms of cultural activism, like rallying for public broadcasting or protecting a landmark,
fans’ effort to protect their shows are dismissed due to high/low culture distinctions.
Another form of fan activism includes efforts for symbolic representation, like the
example of the Gaylaxians, an organization for gay, lesbian, and bisexual science fiction
fans, whose goals included increasing gay visibility within the science fiction community
and helping gay fans connect and develop friendships (Jenkins, 1995/2006). In
considering this case, Jenkins (2012, section 2.6) discusses how these fans build skills
that underlie all forms of activism: “By the time these fan groups had defined an issue,
51
identified decision-makers, developed tactics, and educated and mobilized supporters,
they had done all of the steps required for activism.” Fandom is thus recognized as a
powerful “training ground” for future activists (see also Lopez, 2011). Finally, the history
of fandom’s civic engagement includes support of charities, often ones connected to the
theme of the franchise, or ones the actors or producers are involved in. These examples
serve as context to consider current fan mobilization efforts, such as the groups I’m
examining, which share many of the described characteristics, but differ in that they
engage in sustained efforts, that often seek more structural change.
A fruitful theoretical grounding of fan activism is offered in the same issue by
Mellissa Brough and Sangita Shresthova (2012). These authors consider how research on
fandom may inform our understanding of civic and political action, through four lenses:
the intersections between cultural and political participation; the tension between
participation and resistance; the role of affect and content worlds; and assessment of the
impact of fan activism. Brough and Shresthova (2012, [2.4]) argue for a wider definition
of fan activism, including a “range of intentional actions by fans, or the use of fanlike
strategies, to provoke change.” Building on New Social Movements literature,
particularly Touraine and Melucci, they discuss fan activism as a form of “culturally
defined solidarity” [3.3] as opposed to solidarity defined on political grounds.
This project builds on this work through its focus on how fan communities
encourage young people’s engagement in participatory politics, aided by mechanisms
honed through their cultural participation. As we’ll see in the next chapter, the groups I
consider are unique in that they engage young fans, over time, towards explicit civic and
political goals. While the groups described here are, for this reason, idiosyncratic, the
52
connections they make between the political world and the cultural and social realms
helps us understand the mechanisms necessary to create such connections more widely
within alternative citizenship models. The next chapter will describe the case studies for
this project and the method of observation and analysis.

53
CHAPTER THREE: CASE STUDIES AND METHOD
The Case Studies
This project focuses on a network of groups, active both online and locally, which
build on existing fan communities and which encourage, to varying degrees of
explicitness, members’ participatory politics. Building on the idea that case studies are
“made” according to one’s theoretical reading of them (Ragin, 1992), the case studies in
this project are seen as instances of “alternative citizenship”. The three case studies of the
project are the Harry Potter Alliance, the Nerdfighters, and the Imagine Better Project.
The Harry Potter Alliance
The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) is a non-profit organization established in 2005
by activist and stand-up comedian Andrew Slack. As Slack shared in an information
session at the LeakyCon fan convention, creating an activist group around Harry Potter—
a “Dumbledore’s Army for the real world”—seemed a natural step to him, and he was
surprised no one had thought of the idea before. As their website details, the HPA
promotes literacy, equality and human rights. To do so, the organization taps the existing
infrastructures of the thriving Harry Potter fan community (Kligler-Vilenchik et al.,
2012). The HPA leadership includes a handful of paid staff members and a network of
volunteer staff, dispersed around the nation, conducting most of their communication
online. The local, more face-to-face-oriented component of the HPA includes a network
of over 200 chapters in high schools, colleges and communities nationwide and abroad.
The mostly youth-led chapters engage in national campaigns but also promote local
projects based on their members’ interests.
54
In its ten years of existence, the HPA has engaged in multiple campaigns, some
independent, and some in conjunction with established non-profit organizations, some
charity-oriented and some more overtly political. Every year, the organization runs book
drives for communities in need, and they have donated over 200,000 books to
communities from Brooklyn to Rwanda. One of their most visible campaign has been
Helping Haiti Heal in 2010, in which they raised $123,000 in two weeks from small
donations to send 5 cargo planes full of supplies to Haiti—an achievement reached in part
due to their collaboration with the Nerdfighters. The HPA has also mobilized around
marriage equality, with members phone-banking to persuade residents of Maine and
Rhode Island to legalize same-sex marriage. Many more of the HPA’s campaigns and
civic endeavors will be described throughout this project.
Figure 1. HPA Chapter Organizer Meeting at LeakyCon 2011

The HPA is the group that initially sparked our research team’s – and my own -
interest in the connections between participatory culture and civic engagement. My work
on this project began in 2010-2011 as a research assistant for the Civic Paths team, where
I took part in an initial, exploratory round of research with the HPA and with Invisible
Children (IC), another case study organization. For this project, our team conducted
55
around 20 interviews with members of the HPA (and 20 more with IC members),
augmented by participant observation and media analysis, focusing on members’
participation as a form of civic learning (Kligler-Vilenchik and Shresthova, 2012, 2014).
Building on this initial round of research, I took up my own case study on the HPA and
Nerdfighters for the MacArthur Foundation Youth & Participatory Politics Research
Network in 2012. For this project, I conducted additional 15 interviews with members of
the HPA, as well as more in-depth media analysis and online and offline participant
observation, as will be detailed further in the methods section. I’ve also engaged in
ongoing conversations with the groups’ leadership. Taken together, I’ve been following
the HPA as a case study for over 4 years.
Nerdfighters
The Nerdfighters are an informal group, revolving around the YouTube channel
of the “VlogBrothers,” two brothers in their thirties. John Green is a best-selling young
adult author and Hank Green is a musician and entrepreneur, and both engage in a wide
variety of extremely popular online projects, mostly on YouTube. Inspired by video artist
Ze Frank, the Green brothers launched the “Brotherhood 2.0” project in 2007, in which
they pledged to cease all text-based communication for a year and keep in touch through
publicly accessible vlogs (video blogs). In their vlogs, the brothers adopt the “talking
head” format, facing the camera and chatting with the audience (and each other). Over
time, they developed an elaborate repertoire of made-up jargon and inside jokes, which
56
encouraged others to join their exchange. The main focus for this case study is the
community of Nerdfighters—the predominantly young followers of the VlogBrothers.
8

Figure 2. A local Nerdfighter group, 2012

The name “Nerdfighter” emerged from one of the Greens’ vlogs; John
encountered an arcade game called “Aero Fighters” and mistook its name for
“Nerdfighters.” The brothers’ followers adopted the term to describe themselves, and the
VlogBrothers address many of their vlogs to Nerdfighters or “Nerdfighteria.” Over time,
the Nerdfighter community reached significant proportions—the average Vlogbrother
video receives over 400,000 views. John Green has become increasingly well-known due
to his best-selling books, the last of which has been adapted into a successful Hollywood
film, creating another factor for the group’s quickly growing size. The “barriers of entry”
to Nerdfighteria are kept low. As the VlogBrothers quip: “Am I too young / old / fat /
skinny / weird / cool / nerdy / handsome / tall / dead to be a Nerdfighter? No!! If you
want to be a Nerdfighter, you are a Nerdfighter.”

8
Throughout the dissertation, when I talk about VlogBrothers, I’m referring to the Green
brothers. When I talk about Nerdfighters or Nerdfighteria I’m referring to the wide
community.
57
The pronounced goal of Nerdfighters is to “decrease world suck.” When I
interviewed him, John Green explained that this goal is:
Very much at the center of Nerdfighteria and I don’t think that there really is a
community without that commitment to decreasing world suck or, as Hank likes
to say, “increasing world awesome”. I don’t think there’s a community without its
values.
As the VlogBrothers enigmatically define it in their videos, “World Suck is kind of
exactly what World Suck sounds like. It’s hard to quantify exactly, but, you know, it’s
like, the amount of suck in the world.” This broad definition leaves much space for
individual Nerdfighters to interpret what “World Suck” (and decreasing it) means to
them. Examples cited in interviews have ranged from personal acts, such as being a good
person or cheering up a friend, to collective acts that fit within our definitions of
participatory politics. For example, Nerdfighters are very active on Kiva.org, a non-profit
organization enabling individuals to make small loans to people without access to
traditional banking systems. Kiva.org features communities of lenders, and—after the
company Hewlett Packard—Nerdfighters are the second largest community on the
website with 47,785 members and a total of $4,875,925 disbursed. The Nerdfighters also
support Project for Awesome (P4A), an annual event in which members are encouraged
to create videos about their favorite charity and non-profit organization and
simultaneously post those on YouTube. The first year the project was launched, its goal
was to somewhat rebelliously take over YouTube’s front page with videos of charities
and non-profits for one day, though since then the event is organized in collaboration
with YouTube. In the 2014 P4A, Nerdfighters uploaded hundreds of videos and donated
58
$1.2M to the “Foundation to Decrease World Suck” (a non-profit created by the
VlogBrothers). Nerdfighters could then vote on which charities and non-profits should
receive the donation.
I first learned of the Nerdfighters while conducting the initial round of research on
the HPA. Many of the HPA members I interviewed referred to themselves as
Nerdfighters, or said that what they try to do with the HPA is to “decrease world suck.”
When I asked them, puzzled, what Nerdfighters are, they would answer, based on an
answer given in one of John and Hank’s videos, that “Nerdfighters are people who,
instead of being made up of cells and organs and stuff, are actually made out of
awesome”—an answer that didn’t take me very far. Once I had embarked on the case
study for the MacArthur Foundation, I decided to include the Nerdfighters as part of the
research due to their prominence in my field research, though at first I wasn’t quite sure
what they were “a case of” (Ragin, 1992). As I’ll show in this chapter, I found that
Nerdfighters complemented and complicated the HPA case in interesting ways that
contributed to my theoretical interpretation. I’ve been following the Nerdfighters as a
case study since 2012, for around 3 years. During this time, I’ve conducted 15 interviews
with Nerdfighters, interviewed John Green of the Vlogbrothers as well as Ze Frank, who
inspired the Vlogbrothers’ initial project. I’ve also conducted participant observation in
several sessions of a local Nerdfighter meet-up group, as well as ongoing online
participant observation in Nerdfighter Facebook groups and forums.
Imagine Better
The third case study for this project is the Imagine Better network, an offshoot of
the Harry Potter Alliance. Imagine Better was launched in July 2011 at LeakyCon, a
59
Harry Potter fan convention, at the time that the last movie in the Harry Potter series was
released. At this fan convention, young fans were talking about “the end of an era,”
linking the series’ conclusion to their own ending childhood. The HPA tried to pre-empt
this predicted demise by launching the Imagine Better Project. With the end of the
production of original content in the Harry Potter series, and building on the fact that
many HPA members belong to multiple, inter-related fan communities, the goal of
Imagine Better was to apply the approach that has proven successful for the HPA—
connecting fans around story worlds they love to create real world change—to other
fictional texts, and to collaborations with other fandoms.
Figure 3. The Imagine Better logo

The first attempt of Imagine Better to branch out to other fan communities took
place in March 2012 around the release of the first movie in the Hunger Games series,
through a campaign called “Hunger is Not a Game.” This campaign combined local food
drives as well as collecting signatures for Oxfam’s GROW campaign for building a better
global food system. During this campaign, the organization successfully confronted
movie producer Lionsgate who demanded that they cease and desist the campaign due to
copyright infringement. When Imagine Better mobilized the fan community, Lionsgate
backed off from their demand after 24 hours. Imagine Better has since conducted two
60
more campaigns around two additional Hunger Games movies—both of them around
economic inequality, one of them in collaboration with fast food workers, as well as a
campaign around the Superman movie Man of Steel, centered on immigration policy.
I’ve been following Imagine Better since its launch in 2011 (I was present at the
launch event), and was privy to some of its pre-history as it was planned by the HPA
organizers (a previous name for the project was A-Ha: Arts, Healing and Activism).
During these years, I’ve seen the HPA organizers grappling to resolve the relationship
between the HPA and Imagine Better. Imagine Better was initially thought to replace the
HPA as an organization. But after the end of the release of new content for the Harry
Potter franchise, the fandom did not dissolve as some had thought, and many HPA
members were still committed to their identity as Harry Potter fans, even as they
branched out to other texts. Jenkins (1992, p. 36) describes fans as nomads, “constantly
advancing upon another text, appropriating new materials, making new meanings.”
Imagine Better found that moving on to another text doesn’t necessarily mean
abandoning the “old love.” Currently, the strategy is not one of replacement, but of co-
existence. In 2013, Andrew Slack, the HPA founder, transitioned to be HPA President
and Director of the Imagine Better Network, with Paul DeGeorge—a Wizard rock
musician who had been a co-founder and early supporter of the HPA—replacing him as
executive director of the HPA. A few months after this decision, Paul DeGeorge resigned
and was replaced by Matt Maggiacomo, also a Wizard Rock artist who had previously
been in charge of the HPA’s chapters program.
Explaining the distinction between HPA and Imagine Better, Slack explains in a
2013 email to supporters:
61
The power of story extends beyond the walls of Hogwarts into all of our most
treasured books, TV shows, and movies. It is my role [with Imagine Better] to
take the HPA’s methodology of harnessing the power of popular stories and
spread it to nonprofits and schools, activist organizations, philantropists, and
Hollywood.
I consider Imagine Better as a separate case study due to its distinctions from the
HPA in terms of its imagined audience and its strategy (this difference in strategies will
be foregrounded in Chapter 4 through the distinction between fannish civics and cultural
acupuncture). At the same time, Imagine Better cannot be seen as a completely distinct
entity since its core membership is basically the same as that of the HPA. Reflecting this,
only three of my in-depth interviews are with young people who were involved only with
Imagine Better and do not belong to the HPA. Still, as a comparison case, Imagine Better
allows us to further our understanding of the strengths and limitations of the HPA and
Nerdfighters as the central case studies of this project.
Comparing across the groups
Table 2 provides an overview of the three cases. Taken together, this network of
three case studies serves to illuminate several variables in the way that alternative
citizenship models of this form—connecting popular culture texts and fans to
participatory politics—can function. In addition to varying in size (Nerdfighters are a
much larger group than the HPA/Imagine Better), the groups vary in the degree of their
institutionalization, in their focus on one or multiple content worlds, and in the extent to
which they are explicitly “civic” in nature (see Figure 4).

62
Table 2. Overview of the three case studies
Harry Potter
Alliance
Imagine Better Nerdfighters
Nature of group 501(c)3 non-profit Project under the
umbrella of the
HPA
Informal online
community
Year Established 2005 2011 2007
Structure Online organization,
with local chapters in
schools, colleges and
communities
Online
organization.
Relies on the
structures of the
HPA
Mostly online
(particularly
via YouTube),
with some
informal local
groups
Characteristics of
Participants
Mostly college, some
high-school age and
some older
participants
Generally same as
HPA
Mostly high-
school age,
some college-
age, few older
participants
Leadership Matt Maggiacomo –
Executive Director.
Andrew Slack –
founder and
President. Senior
staff. Chapter
organizers.
Andrew Slack –
Director.
John and Hank
Green (the
VlogBrothers).
Informal
organizers for
local groups.
Guiding motto Dumbledore’s army
for the real world
We don’t need
magic to change
the world, we
have the power to
imagine better.
Don’t forget to
be awesome
(DFTBA)
Size Claims to mobilize
“hundreds of
thousands”. Around
200 local chapters.
Generally same as
HPA – with less
name recognition
Each video
garners around
400,000 views;
Over 2.4m
subscribers to
the
VlogBrothers
channel

The HPA is a non-profit organization, a registered 501c3, with an explicit civic
goal, though its articulation is unique. The HPA can be seen as an innovative form of
“civic association,” yet it is difficult to consider a “formal organization” as it doesn’t
63
have a fixed location or a membership list. Nerdfighters are a loosely-organized group
with no formal organizational structure beyond self-identification, with the option of
subscribing to a YouTube channel or signing up for a mailing list. While collectively
Nerdfighters are devoted to “decreasing world suck,” this may manifest in different ways
for different members, enabling more flexible participation. Nerdfighters are a much
larger group than the HPA, with members that are often younger, and generally less
committed to civic goals. Chapter 4 will consider in depth the ways that these groups rely
on and structure around content worlds. In this regard, as well, the three case studies
present interesting differences. While the HPA is focused on one content world,
Nerdfighters rely on multiple shared content worlds and on a shared identity as “nerds”.
Imagine Better can be conceptualized as an attempt to translate these forms of
engagement beyond dedicated fans to wider audiences, and thus as a test case for their
generalizability.
Figure 4. Dimensions of comparison across the groups

64
The groups as cases of alternative citizenship
As explained in the introduction and in Chapter 2, this dissertation project uses
these groups as case studies of alternative citizenship, and the empirical examination of
them serves to illuminate aspects and processes in how alternative citizenship may work.
In Chapter 2, I discussed some of the common tenets of alternative citizenship models,
that generally describe the rise of new forms of participation (e.g. individual, self-
expressive, loosely organized), rather than focusing on a decline in participation of a
more traditional kind. Specifically, I pointed in Chapter 2 to the role of the media, which
has been given little attention in most accounts of alternative citizenship.
The three case studies described here should be seen as exemplary cases,
manifesting a certain type of alternative citizenship. As alternative citizenship models
posit, these groups make rich use of self-expressive actions and build on existing interests
and existing social ties. But they do so by building on passionate engagement with
popular culture, and scaffolding it explicitly towards civic goals. The participants in these
groups are those most highly engaged with popular culture, and usually very highly
engaged with new media. In this sense, these groups as “extreme cases” shine a light on
the role of media and popular culture in civic engagement, and point to its potential as a
route for the political socialization of young people.
At the same time, participation in these groups is bounded across certain lines.
Participants in these communities generally tend to come from middle and upper middle
class backgrounds, have educated parents, and are highly digitally literate. As I will
discuss in Chapters 4 and 5, they are also predominantly white. These cases should thus
not be seen as representative of all youth practice, but rather as pointing at the potential
65
of a model combining civic interest and action with domains that youth are highly
engaged with.
Method
The goal of this project is to employ qualitative empirical research with the aim of
improving on our understanding of alternative citizenship models. The project is
informed by the logic of Michael Burawoy’s (1991) “extended case method.” The
extended case method aims to reconcile the advantages of participant observation with
the possibility of generalization. Generalization, according to this method, can happen
even through a single case study (Burawoy, 1991, p. 279). By building on pre-existing
theories that have been established, and improving on them through participant
observation, the extended case method seeks to improve the applicability of theory,
allowing it to cover a wider variety of cases while explaining underlying processes more
closely.
While Burawoy’s focus is on participant observation data—direct observation of
how people act coupled with how they understand and experience those acts (Burawoy,
1991, p. 2)—this project uses three main data sources: in-depth interviews, participant
observation, and media content analysis.
To understand how these groups function as cases of alternative citizenship, this
project employs three methods that are helpful in illuminating different levels of data
9
.
1. Individuals – On the level of individuals, this project seeks to understand who
are the participants in these groups, what drives their engagement, how do
they narrate their trajectories of participation, and how do they understand the

9
All components of the research were approved by the University of Southern California
IRB.
66
meaning of their participation. This level of data is mostly explored through
individual interviews and through content analysis of media produced by
individual participants.
2. Sub-Groups – As we will see, most participants in this project are embedded
in small sub-groups within which they participate in the larger organizations.
These sub-groups can be face-to-face, or online based. Examples for such sub-
groups include: a local chapter of the Harry Potter Alliance, a collaborative
YouTube channel made up of several Nerdfighters, a Facebook group for
Harry Potter chapter organizers, a local meet-up group for Nerdfighters, and
more. Within these sub-groups, individuals make sense of their participation
in a shared communicative process, and express it in conversation and
interaction in natural settings, without being prodded by a researcher. This
level of data is explored through participant observation and is also discussed
in individual interviews.
3. Groups or Organizations – As described in the previous section, the three case
studies differ on several important variables: the formality of the organization,
the explicitness of civic goals, and the role of content worlds. On the
organizational level, the project examines how these and other characteristics
contour which forms of participation are available to participants and which
are constrained. This level of data is explored through interviews with
leadership, content analysis of media produced by the organization/group
leaders, and observation of campaigns led by them, and is also discussed in
interviews.
67
Interviews
The goal of the interviews is to elicit members’ interpretation of their involvement
with the groups in their own words (Briggs, 1986). While the interviews included some
informational questions (e.g. how did members find out about the groups, how much time
do they spend with them, what kinds of activities they are involved with), the interviews
mostly sought to elicit members’ narratives of participation, and the way they understand
and make sense of their experience.
This project builds on two rounds of interviews. In round one, taking place in
2010-2011, 23 participants in the Harry Potter Alliance (ages 18+) were interviewed as
part of a Spencer Foundation project on civic learning. In this round, the Civic Paths
research team received a list of initial participants suggested to us by the organization,
and snowballed from there. Interviews were conducted by different members of the
research team, myself included. Interviews were conducted face-to-face or online, and
lasted up to one hour. There was no monetary incentive to participate. These interviews
were partially transcribed, and analyzed through the data analysis software Dedoose to
identify emerging themes. Data from this round of interviews served as the basis for a
MacArthur Foundation/Spencer Foundation report on civic practices (Kligler-Vilenchik
and Shresthova, 2012) and two journal articles (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2012; Kligler-
Vilenchik & Shresthova, 2014). See Appendix A for the interview guide for round one of
interviews. Appendix B is a summary of research participants in this round—who were
almost all female. Ages were not recorded systematically at this round of interviews, but
ranged from 20-35.
68
Round two of interviews was conducted in 2012. I conducted thirty in-depth
interviews with members of the groups, mostly between the ages of 15-25. As noted,
there is a lot of overlap between the groups, and many of the interviewees identified with
both (or all three) groups, yet each interviewee was grouped into a “primary” affiliation,
so that there were 15 Nerdfighters and 15 HPA/Imagine Better participants, including
three who identified only with the Imagine Better network (these were primarily Hunger
Games fans). See Appendix C for the interview guide for round two of interviews, and
Appendix D for a summary of participants. Most of the data included in this dissertation
comes from round two of the research, though it was strongly informed by the findings
from round one.
For round two, I began my sampling process from group members I had met
during the first round of interviews and my participant-observation, and snowballed from
there. Additional interviewees were contacted through Facebook group pages. In this
round, I made particular efforts to sample males and members of minority groups, who
never-the-less make up a small portion of participants, as the groups are predominantly
white and female. Interviewees were usually contacted through e-mail or, especially for
younger participants, through Facebook, and were invited to participate in the research.
Parental consent was required for participants under 18. The semi-structured interviews
were conducted via Skype or, in five cases, face-to-face. Interviewing through Skype
enabled me to reach participants from all over the country, and eased the process
particularly for underage interviewees for whom both transportation and safety were
concerns. While technical issues arose in a few interviews, the advantages of online
interviewing outweighed the disadvantages. Interviews in this round lasted between 1.5-2
69
hours. Participants received a $25 gift card for their participation, as well as an additional
$20 gift card to participate in a supplementary online survey.
After consenting to participate, the interview protocol began with a mapping
exercise, where participants were asked to draw a map or image of their life and the
things in their life that matter to them. If they did not do so on their own, they were asked
to also place the groups on this map. This exercise served as an icebreaker and helped me
identify issues to focus on in the interview. For example, sometimes at this stage I would
learn a participant I had met through one of the groups (e.g. Nerdfighters) turned out to
also be a member of the HPA, or vice versa. Next, the interview protocol touched on how
the participant became involved with the group; what activities she does with the groups;
what are things she values about the group; comparing the group to other activities in her
life (particularly other civic activities). In each interview, I sought an area of particular
interest and honed in on that. Thus, some interviews focused more on creative
production; others more on past civic experiences. Participants were also asked to give
their definitions for “native terms” (Emerson et al., 1995, p. 120) used by the group, such
as “nerdy,” “fan,” or “decreasing world suck.” A third part of the interview protocol was
more conceptual; here, the participant was asked to define, or say what they think of,
when they hear the following words: citizen, good citizen, activist, and the political. With
participants’ permission, interviews were fully transcribed. Transcripts of the interviews
were analyzed and coded on Dedoose.
In addition to interviewing members, I conducted seven ‘expert interviews’ with
people in leadership positions for these groups, including Andrew Slack, Paul DeGeorge
70
and L. Bird for the HPA and John Green and Ze Frank for the Nerdfighters. These
interviews were more informally structured and were not incentivized.
Participant observation
Participant observation enables direct observation of how people act, coupled
with an understanding of how they interpret and experience these acts (Burawoy, 1991).
In this project, participant observation was employed as an additional method to discern
members’ meanings, used in conjunction with—and independently from—the interview
data (Emerson et al., 1995). Within the context of these groups, participant observation
was conducted both in physical settings and online. Observations of both contexts serve
as a methodology that, as Orgad (2009, p. 38) suggests, captures “the online, the offline,
and the connections between them.” Participant-observation allowed me to see how
issues that were discussed abstractly in interviews were manifested in group contexts.
Participating in events and getting to know members personally was also helpful in
recruiting interview participants and gaining trust, particularly for younger respondents.
Participant observation was used intermittently in this project, with the exception of
Chapter 6, where it represents the key methodology for an observation of a small group
context. When conducting participant observation, I received permission from a group
leader to attend and observe, with the exception of contexts where participation was
completely open to the public (e.g., a VlogBrother tour). During observations, I took
jottings in the fieldsite and wrote out elaborate fieldnotes immediately after the
observation.

71
Media Analysis
Building on their nature as participatory cultures, the groups in this research
produce very large amounts of media, including YouTube videos (by the Vlogbrothers,
by individual Nerdfighters, by the HPA), web pages (particularly for the HPA), and
content on social media, including Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. In addition to content
created by the groups, participants in the different case studies are often themselves avid
producers of media content, both as part of their activities with the groups and for
personal expression and enjoyment.
As part of the research, I have been following the groups’ communications online,
including primarily, for the HPA, their email list-serv, Facebook page (national and
specific local groups), and Tumblr, and for Nerdfighters, the YouTube channel (of the
VlogBrothers and of individual Nerdfighters), Facebook group pages for local groups,
and Tumblr sites for individual Nerdfighters. My focus has been on content that is central
to the group (e.g., it is used in a campaign, or is often mentioned by participants), or, on
the other hand, content produced by interview participants which sheds additional light
on their participation.
The media analysis component reflects the key roles that cultural production plays
in these groups, as one of the practices that can be directed towards civic goals. Chapter 4
will begin our analysis of these groups by discussing how they translate practices honed
on the level of cultural participation, toward participatory politics.
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CHAPTER FOUR: MECHANISMS OF TRANSLATION
10

On February 14, 2013, President Barack Obama participated in a virtual “Fireside
Hangout.” A“21
st
century take on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats,” the Google+
Hangout was designed to enable an informal, participatory discussion between the
President and various internet personas, all representing thriving online communities.
Amongst the participants was John Green of the VlogBrothers, representing the
Nerdfighters. When Green was invited to participate, he asked Nerdfighters online what
questions he should ask. The issue that received the highest number of votes was one
much discussed in the Nerdfighter community: Why doesn’t the U.S. eliminate the
penny, which research shows is wasteful to the economy? Stumped by this question, a
surprised President Obama admitted: “I’ve got to tell you, John, I don’t know,” before
quickly shifting the discussion to more familiar ground. As the event drew to a close,
Obama urged the Nerdfighters “not to forget to be awesome,” referencing the group’s
motto.
The virtual encounter between John Green and the President of the United States
renders visible some of the ways that civic and political engagement may be changing,
especially for young people. Green spoke with the President not as a representative of a
political party or formal organization, but rather of a participatory culture, as described in
Chapter 2. His participation in the Fireside Hangout shows the extended opportunities for
such cultural groups to exert their voice and influence in contemporary politics (in fact,

10
A version of this chapter has been published as a white paper report for the MacArthur
Foundation, entitled: “Decreasing world suck: Fan communities, mechanisms of
translation, and participatory politics.” Available at:
http://dmlhub.net/publications/decreasing-world-suck-fan-communities-mechanisms-
translation-and-participatory-politics/
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two years later, Hank Green was also invited to interview President Obama, this time in
person). The Nerdfighter community voting to ask the President about the elimination of
the penny is an example of participatory politics in the sense of “interactive, peer-based
acts” through which the group sought “to exert both voice and influence on issues of
public concern” (Cohen & Kahne, 2012, p. vi).
In this chapter, I look at the Nerdfighters and the HPA as exemplifying how the
practices young people engage with culturally and their sense of shared identity can be
harnessed toward civic goals. Keeping in mind the arguments of Mark Warren (2001)
discussed in Chapter 2, I focus on a specified range of democratic effects: how these
groups function as an entry point into cultivating civic identities, encouraging political
expression and supporting political action. Using the concept mechanisms of translation,
this chapter shows how the same practices that are honed in the context of online
participatory cultures—such as cultivating a sense of community, producing content, and
engaging in conversation and discussion—can serve to extend participatory politics.
However, we will also see that language and context barriers can hinder the translation
from cultural to political participation. As this chapter will show, the “translation
process” may be smoother toward some forms of participation (particularly consensual
civics) than others (contentious politics).
Participatory culture – from origins to consequential connections
The term participatory culture, which I introduced in Chapter 2, originally grew
out of Henry Jenkins’ early work on fan communities. In Textual Poachers, Jenkins
(1992, p. 46) discusses fandom as “a participatory culture which transforms the
experience of media consumption into the production of new texts, indeed of a new
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culture and a new community.” This use of the phrase participatory culture contrasted
participation with spectatorship, seeing fans not only as consumers of mass media, but
also as a creative social community that uses popular culture as a raw material, which
they re-appropriate for their own goals (Ito, boyd & Jenkins, forthcoming). The use of the
term culture, in this phrase, builds on Raymond Williams’ (1958) conception of culture
as ordinary—in this view, culture refers to the sum of things humans create or do
together, including what are “sometimes very ordinary, taken for granted aspects of our
lives in the digital age.” (Ito, boyd & Jenkins, forthcoming, n.p.).
While Jenkins’ work in the early 1990s considered fan communities as a
particular subculture engaging in participatory culture, the technological and cultural
changes in the last decades have shifted the ability and ease in which participants, not
only within fan communities, can take an active role in the production of culture.
Building on these extended possibilities for cultural participation, Jenkins et al. (2006)
broaden the view from the focus on fandom to position participatory culture as referring
to a wider cultural trend. Forms of participatory cultures include affiliations in groups
such as online communities, collaborative problem-solving in formal and informal teams
and more (Delwiche & Henderson, 2012). Some of the strengths of the participatory
culture model is that all participants are seen as potential producers who can contribute
creatively to the group—though recent work acknowledges that this may be a utopic ideal
to strive to, rather than the lived reality of most participatory culture groups (Jenkins &
Carpentier, 2013).
Previous work has identified the advantages of participatory cultures as spaces for
collaborative learning, creative expression and identity formation (Jenkins et al., 2006;
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Ito et al., 2009). Scholars working in this field have suggested multiple models
exemplifying connections between participatory culture and other ‘outcomes of interest.’
The work of the Connected Learning research team is one such model, examining how
interest-driven activities can drive success in academic achievement, career opportunities,
or civic engagement. Connected Learning is seen as:
Socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward expanding educational,
economic or political opportunity. It is realized when a young person is able to
pursue a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults,
and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement,
career success or civic engagement. (Ito et al., 2013, p. 42)
While the Connected Learning model looks at a host of outcomes of interest for
young people, other work focuses on the role that engagement with popular culture can
play more specifically for civic engagement, or what we may call, following Mark
Warren (2001), democratic effects.
A case in point is the work of Lisbet van Zoonen (2004, 2005) on the citizen-as-
fan. Given decreasing levels of political engagement, the underlying question for van
Zoonen’s work is whether and how politics can learn from entertainment how to create
intense audience investments, “so that citizenship becomes entertaining” (p. 66). To
answer this question, van Zoonen engages in a comparison of fans and political citizens.
Van Zoonen describes processes of the decreasing power of social group membership to
define political alignment, the result of which is that political parties and candidates, like
entertainment programs and stars, now have to produce their constituencies through their
own appeal. Van Zoonen describes fans as characterized by passionate involvement
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around a text, expressed through activities like discussions about the qualities of the text,
and proposing and discussing of alternatives that fans would implement, if they were in
control. These activities, she argues—information, discussion and activism—are the same
customs underlying democratic politics, implying their potential for political
involvement.
Van Zoonen’s work makes a valuable contribution in encouraging us to rethink
the paths toward political engagement and to realize that politics has to produce its
constituents by making politics relevant—and even entertaining—for them. A connection
between cultural and political participation has been confirmed by quantitative work,
showing that engagement in nonpolitical online participatory cultures can serve as a
gateway toward participatory politics (Kahne, Lee & Feezell, 2013). Yet a critique of
models like van Zoonen’s is the lack of attention to the processes through which fan
enthusiasm can be translated into interest in or engagement with politics. Van Zoonen
makes a comparison of fans with political constituents, and finds many characteristics
that are common to both, yet it may be a logical fallacy to equate that with fan activity as
being already political. Models such as van Zoonen’s can be characterized as looking for
the ‘potential’ for civic action in spaces designated for other purposes (see, e.g.
Wojcieszak & Mutz, 2009), yet in this model, the move from the cultural to the civic is
seen as an automatic one, that occurs on its own. In other words, such a model ignores the
transfer that needs to happen in the move from the cultural to the political.
In a recent co-authored paper (Ito et al., 2015), colleagues and I discuss the notion
of transfer in regards to civic action. Transfer, a concept emanating from the learning
sciences, refers to the ability to move skills from one context to the other (for example,
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from classroom math to real-world experiences such as calculating the price of an item
after sale). On its surface, transfer may not seem relevant to civic engagement, but in fact,
it can be highly applicable when we think about how the skills learned in civics classes
do or do not transfer into participating in real-world civic and political action.
At the same time, we further argue in that piece for complicating the notion of
transfer. First, we use it not only to think about the transfer from “school knowledge” to
“real-world knowledge,” but also for thinking about how experiences conducted within
spaces of participatory culture, with peers and around areas of passion, can be relevant
and applicable for participatory politics. Moreover, we argue, the cultural and social
knowledge and experiences learned are not simply discarded after a move to participatory
politics is made. Instead, we use the term consequential connections, in the sense of
transitions that are “consciously reflected on, often struggled with, and the eventual
outcome changes one’s sense of self and social positioning” (Beach, 1999, p. 114) to
reflect the continuous building of one sphere on the other. As we argue in the paper:
Building on these frameworks, our view takes into account the fluid nature of
young people's engagements, where new interests and affiliation are explored,
abandoned, revisited, or brought together in ways that are not fully captured by a
notion of “transition” from one role or activity to another—hence our use of
consequential connections instead. Young people continue to value their
interests–in slam poetry, for example, or gaming, or comics, or reading and
writing back into wildly popular texts like Hunger Games–for their own sake and
not just to the extent that these activities advance a civic or political agenda. (Ito
et al., 2015, p. 14)
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The connection between participatory culture and participatory politics is
conceived, then, as not occurring automatically, and not as simple transfer either. I
conceive of it, instead, as a process of translation.
Mechanisms of translation as a framework
Mechanisms of translation describe the ways that group members’ cultural
investments and social connections get deployed to support participatory politics
outcomes, with a focus on existing practices within participatory culture communities. By
using the term mechanisms, I wish to signal that connecting the cultural and the political
is a process, in which multiple parts come together to achieve a certain result; and this
process is one of translation, in the sense of using ideas, terms and practices that are
legible in one context to support the comprehension of another context. The attention to
translation mechanisms is crucial if we want to identify what accounts for more and less
successful connections between the cultural and the political, and to be able to scaffold
and encourage these linkages as a way to encourage youth engagement.
The mechanisms of translation diagram (Figure 5) will guide our discussion. The
diagram begins with networked individuals (Wellman et al., 2003), young people who
interact with other individuals and groups in multiple ways but are not (or, perhaps, not
yet) members of participatory culture groups. Including networked individuals in the
figure reminds us that the majority of youth are not involved in participatory cultures in
the sense of subcultures with shared norms and practices that encourage members’
participation and production, and that many networked individuals engage in
participatory politics without belonging to such groups. We will return to think about
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networked individuals in the conclusion of this dissertation. The case studies of this
dissertation are ones rooted in participatory culture, the blue area.
Figure 5. Mechanisms of translation - diagram

The orange area visualizes participatory politics outcomes. As stipulated in
Chapter 2, I do not expect these groups to achieve all forms of democratic effects, but
rather focus on their developmental effects (how they contribute to the capacities of
democratic citizens) and their public sphere effects (their contribution to the formation of
public opinion). Specifically, I look at how they encourage young people to: 1) Develop
civic identities, referring to the ways in which young people come to see themselves as
civic actors with an independent opinion and agency, 2) Exert voice through political
expression, for example through comments, blogs, videos or creation of humorous
memes, 3) Engage in political discussion with peers, off-line (in social meet-ups or
Mechanisms of translation:
- Tapping content worlds and
communities
- Creative production
- Forming opinions and discussion
Networked
Individuals
Recruitment
Sustained
Participation
Participatory
Politics
Participatory
Culture
Participatory politics
outcomes:
- Mobilization
- Political discussion
- Political expression
- Development of civic
identities
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discussion groups) or online (through comments, blog posts, discussion forums) and 4)
Mobilize them (or get them to mobilize others) to take civic or political action, e.g.
signing a petition, voting, or attending a protest. These participatory politics outcomes
include both forms of participation valued by traditional citizenship models and by
alternative citizenship models, as discussed in Chapter 2.
The green area, focused on mechanisms of translation, is at the center of this
chapter. Mechanisms of translation connect the worlds of participatory culture and
participatory politics. The three mechanisms described here are the ones that emerged
empirically from these case study groups, however this concept has wider applicability as
will be further discussed. While the concept of mechanisms of translation elucidates
points of connection between the worlds of popular culture and politics, it also points to
challenges and barriers in the translation process.
In what follows, I describe the three translation mechanisms that emerged from
these case studies. This chapter also serves a descriptive purpose, providing us an in-
depth depiction of what membership in these groups looks and feels like. For each
mechanism, I begin by exploring the root of the practice in participatory culture, giving
us a sense of what these groups are about and what “makes them tick,” before showing
how the same practice that youth engage with on the cultural level can be harnessed
towards forms of civic and political participation, but also where translation processes
may break down. Our three mechanisms move from those most rooted in participatory
culture practices, to those more closely associated with the world of civic and political
engagement.
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Three mechanisms of translation
Tapping content worlds and communities
11

Both the HPA and Nerdfighters are first and foremost social communities, which
gather around shared popular culture interests. This socio-cultural connection is central to
these groups’ existence and sustainability: without this strong rooting, these groups could
not be mobilized for civic goals (Kligler-Vilenchik and Shresthova, 2014). In this first
section, I will explore the social and cultural ties that have created and sustain these
groups—these ties are the main reason young people are engaged with these groups in the
first place (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2012).
The Harry Potter Alliance’s mission statement explains this organization’s close
connection to the extraordinarily popular fictional text:
The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) is a 501c3 nonprofit that takes an outside-of-
the-box approach to civic engagement by using parallels from the Harry Potter
books to educate and mobilize young people across the world toward issues of
literacy, equality, and human rights. Our mission is to empower our members to
act like the heroes that they love by acting for a better world.
The HPA builds on the fictional text as a “content world,” understood as “the
network of characters, settings, situations, and values that forms the basis for the
generation of a range of stories, in the hands of either a commercial producer or a
grassroots community” (Jenkins, 2012). Content worlds may consist of fantastical stories
or realist fiction. They may originate from a group or from existing popular culture

11
In my initial work on the framework of three mechanisms of translation, this
mechanism was more elaborate. In this chapter I present a slightly truncated version, as
these concepts are further elaborated on in chapter 5.
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content. At different times, the group may valorize the content world, critique it, or adopt
a more ambivalent posture, yet the content world serves as a point of shared experience
and understanding. In Chapter 5, I’ll further elaborate on the concept of content worlds;
here, I’ll focus on two ways that content worlds are used by these groups towards civic
purposes: by tapping mythologies associated with content worlds; and by soliciting
participation from the communities that revolve around them.
For the HPA, the connections to the content world go beyond a rhetorical strategy
on the organizational level, as we’ve seen in the mission statement, and are central to the
participation of young members. Most, though not all, HPA members see themselves as
members of the social community of Harry Potter fandom. In interview, several HPA
members describe having “grown up with Harry Potter,” reading the books as they came
out, and experiencing the gradually maturing story-line as they themselves were entering
adulthood. For some, these books were a safe haven from challenging childhood
experiences such as difficult family situations (e.g. divorce), or bullying. In my interview
with Calvin, an HPA member currently in active duty in the Navy, he recalled the role
these books played for him growing up:
At that time in my life, in high school, I was a loner, a recluse. I didn’t have any
friends, stayed to myself. I had this rare case of ADHD, just didn’t know how to
socially interact with people on a level like my sister did for some reason. And
was just teased, harassed and bullied in school and I think I identified more with
Hermione because I was also really smart… even though she had Harry and Ron,
she was harassed and bullied all through the books pretty much. So I really
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identified with her because she was such a strong female character. (Calvin, 25,
HPA)
These stories were central in the lives of many in the so-called “Harry Potter
generation,” the “Millenials” (Howe & Strauss, 2000) who “grew up” with Harry, their
real childhood progressing alongside his fictional one. The young members of the Harry
Potter Alliance are part of this generation, but they are a particular subsection of it. First,
they are passionate followers of this text, who have channeled their passion not only
toward individual re-reading or re-watching, but also towards participation in the multiple
structures of the social community of Harry Potter fandom, a prolific community that has
prospered since the late 1990s, and that we’ll further discuss in Chapter 5 (for an account
of the fandom see Anelli, 2008).
But moreover, members of the HPA are a small subset of Harry Potter fandom.
By being part of this organization, they have developed a different relationship to the
magical universe, adopting an explicit reading of the narratives through the lens of real-
world issues and concerns. They use critical discussions around Harry Potter to make
sense of the sometimes confusing array of issues one “should” know and care about.
Satya, a 17 year old of Nepalese origin, is a volunteer staff member with the HPA
and also active in a range of high-school clubs (an involvement that started after engaging
with the HPA). She claims: “I learned more about myself and more about the world
around me because I think it's a lot easier to understand Harry's world than it is to
understand our own.” This constitutes what Ashley Hinck (2012) calls a public
engagement keystone, “a touch point, worldview, or philosophy that makes other people,
actions, and institutions intelligible.” Connecting the work of several scholars of
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democracy, Hinck explains that public engagement keystones serve multiple goals for
activist groups: they create an anchoring at the level of citizens’ lived experiences, they
help identify and bring together people with shared beliefs and interests, and they forge
strong ties between activists.
Further building on this argument, Hinck (2015) describes the role of popular
culture texts for activists as part of a move toward more fluid affiliations (similar to the
processes we discussed in Chapter 2 as underlying many arguments around alternative
citizenship models). As she argues, scholars have traditionally understood civic action as
arising out of social institutions such as family and church, civic groups, or political
parties. However, “in a fluid world, citizens may easily choose Harry Potter over the
Republican Party to guide their civic action on same-sex marriage” (p. 3). She examines
how groups like the ones examined in this project can “combine noncivic ethical
frameworks from popular culture with civic ethical modalities, civic actions such as
voting, petitioning, and so on” (p. 3).
The HPA’s use of the fictional world towards “civic ethical modalities” extends
from the macro-level of the organization to the micro-level of individual participants’
interactions and conversations. The richness of this content world, along with fans’ deep
relationship with them, allows individual HPA members to build their own connections
to real-world issues that are most pertinent to them, while enjoying the institutional
support of a larger organization which might allow them to initiate collective actions.
This is evidenced in the work of chapter organizers like Davia:
We like to link everything back to Harry Potter. We have to get a little creative
sometimes, but we can still link. We were trying to get involved in some
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environmental issues so we called it herbology, and with animal things we call it
"care of magical things.” (Davia, 31, HPA).
On the individual level, connecting the fictional text to real world issues may be a learned
skill. Astera, a 17-year old HPA member, explained how only her experience with the
HPA has sensitized her to making such connections:
A lot of it, I only started to think about once I found the Harry Potter Alliance and
all of that. The first time [I read Harry Potter] it was just a really good and
surprisingly intricate story. But now that I've thought about it that way for the first
time, I realize that there actually are a lot of parallels, that aren't even that far of a
stretch, and I'm trying to think about all books I read more like that. I'm making
them more real and applicable. (Astera, 17, HPA)
Most HPA participants see these narratives as promoting engagement and
tolerance. Faced with both mortal danger and government corruption, Harry and his
friends embraced activism rather than apathy—an activism informed by principles of
tolerance toward oppressed others and strengthened through friendship and mutual
caring. The HPA summarizes these principles in mottos such as “what would
Dumbledore do?” or “the weapon we have is love.”
A twenty year-old agendered
12
participant used the example of Lupin, a werewolf,
as a metaphor for the demonization and discrimination of the LGBT community:
If they already know the story, you can retell like, “Oh, you know how Lupin was
fired from his job because people thought werewolves were monsters.” Well,
that’s like such and such group of people—we’ve used this for the HPA for

12
Agendered people do not identify with or conform to any gender.
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LGBT people. We have this conception in our popular culture of LGBT people
like, “Oh, they’re pedophiles. They're going to attack your children” and that’s
what people think of. The wizards, they think, “Oh! The werewolf, he’s going to
infect my children.” It’s the same concept of some sort of infectious disease. It’s
going to harm their children, that’s what they’re afraid of. But Harry Potter fans
know that’s not true about werewolves. They know the wizarding world was
wrong, so you tell them that story and they can make that connection and go,
“Oh! Maybe we’re wrong about LGBT people and all being like, they’re going to
attack my child and going to infect them with the gay.” (E., 20, HPA)
Yet while the connection to the narrative is a powerful one, these members often
exclaim that it’s about “so much more than Harry Potter.” Rather, their engagement
emerges from the community that has formed around this content world. Lane, an HPA
staff member, says:
A lot of people I know in this fandom have only read Deathly Hallows one time
and they don’t particularly like the movies. But the Wizard Rock, the
conferences, the podcasts, all of that, that’s what they’re into, and it’s the
community, like the friends that they’ve made and stuff like that. (Lane, 20, HPA)
As we will see in the case of the Nerdfighters, as well, the friendships formed in these
communities are often a significant form of social support for members. Kevin, for
example, turns to his Quidditch team (a sports based on that in the wizarding world, with
brooms but without flying) for emotional support:
We've probably become each other’s best friends. Like one of our girls she just
lost her grandma and another is going through a lot with her dad and I was going
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through some stuff with my step dad in his health. And you know, the first person
you turn to, the first people you turn to are the [quidditch team]. (Kevin, 27, HPA)
Quidditch games, Wizard Rock concerts (Harry Potter-themed music), podcasts
and fan conferences are key components of Harry Potter fandom, and the HPA builds on
these infrastructures for its civic goals, as channels for awareness raising and
mobilization. From its inception, HPA has used Wizard Rock concerts held around the
country as key venues to inform fans about the HPA and recruit them to participate in
campaigns. As part of the 2012 Wrock (Wizard Rock) the Vote campaign, members of
local HPA chapters registered voters at Wizard Rock concerts. In the summer of 2012,
those entering a popular L.A. bar to attend a wizard rock concert were greeted by HPA
members handing out voter registration forms, engaging concert-goers in discussions
about the importance of voting. Paul DeGeorge, a prominent Wizard Rock artist, is a co-
founder of the HPA and served as its executive director for a few months in 2014, and
many other Wizard Rock artists support the organization. Other examples of tapping the
structures of the Harry Potter fan community include training sessions about the HPA in
fan conferences, working together with fan websites (such as the Leaky Cauldron) to
increase coverage for campaigns, and setting up HPA information booths at quidditch
tournaments. While the narratives create an anchor for the group’s civic goals, working
through existing community infrastructures and building on the strong ties built between
members has enabled the HPA to reach members in many ways, at the places where they
are already engaged (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2012).
The Nerdfighters can also be seen as forming around a content world—in this
case, the video blog of John and Hank Green (the VlogBrothers)—though their
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identification extends beyond that space. The VlogBrother channel on YouTube currently
features two new vlogs a week (down from three a week in 2011 and daily vlogs during
2007). Their topics range widely from “How to make friends” to “Revolution in Egypt: a
4-minute introduction.” Nerdfighters recalled being introduced to the VlogBrothers
through different avenues, most commonly through other YouTubers, or through John
Green’s books
13
. However, once they discovered these vlogs, many Nerdfighters made a
strong connection:
Once I found the VlogBrothers, I immediately latched on to the content they're
making because it was really fun, but strangely educational at the same time,
which I really enjoyed. (Meghan, 23, Nerdfighters)
Nerdfighters appreciate the VlogBrothers’ intellect, their smart ways of engaging
with topics and encouraging viewers to ponder issues. Nerdfighters feel like the Greens
speak to them as equals, respecting their intellectual abilities and maturity. At the same
time, the VlogBrothers’ content is humorous and relatable:
First they’re just funny, a lot of their stuff, but a lot of times it’s kind of that smart
funny other than just like slapstick comedy. It’s like this is intellectual jokes, or
not trying to sound superior. (Julie, 17, Nerdfighters)
A shared ritual among “novice” Nerdfighters is to watch all the vlogs dating from 2007,
comprising over 72 hours of video. What Adrian describes in his interview as “basically
impossible” has, in fact, performed by several Nerdfighters I’ve spoken to:

13
Interviews were conducted before the adaptation of John Green’s book The Fault in
Our Stars into a highly popular movie, which brought with it a new influx of
Nerdfighters, a point I refer to briefly in Chapter 5.
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In order to be a really serious Nerdfighter, what do you do? You watch every
single video in a chronological order. At this point, it's been so long that I think
it's basically impossible (Adrian, 17, Nerdfighters).
Nerdfighters generally say that they share an interest in “everything nerdy”—a
term that is very broadly defined. When Nerdfighters say something is nerdy, they may
mean it prompts you to think. But they may also mean a certain mode of engagement,
which could apply to any text. In one of his You-Tube vlogs, John Green has described
this mode of engagement as “unironic enthusiasm”:
Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are
allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself
love it. (Vlogbrothers, 2009, July 19)
Nerdfighters referenced a range of examples under “nerdy stuff,” including the
musical Cats, stop motion Lego animation, and the American Museum of Natural
History. This broadness allows for more inclusivity than the case of the HPA, which
generally attracts fans of a particular franchise. At the same time, Nerdfighters’ more
open-ended approach can lead to discontinuities when they try to build on shared
knowledge to create a sense of community.
Consider, for example, what happened during a local Nerdfighter meet-up I
attended in November 2011. The group was playing a charade-like game where the goal
was to identify YouTube celebrities. At some point, following a series of failed attempts
where participants did not recognize the performed identities, Joanna, the group’s
informal organizer, exclaimed, “That’s the problem with YouTube stuff, not everyone
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knows the same things.” Such lapses matter because Nerdfighters rely on shared
affiliations with content as the basis for their community. As Adrian explained,
[Nerdfighteria is] a group of people who share a common interest generally in
online activities, people who enjoy doing games, engaging in online discussions
and making friends who might not necessarily be with you but you could still be
with them all the time because you can be online with them… There’s not like a
manifesto or like creed that we adhere to. It’s just like we happen to have found
each other on the internet and so because we have mutual interests, we engage
with each other and tend to make friends with each other (Adrian, 17,
Nerdfighters).
Many participants see these communities as spaces where they’re comfortable
expressing their “true selves” amongst friends. Small sub-groups within Nerdfighteria
offer niches where participants can talk without feeling judged:
For the most part we’re a very, very safe space. When someone is not sure what
to do with their life and like sometimes something very, very close to home has
happened and it just kind of hit them really hard and they don’t know what to do,
often they go to the other Nerdfighters and try to talk about it with them, and that
helps most people a lot. (Lucy, 20, Nerdfighters)
Nerdfighters mentioned talking to others in the group about their most intimate problems,
such as battling depression, or uncertainties around their sexual identities.
Nerdfighters are mostly in their formative teenage years, when peer relationships
are a central preoccupation (Bukowski, Newcomb & Hartup, 1996). Nerdfighteria
combines an interest-driven group with a friendship-driven one in which the main goal is
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engaging with peers (Ito et al., 2009). Nerdfighters often admit to being somewhat
introverted, shy, or, in their words, “socially awkward.” Discovering the Nerdfighter
community online, and for some also in-person, often feels like a safe haven. Joanna,
who at 25 is an older-than-average Nerdfighter, explained what she has observed among
her younger peers:
There are a lot of younger Nerdfighters. And I think like being young and being a
Nerdfighter is common because a lot of young kids don’t have a lot of friends
who like what they like. That age is so awful with popularity and being weird at
things. So, when they find a community like this, they attach themselves to it and
they just love it. (Joanna, 25, Nerdfighters)
The Nerdfighters build on the infrastructures of the social community they’ve built to
mobilize toward civic goals—often on a much larger scale than the HPA. The community
has an impressively large reach. At the time of writing, the VlogBrothers’ YouTube
channel has over 2.5 million subscribers. When the Green duo attempt to inform or rally
this community, their message has a wide reach, and usually a large impact. The
VlogBrothers inform their viewers through videos which explicitly educate about
political issues, and are widely viewed (e.g. North Korea: Explained with over 800,000
views or Understand the Sequester [spoiler: It’s Bananas] with over 350,000 views). On
the mobilization side, Nerdfighters raised over $870,000 in 2 days of the Project for
Awesome campaign in 2013 and loaned almost $2,000,000 to small business owners in
developing countries through the non-profit Kiva.
Such success does not simply reflect the size of the VlogBrothers’ following—if
that were the case, we may expect to see much larger mobilization successes by fans of,
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say, Katy Perry, who currently holds the record for the most Twitter followers. As
Jenkins and Shresthova (2012) argue, there is a difference between the efforts of
celebrities to mobilize fans around their “pet causes,” and the more grassroots work of
fans who pull on popular culture resources and interpersonal connections to energize their
social change efforts.
The Nerdfighters example straddles this line. The “celebrity status” of John and
Hank Green is central in their ability to mobilize fans, no doubt about it, but it differs
from an earlier model of celebrity activism in which the celebrity’s influence is derived
mostly from the attention they command (see Meyer, 1995). Lucy Bennett (2012)
explains that the use of social media by celebrities to communicate with fans “directly”—
even if it is a performed intimacy (Marwick and boyd, 2011) that is purposeful and
strategic—creates a sense of closeness that enables artists in the digital age to mobilize
their fan-base in was not possible before. This definitely rings true for the Vlogbrothers,
who, since their initial daily video blog in 2007, have invested tremendous efforts in
maintaining constant communication with the community of Nerdfighters, including not
only videoblogging but also direct interaction with individual Nerdfighters through
Twitter, Tumblr, and even local gatherings (see Baym, 2012 on the challenges of
maintaining an active engagement with audiences through social media).
Moreover, promoting civic agency is baked into a lot of the content the
Vlogbrothers produce. Describing fans of Joss Whedon, Tanya Cochran (2012) claims
that his ability to promote social issues within his fan base—notably feminism—is rooted
in the salient role that strong women play in this television writer’s universe. Similarly,
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Vlogbrother videos very often revolve around civic and political issues, promoting
Nerdfighters to consider their own role as civic agents vis-à-vis these issues.
Thus, for Nerdfighters, their ability to mobilize participants to their civic
campaigns stems from participants’ feelings of belonging to the community, as well as
from the work the Green brothers have done to increase participants’ sense of civic
agency. Nerdfighters’ broad range of shared interests allows for a diversity of participants
and accommodates the large following that the Green brothers have acquired. At the
same time, this broadness may also limit the actions the group chooses to take on, as we
will see further.
Creative production
As Patricia Lange and Mimi Ito (in Ito et al. 2009, p. 250) note, we are currently
witnessing “young people… engaging in the production of digital music, images, and
videos,” to create meaning “contextualized in their everyday life-worlds.” Beyond the
technical possibilities afforded by new media, these groups, as previously stated,
represent participatory cultures in the sense that their structural and communal features
promote participation. So, conforming to the characteristics of participatory cultures
(Jenkins et al., 2006), these groups promote creative production by lowering the barriers
to expression; most if not all community members are seen as potential content
contributors (as opposed to a centralized and hierarchical model in which content is only
produced by elites). There is strong support for creating and sharing creations, realized
through structures such as tutorials or forums to ask questions, troubleshoot problems,
and receive feedback from others. A thriving participatory culture also requires
appropriate norms that support creative practices. Such support may come from anyone
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in the group, though there are also forms of informal mentorship from experienced users.
Such norms and practices provide members with the strong sense that their contributions
will be heard and appreciated. Moreover, these groups create and maintain relatively safe
and supportive spaces, in contrast to the more hostile climate surrounding some online
platforms, such as YouTube.
It is important to note that most of these groups’ creative production does not
center on political topics. However, as we will see, these groups create structures that
promote their participants’ ability to engage in creative production online around diverse
topics, by providing genres to emulate, by creating an appreciative audience, and by
encouraging friendly norms of feedback and support. Once avenues exist for creative
production, these are then available for participants to express their voice around civic
and political issues—an affordance these young people sometimes take advantage of. At
the same time, producing political content introduces its own challenges. When spaces
are usually designed for cultural participation, personal expression, and social interaction,
when does it feel appropriate to use them for political expression? And how may the
language that resonates with cultural affiliations support, or hinder, political messages
from reaching a larger public or informing institutionalized politics?
Creative production occupies a central space both for the VlogBrothers and for
the wider Nerdfighter community. Sonia Livingstone (2009) argues that while new media
provides resources for children’s creativity, their uses usually reveal creative tendencies
they would have engaged in anyway, with or without the internet. In interviews,
Nerdfighters described an impressive range of offline creative activities, ranging from
writing stories and songs, to costume making, to video editing, to luthiery (making of
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string instruments, particularly Ukuleles). But, for these young people, being embedded
in the social context of Nerdfighteria is a significant boost to their creative tendency. As
Jenkins and Bertozzi (2008) argue, online, young people see other models for what
creativity looks like, and have the motivation provided by having an audience respond to
their work. Belonging to a community of “creative people” nurtures and supports
creativity.
Seeing a creative identity as a shared trait of Nerdfighters is apparent in Theo’s
(15) claim: “these communities are really based on creating content,” or Joanna’s
description of Nerdfighters as “certain kind of kids”:
They’re not the kind of kids that just sit on the rug playing video games and doing
nothing else, these kids are like “I’m going to film something” or “I’m going to
write a song” or “I’m going to do this thing” and they’re all just really proactive,
and that’s kind of how I was at that age (Joanna, 25).
Lange and Ito (in Ito et al., 2009) describe trajectories of participation for creative
production, including stages that move from tinkering and playing to acquiring more
advanced skills. While the ease of pressing “record” on a digital camera—or even on the
phone—may belie it, creative production is a high-effort endeavor. Creating a video
involves multiple stages of planning, scripting, filming, editing, posting and tagging.
Conceptualizing the move to produce content online as a trajectory shows how much
learning is required for this practice, and at how many steps along the way young people
could become discouraged or give up.
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Nerdfighters highlight the importance of the group context in helping participants
move along these trajectories. As Inez, a Nerdfighter vlogger, explained, key steps in
such a trajectory include creating a YouTube channel and uploading their own content:
I have my own channel, which I started before I got into VlogBrothers, and I
never, I just got it for favoriting videos and liking stuff, commenting and stuff like
that. I subscribed to a couple of people, but after I got into VlogBrothers, it’s
when I started making content. What I do is just vlog about things I guess (Inez,
16, Nerdfighters).
In Inez’s percpetion she “just vlogs about things”—but on closer inspection, Nerdfighters
vlogging is strongly rooted in the shared practices of the community. Nerdfighters are
connected to the wider video creator community of “YouTubers
14
,” for whom video-
blogging is a popular genre (Lange, 2008). They occupy a niche genre within this
community; specifically, their videos are closely inspired by the VlogBrothers’ own
mode of creative production. So, when most Nerdfighters vlog, they will usually make
sure, just like the VlogBrothers, to keep their vlogs to no longer than four minutes, or to
use some of the VlogBrothers’ recurring genres (e.g. “thoughts from places”).
Nerdfighter YouTube channels can often be identified by their reference of common
Nerdfighter terms in their titles, such as “nerd,” “awesome” and “cool,” signaling their
identity to other Nerdfighters who can be potential audiences.
Another supportive structure for creative production is the use of “collab
channels,” YouTube channels that are shared by several people. While the VlogBrothers’

14
“YouTubers” see themselves as engaging with YouTube on a different level than most
people. While many go to YouTube occasionally to watch a video, YouTubers subscribe
to multiple channels, follow their content religiously, comment on it, and often create
content themselves.
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channel was a collab channel for two people, other prominent YouTubers (such as
FiveAwesomeGirls, launched November 2007) popularized versions including five
participants who are typically assigned a set day of the week (e.g. one member always
vlogs on Mondays, one on Tuesdays, etc.). Collab channels help young people overcome
some of the challenges of online production. Being in charge of creating one video a
week is a much lower bar than trying to maintain daily content, as some devoted
videobloggers attempt to do (and as the VlogBrothers originally did in 2007). Members
of collab channels often set a theme for the week (e.g. “the Oscars” or “your first kiss”)
that solves the problem of deciding what to talk about. Being assigned a regular day
means you have a responsibility to the other group members and don’t want to disappoint
them. Some collab channels even impose playful “punishments” for not creating a video
on your day, often consisting of dare-like tasks.
Figure 6. “Five Unknown Nerds” – an example of a Nerdfighter collab channel

In his discussion of digital media creation in schools, Peter Levine notes “the
audience problem”: many civic education projects online reach a frustratingly limited
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viewership. “We communicate in a public voice in order to address someone, and it
matters who listens. It is discouraging to build something if no one comes”

(Levine, 2008,
p. 129). Nerdfighters overcome the audience problem in several ways. First, Nerdfighters
serve as each other’s audiences. The common etiquette of Nerdfighter reciprocity states
that if someone subscribes to your channel, you should subscribe to theirs. Beyond
subscribing, a level of active engagement is the cultural norm:
I think within the Nerdfighter community, you know when you have this video
and you post it (…) they’re going to watch it and they’re going to like talk to you
about it. If you’re talking about something that they can relate to they are going to
comment back and you’re going to create that sort of friendship and that
connection (Joanna, 25).
This engagement, moreover, is sustained by norms of encouragement and
friendliness, where, as Joanna further described, “everyone’s really accepting and
welcoming.” Receiving positive, encouraging reactions to videos is an incentive for
further production, whereas criticism, cynicism or meanness (the behavior of “haters” in
the YouTuber jargon) inhibits expression. When young people who are not embedded in
such social communities engage in creative production online, the results are not always
supportive. Sarah Banet-Weiser (2012), for example, discusses how girls’ YouTube
videos of themselves singing and performing are often met with pejorative, hurtful and
sexually objectifying responses online. In contrast, few Nerdfighters mentioned a concern
around negative responses to their creative production online, and if they did, it was only
in regards to comments coming from those outside of the community. Nerdfighters
shelter most community members from some of the harsh reactions confronting other
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amateur creative production, both through the norms of friendly community engagement
they’ve established and, as we’ll see later in this chapter, through the VlogBrothers’
active erasing of negative responses from those external to the community and their
banning of virulent participants.
Finally, much of the Nerdfighters’ creative production is focused on internal
communication amongst friends and is explicitly not aimed at reaching wider audiences.
This characteristic, of course, makes their production less effective for political
conversation (as it is directed at a narrow, often homogenous group), but, as previously
stated, the goals of Nerdfighter’s creative production are often more social in nature,
aimed to create strong relationships. Mona, for example, described how her friends use
their joint YouTube channel for shared communication:
It’s just kind of whenever we do something or see something that makes us think
of one another or if we have a story and we want to tell each other […] whenever
I would vlog, it was because I was too busy to chat with them on Skype so what I
would do is I would just periodically make videos so that they would still be a
part of my life and they would know what was going on with me and things like
that and then they would comment. I would feel that we’re still friends (Mona, 17,
Nerdfighters).
Nerdfighters have thus created a structure that encourages and sustains creative
production, and that overcomes the “audience problem” in amateur media making. This
structure is used by Nerdfighters to vlog about various topics of interest to them. But can
this production be channeled toward participatory politics?
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If Nerdfighters’ production takes its cue from the VlogBrothers videos, they have
a good role model for the ways in which informal vlogging can be linked to wider civic
and political issues. Many VlogBrother videos discuss issues of public concern, ranging
from social issues pertinent to young people (e.g. environmentalism or LGBTQ rights), to
American electoral politics (importance of voting, “why rich people pay more taxes”), to
global issues (the revolutions in Arab countries, water.org’s actions in Haiti). These
videos, in turn, are interspersed with other, clearly non-political topics such as “the
world’s smallest animals” and “how to make friends.” The VlogBrothers’ more
politically oriented videos usually start with placing a current event in a broader historical
or political context and are often grounded in substantial research. At the same time,
these videos have the signature Vlogbrother “look and feel,” including rapid-fire speech,
jump cuts, and inside jokes.
For example, the Vlogbrother video called “why does congress suck?” (2013,
January 1)

begins with John Green describing the Senate’s compromise to postpone
action on the impending fiscal cliff. John argues that the current Congress is even less
effective than “the famous do-nothing congress of the Truman era” given the low number
of bills passed. He offers a “quick history lesson,” explaining the differences between the
U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. He describes the process of choosing
congresspersons according to districts. John’s conclusion addresses the risks of
decreasing trust in government but also the role of government in our everyday lives and
the importance of voting in local elections. If they follow the 3:55 minute video’s quick
flow (which, admittedly, is a challenge—pausing, returning and rerunning pieces of the
video is definitely needed to get the full picture), Nerdfighters gain an understanding of
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legislation that goes far beyond that usually offered by the most in-depth news
commentary or provided in most civics classes. Not among the channel’s most popular,
this video has still been viewed over 400,000 times and elicited over 3500 comments.
To what extent do the Nerdfighters offer this kind of political discussion in their
own creative video production? Examining Nerdfighter community videos shows that
political topics (with politics widely defined) is the exception rather than the norm, much
less common than in the VlogBrothers’ videos. While it’s hard to describe or quantify an
absence of a topic, the way that issues of public concern are or are not discussed by the
same person in different contexts is telling (see, e.g., Eliasoph, 1998).
An interesting example is 17-year-old Nerdfighter Ruth. At her school, Ruth is
active in several clubs and associations, and in her interview she voiced strong opinions,
for example about the need for separation of church and state, which in her experience (as
a young Jewish-American) is sometimes lacking in US public schools. However, when
looking at Ruth’s YouTube channel, shared with other Nerdfighters, this political content
evaporates (Eliasoph, 1998). When prodded on this absence in interview, Ruth first
hesitated, then provided several explanations. First, she said, talking about political issues
in the videos feels like a high bar. Creating a political video entails much research as well
as the self-confidence necessary to delve into issues that are beyond everyday
conversation. Ruth explained:
I want to make sure that I have the facts, that I was educated on what I was
talking about and that I had really fleshed out what my opinion was before I went
to make a video about it. (Ruth, 17, Nerdfighters)
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The perceived need for elaborate research stems from fears of being criticized in
the comments if you are not completely knowledgeable—a valid concern, as we’ll see
later on in this chapter. This concern also reflects a wider endorsement of the ideals of the
“informed citizen,” who, as we’ve seen in Chapter 2, is perceived as required to have an
in-depth knowledge of all sides of the argument before forming an opinion (Schudson,
1999). While generally perceived as positive, this ideal may also inhibit young people’s
political expression by setting excessively high bars of required knowledge (Thorson,
2010; Kligler-Vilencik & Thorson, 2015). Judging themselves against the perceived bar
of required knowledge may lead young people to refrain from public expression.
Moreover, though, there is the question of the context or venue for expression.
Most Nerdfighter’s video production takes place on YouTube, which young people
generally perceive as an entertainment medium. Ruth voiced her sense that YouTube just
“isn’t the right place” for controversial issues. Even though she saw value in creating
political videos, she spent a large chunk of her interview explaining why she doesn’t see
her collab channel doing that:
I don’t think I’ve said anything that’s too controversial or provokes too much
discussion in my videos, but I don’t think it’s the right venue to do that. I mean,
maybe it’s not the right venue. Usually with the collab channel, every week we
have a theme. So we’ve decided that we’re going to talk about movies or we’re
going to talk about TV shows. (Ruth, 17, Nerdfighters)
In her ethnographic examination of political talk in civic groups, Nina Eliasoph
(1998) uses the concept of political etiquette to ask whether the discussion of political
issues is deemed appropriate or desirable within various group contexts. If Nerdfighters
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see decreasing world suck as a main goal, as I’ve claimed in Chapter 3, why are
Nerdfighter videos not the right venue to discuss, as Ruth said, “anything that’s too
controversial or provokes too much discussion?” Part of this may be the sense that, when
the key space for Nerdfighter interaction are entertainment media—like YouTube—the
introduction of political language feels out of place. We can thus see it as a challenge of
translation across contexts.
The challenges of using creative video production online for political expression,
pointed at by Ruth, is exacerbated in the example of Inez. Inez, a 16-year old Mexican-
American Nerdfighter, shares a collab channel with four other girls, and one of her videos
is of particular interest
15
. Inez, who lives in a small town on the border with Mexico,
begins the video in a fancy dress, as her collaborators decided to all dress up for the
Oscars week. Inez talks about the dress and asks viewers (of which there are very few,
beyond fellow members of the collab channel) to like the video for a competition the girls
are doing on who’s the fanciest. About 28 seconds into the movie, Inez says, “Nobody
actually decided to punish me,
16
so I took the liberty of punishing myself, so I’m going to
do peanut butter face.” After showing a jar of peanut butter, she says, “While I put peanut
butter on my face I’m gonna talk about some of the things you can’t say when you’re in a
Catholic school.” She starts with “Sister, I don’t agree with what you’re saying” and “I
actually really like the Da Vinci code” and moves on to “I don’t believe in God.” She
then makes an abrupt transition: “Actually, talking about Catholic schools, oh my god,
the elections. Everybody at my school practically hates Obama because they’re all

15
The video itself is not linked here so as not to identify the interviewee.
16
As mentioned previously, “punishments” are used in collab channels when one of the
members is “delinquent,” e.g. misses a video, like Inez did.
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Catholic what-evs, and they’re all like voting for Republican candidates, and I’m just
sitting there saying, are you crazy?! Have you actually heard what they’re saying?” She
discusses conversations with a classmate about gays serving in the military, trying to
convince her dad to vote for Obama, and saying they should move to Canada if Santorum
is elected for president (the video is from March 2012 while Santorum was still in the
race). All throughout this impassioned speech, Inez engages in a puzzling act: she smears
peanut butter all over her face.
In terms of its content, Inez’s video displays the kind of political voice that
scholars desire in young people’s expression. Inez is knowledgeable and passionate about
politics, and is willing to voice her opinion. She sees politics as relevant to her own life
and to the lives of those around her, enough to try and persuade others of her opinion. At
the same time, the act of smearing peanut butter on her face during her speech makes the
situation bizarre, if not laughable. While this action is undecipherable to an outside
observer, those in the Nerdfighter community would know that this gesture is an homage
to the VlogBrothers. In several videos, John discusses serious topics (the war between
Russia and Georgia or the civil war in Sri Lanka) while smearing peanut butter on his
face, explaining: “Everyone knows, Hank, the only way to get the internet to pay
attention to news is via peanut butter face” (VlogBrothers, 2008, August 12).
Knowing this context may help make Inez’s video somewhat more legible—
though, when I asked her about it in interview, her reasoning for using the peanut butter
was different from John’s. Inez recalled that a week before, she had watched a
Nerdfighter video on another, more well-known channel, where one of the girls talked
about her dislike of Santorum and received very harsh comments: “She was just talking
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about it and she was saying a lot of his quotes. It started a lot of controversy in the
comments and if I'm not mistaken, they lost a bit of subscribers because of that video.”
Inez felt that using the peanut butter could protect her from such backlash:
I know that if I talk about it without doing something like putting peanut butter on
my face, obviously the same reaction will happen to me because there are a lot of
people that are against and for Rick Santorum.…Well, like what Jade did [the girl
who did the Santorum video], she tried to do it in her video and tried to get people
to see what things he said. Well, I try to do it in my American political situation
video with peanut butter. I try to do it in a very funny way though I was very
distressed about how I didn’t want him to win and I wanted to move out of the
country. Those are means right now that I have found to express things I want
other people to see what I think about (Inez, 16, Nerdfighters).
As we’ve seen, the Nerdfighter community is successful in encouraging creative
production at the level of participatory culture, by decreasing barriers to participation and
creating supportive structures. However, when Nerdfighters attempt to translate these
skills toward political expression, they are often inhibited, as the context and language
used for entertainment purposes feel inappropriate or may not properly convey the
political message they would like to express. It may be telling that some Nerdfighters
who are also HPA members thought that the HPA might be a more appropriate context in
which to bring up political issues—leading us to consider video production, both on the
cultural level and for civic/political expression, for this group.
As we’ll see, the HPA also encounters challenges of translation, but these are
often of an opposite kind than for Nerdfighters—given their explicit civic goals, the HPA
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struggle with translating civic goals into a language understandable and compatible with
the participatory culture contexts the group is embedded in.
In the HPA, creative production tends to be more centralized than in Nerdfighteria
and emerges mostly from the organization and its volunteer staff—particularly in the case
of video production. While many HPA members have other, textual or image focused,
modes of expression, such as blogs or Tumblr pages, fewer have their own YouTube
channels—unless they also consider themselves Nerdfighters. The infrequent vlogging
may stem from the fact that early Harry Potter fandom was more focused on text-based
modes of expression, such as writing of fan fiction (Tosenberger, 2008) or creating fan
sites like The Leaky Cauldron. The book series has famously been attributed with
bringing kids back to reading and writing (Belcher & Herr Stephenson, 2007). However,
the younger Harry Potter fans and HPA members interviewed for this project have
largely shifted towards video production or more visual platforms such as Tumblr. Some
see a generational divide within the fandom, where “older” fans (those who are now in
their mid twenties and above) are more likely to express their ideas through text, and are
sometimes skeptical of the younger fans’ audio-visual tendencies (Tosenberger, 2012,
personal conversation).
Audio podcasts constitute one intermediate phase between textual and video
production. Harry Potter fandom was among the first fan communities to embrace
podcasting when this affordance became available. One popular podcast, Pottercast, was
connected to the fan site The Leaky Cauldron. Pottercast aired 250 episodes, won several
podcast awards, and featured interviews with J.K. Rowling. Pottercast also featured
HPA’s campaign to raise awareness around Darfur. Other podcasts are smaller and of a
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more grassroots nature. Portkey, a podcast that aired during the fan conference
LeakyCon, helped those not able to attend stay connected to the event. Portkey is
affiliated with the HPA, but it is independently produced by several fans. Bethany, an
HPA member and one of Portkey’s organizers, stated that their autonomy enables them to
maintain a close connection to the wider fan community and to the aspects that remind
members of their “love for Hary Potter” and for the fandom—while also supporting the
HPA’s civic goals:
The great thing about Portkey is that while it’s affiliated with the HPA, and we
love doing things revolving like LGBTQ issues and equality for the win and
everything like that, Portkey likes to tap the fact that we have a love for Harry
Potter, we have the fandom and we need to bring that back sometimes… We’re
realizing why we love Harry Potter, which is why we have more just like fun
panels, like the Pottermore panel or the Unpopular Fandom Opinion Panel.
(Bethany, 20, HPA)
Figure 7. The PortKey channel on Livestream

HPA members are less likely than Nerdfighters to belong to collab channels or to
have YouTube channels on which they vlog regularly. Their creative production online—
108
at least as representatives of the group—is more often explicitly elicited by the
organization. Signaling their ties to the Nerdfighters and the YouTube community, the
HPA launched a regular video blog on the YouTube channel hpalliance in 2011. Though
the HPA had produced several sporadic videos before to launch campaigns or publicize
success stories, the vlog marked a shift in their use of YouTube as several vloggers
shared the responsibility of posting new material 2-3 times a week. Lane, one of the HPA
vloggers, explained some of the goals for creating the regular vlog channel:
We did realize that we definitely needed to have vloggers. We needed to be more
part of the YouTube community because we consider YouTube to be one of the
fandoms that we associate with (…) We also wanted some more faces of the HPA
because the HPA, we’re like 50 to 70 staff and we do all these things, but people
only know Andrew [Slack]… (Lane, 20, HPA).
The HPA did not have many models to emulate how a non-profit might deploy a
YouTube vlog. Lane described a long learning process as they experimented with
translating their civic messages into the language of vlogging:
YouTube has obviously been something that just about everyone on the HPA is
interested in, because it’s a weird thing, there is the YouTube community and for
people like wizard rockers or people who just started out as vloggers, it’s very
easy to translate that into video. But for the HPA, you know, we're a non-profit
organization and most non-profits don’t have vloggers for sure and their videos
are usually something that they'll commission, they're not really like engaging or
interactive. And so we’ve always had to try and reconcile that (Lane, 20).
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One of the challenges for the HPA vloggers was how to create videos that are not
only informational, but are engaging and fun to watch. Over time, their most successful
videos were the ones that were informal and conversational in tone rather than tightly
focused around a core message (e.g., summarizing a campaign). The vloggers were
frustrated by the fact that the average HPA vlog has a view-count of around 500, which
they saw as disappointingly low. At the same time, relative to the number of views, these
videos have a high number of “likes” and many comments and responses. As Burgess
and Green (2009) discuss, YouTube’s different “popularity measures” assess different
logics of audience engagement: whereas the view count is a way of “counting eyeballs,”
high numbers of comments point at a very engaged viewership. The HPA vloggers
support their viewers’ engagement by ending their vlogs with a question for the audience
to answer in the comments, and by going back, responding to many of the comments they
receive and structuring a form of conversation within the comment section.
While the HPA vloggers have produced several videos a week several years, one
particular video embodies the strengths, but also possible limitations, of pursuing
participatory politics through production of engaging videos. Julian Gomez, a 19-year old
college student from Miami, Florida, has been an HPA vlogger since the channel’s
inception. In the video entitled “Why I can’t go to LeakyCon”
17
(thehpalliance, 2012,
July 31), Julian makes a surprising revelation: he is undocumented.

17
I would like to acknowledge the participants in the 2013 Civic Media class at USC
Annenberg, whose discussion of the video raised some of these ideas.
110
Figure 8. Screenshot of “Why I can’t go to LeakyCon”

The video begins with Julian, dressed in a button-up shirt and tie, recounting the
amazing experience he had at LeakyCon the previous year in Orlando, Florida, not far
from his home. He describes meeting online friends in person and celebrating the power
of stories to bring people together to do great things. He then sadly observes that this year
the conference will be held in Chicago, and he can’t attend: “There is a longer story
behind this, but the simple truth is – I’m an undocumented American.” Against the
backdrop of old family pictures, Julian narrates the story of his parents, who had a
successful store in Argentina but encountered financial problems after it was robbed.
They decided to make a fresh start in America, where their kids would have “a better
chance at a good education and a safer life.” Julian describes his life in Miami, where he
graduated summa cum laude from his high school and was accepted to a college honors
program. Yet, while other honors program participants are exempted from tuition, he has
to pay for school. He explains that, as an undocumented student, he has out-of-state status
“even though I do live in-state, in the house that my parents own and pay taxes for.”
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Julian continues, “I can’t take a student loan, can’t get a job, can’t get a license, so I don’t
have an ID that will let me fly or take a train, and I don’t know anyone with a flying car.”
Connecting his situation to broader immigration issues, Julian explains that there is
currently no common-sense immigration process available for millions of aspiring
citizens. He then connects all this back to the Harry Potter content world by observing
that “If Voldemort had his way, those born to Muggle
18
parents would be stripped of the
right to work, an education, and the practice of magic of course. Harry Potter would
support immigration reform.”
Julian’s video was a striking success for the HPA vlog. Developed in coordination
with the senior HPA staff, the video was released two weeks before the launch of HPA’s
Equality for the Win campaign, which raised funds for immigration reform and other
issues. Moreover, the video was produced in conversation with prominent immigration
activist Jose Antonio Vargas
19
and was modeled on the “coming out as undocumented”
media created by DREAM activists (Zimmerman, 2012), thus enabling networking with
that movement. Dedicated HPA members, who felt a strong identification—and often
personal friendship—with Julian helped promote the video’s circulation. Meghan said:
I reblogged it on Tumblr. I retweeted it from the HPA and a couple of different
people on my Twitter as well. Have I showed it on my Facebook? If I haven’t, I
should. So I've definitely tried to get it out there because Julian asked us in our

18
Muggles are regular, non-magical, people.
19
The video even ends with the logo for “Define American?”, a non-profit started by
Vargas, though that connection is not explicitly stated in the video.
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Catitude group
20
if we'd be willing to share it and we were all very supportive of
him making this video and putting it out there. (Meghan, 23, Nerdfighters)
For many HPA members, the video’s key success was putting a face to immigration
reform, the face of someone they considered “one of them” (Julian had been vlogging for
the HPA for over a year by the time the video had launched). Many supporters admitted
to not having personally (at least knowingly) known anyone who is undocumented
before. Meghan explained how Julian’s story informed her stance on immigration reform:
Immigration was one of those things that I never really thought too much about
before. I never really truly took a stance on it, because I just didn’t know anything
about it. I’ve never known anybody who was a legal or an illegal immigrant, one
way or another, or that came to this country, at least to my knowledge I didn’t
know. To have somebody who had come to this country, they're an undocumented
citizen, and being able to tell their story gave me a lot of perspective very quickly
about that subject (Meghan, 23, Nerdfighters).
The HPA community’s discussion was vibrant, but what’s especially notable is
this video’s success in what few HPA vlogs had achieved—reaching beyond Harry Potter
fandom (in Chapter 5 we’ll see another example of an HPA video that succeeded in
crossing the community boundaries). The video has been picked up by several
mainstream media channels, including Univision and ABC news. It garnered a relatively
impressive reach—over 16,000 views at the time of writing.
In “Why I can’t go to LeakyCon”, references to the Harry Potter content world
and to everyday fan experiences helped to engage and mobilize fans, who were often

20
Catitude is an informal subgroup of Nerdfighters, established in the early days of the
online community, that has received some prominence within the larger community.
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thinking about these matters for the first time. Yet, these choices may also have limited
the conversation that followed the video’s release. Julian did ultimately attend LeakyCon.
Touched by his video, the HPA community worked together to offer rides and ensure he
was able to get to Chicago without boarding a single plane. Julian recounted his
experiences in the follow-up video, “Why I went to LeakyCon.” (hpalliance, 2012,
August 20). As excited and thankful as he was, Julian says there, he was also somewhat
frustrated by the attention focused around his arrival to the conference. “I was just
amazed at how great people are, but I also thought that they were missing the point. I
wanted people to be that passionate about discussing immigration policy flaws, not
getting me to Leakycon.” Julian concluded, however, that the purpose may have been
achieved anyway: when people go out of their way to help him attend the conference,
they see him as a fellow Harry Potter fan, not just as an undocumented immigrant.
In her discussion of the centrality of storytelling for social movements, Francesca
Polletta (2006) considers the ways that narratives may limit how social issues get
discussed. “Without denying narrative’s political potency,” she argues, “for
disadvantaged groups, narrative comes with risks as well as benefits. The story lines
available to modern American activists make it more difficult to tell a story of long-term
endurance than one of short-term triumph and more difficult to argue that to ‘keep on
keeping on’ is success” (Polletta, 2006,p. 3). “Why I can’t go to LeakyCon” may
exemplify this claim. Julian’s ability to attend the conference became the story’s “happy
ending,” potentially closing off further discussion.
Creative production is a central cultural practice, for both the Nerdfighters and the
HPA. For Nerdfighters, establishing mechanisms for expression, even when these are
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non-political, enables young people a structure and opportunity to have their voices
heard. Thanks to these structures, Nerdfighteria is characterized by wide participation in
creative production. Using these venues for political expression, however, presents
challenges. As Inez’s peanut butter video shows, the language of YouTube or
Nerdfighteria may sometimes be unintelligible to outside participants, cutting participants
off from larger public discussions. Moreover, some members feel that the entertainment
spaces where Nerdfighters conduct much of their interaction (like YouTube) just aren’t
the right venue for political expression.
As a non-profit, the HPA, by contrast, has clear civic and political goals: they
want to foster public awareness. HPA’s success lies in creating a space in which political
expression is legitimate and accepted and in tapping the Harry Potter fan community and
its structures to engage others around these messages. To do that, the organization needs
to translate their concerns into a language that resonates with the fan community. Yet, as
the example of Julian’s video shows, this narrative frame may sometimes prove too
narrow, precluding some issues or potential participants.
Forming opinions, discussion and diversity
In online participatory cultures, a lot of the interaction occurs through online
discussion of a wide range of issues. In this section, we will see how the contexts created
within these groups can also enable political discussion (a theme we’ll further explore in
Chapter 6) and serve to help young people form their opinion. Here, I will also consider
questions of inclusion and exclusion within these groups, a theme I’ll continue to touch
on.
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One of the potential obstacles for young people to become involved civically and
politically has to do with the perceived demand to be knowledgeable—and opinionated—
on a wide variety of issues on the political agenda, based on idealized notions of the
“informed citizen.” When the young participants in this project were asked about their
willingness to engage in political discussions, they mentioned many potential barriers.
For example, young people may feel overwhelmed by the range of issues they are
“supposed to know about” and the many viewpoints there are to comprehend. Echoing
well-documented trends among youth (Buckingham, 2002), Tara expressed her distrust of
the news media:
There’s just too much and it’s overwhelming and you don’t know who to listen to
or what to pay attention to. The news nowadays is just garbage half the time
anyway. (Tara, 27, HPA)
Young people are also often turned off by political discussion when they feel
there is a one-sided attempt at persuasion:
I feel that's kind of why people engage in those discussions in the first place, is to
persuade somebody that they're right. I mean, I try to maintain that everybody has
an opinion and just because I don't agree with your opinion it doesn't mean it's
wrong. (…) But for political discussions, I don't actively seek them because I
always feel like I'm being pitched something, like I'm being pitched a different
viewpoint, and that's not something that I look for or enjoy. (Kim, 23, HPA)
The young people interviewed for this project echo many of the concerns that
help explain why a large percentage of young people can be considered as disengaged
from politics (Cohen & Kahne, 2012). Yet, the two case study groups also model ways to
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overcome these obstacles. Collectively, these groups identify specific issues deemed
important, and members work together to become more informed about those topics—a
more manageable task than knowing “all there is to know.” As Tara describes:
I think HPA has helped me a little bit with being aware of what's going on. It’s
actually like, “Oh, well this is important,” and then I read it and I'm like, “Okay.
Yeah, this is important to me.” (…) So that helps me realize, “Okay, this is not
important to me but this is” (Tara, 27, HPA).
To facilitate these processes of learning and becoming informed, both the HPA
and Nerdfighters have embraced norms of civil discourse and friendliness. Julie
contrasted the polite discussions amongst Nerdfighters to the mean-spirited comments
often made in the broader YouTube environment:
I mean, there’s obviously still a lot of arguing and things like that. People’s
viewpoints are so different, but there’s definitely a lot more discussion that’s civil.
(Julie, 17, Nerdfighters)
As we’ve seen in the first section, tapping shared cultural experiences helps members
identify the personal relevance of political issues that may seem distant:
I'm not saying that everyone my age is unaware of what happens in the world, but
most of them are not. So, when you already have something that’s there and
you're not saying, “Here, you must be informed about everything there is to know
about the world, of all the evils and stuff. And now, you have to do something
about it.” It's different than saying, “At Harry Potter, this happened and this is
happening now, too. You should probably do something” (Satya, 17, HPA).
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Issues that are consistently raised and discussed in the community can become issues of
personal importance to individual participants. For Mona, this was the case with the
elimination of the penny, an issue often raised in Vlogbrother videos:
I am 100% for getting rid of the penny and I believe very strongly in it. People
don’t understand how much money we waste on pennies and like how stupid it is
to have a penny… It’s just stupid. So that—yeah, that was brought to my attention
by Nerdfighteria. (Mona, 17, Nerdfighters)
Reflecting the notion of participatory politics as “not guided by deference to elites,”
(Cohen & Kahne, 2012, p. VI), Nerdfighters express a strong appreciation of the value of
discussing issues and making up their own opinions. Jo noted that simply adopting the
issues John and Hank see as important would be antithetical to the group’s values:
I think debating social issues is a good thing because if everyone just kind of
blindly followed everything Hank and John said, that would kind of—I don’t
think Hank and John would want that, first of all. I think it would just lead to
people liking or being in support of things they didn’t really know about or didn’t
really care about, or maybe even disagree with, but they would just do it because
the people that they follow are in support of it… But I feel like they [Hank and
John] encourage to make your own decisions, nothing’s forced. They always
encourage to research more on your own, like don't just take their word for it. Go
look at like YouTube where they got information from and things like that (Jo, 20,
Nerdfighters).
Some features of Vlogbrother videos facilitate this “research on your own”
approach. For instance, the video “I HATE PENNIES!!!!” (VlogBrothers, 2010,
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September 6) includes an on-screen message that links to further links and resources,
including the CPI inflation calculator and articles from the Washington Post and
Consumer Affairs. The VlogBrothers even use these features to correct themselves. For
example, as John details the cost of producing a penny in this video, a message indicates
that these figures are from 2008 and that producing coins became cheaper in 2009,
pointing viewers to more information in the “doobylydoo” (the text box under the video’s
“about” tab). There, the YouTuber Sivartis is thanked for the correction. Nerdfighteria
embraces the values of collective intelligence. In this model, discussed by Pierre Levy
(1999), voluntary knowledge communities can achieve the best outcomes when group
members pool knowledge and share expertise.
Figure 9. Screnshot of “I HATE PENNIES!!!!”– example of digging in the data

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The HPA also encourages members to investigate and form their own opinions. As
volunteer staff member Heather sees it:
I think that they're very good at like saying, “Make sure you look more into this.
Make sure you go to the CNN Freedom Project for more information about
starvation and wages and things like that.” (…) The HPA is supportive of making
sure that you are doing more research than what we're telling you (Heather, 26,
HPA).
Bethany described her conscious mode of engaging others as a volunteer HPA staff
member:
We [at the HPA] inform the people that we’re trying to help and that we’re trying
to get involved or engage, and inform them on a much more independent level.
Meaning, they have to seek out the information for themselves on some level,
versus slacktivism where the information, they pretty much hand it to you, and
you just hand the same information off. (Bethany, 20, HPA)
Bethany’s reference to “slacktivism” is telling. At the time the interviews were
conducted, many participants had just witnessed the controversy around the online film
Kony2012, produced by the non-profit organization Invisible Children
21
(IC) as part of
their campaign to capture African warlord Joseph Kony. The 30-minute film was widely
shared via social media, particularly by young people (Quilty-Harper, 2012), becoming
the fastest-spreading online video at the time with 112 million views in one week (Visible
Measures, 2012). While IC has been engaging young Americans for over nine years by
the time Kony2012 was released, the group had reached global exposure, overnight, upon

21
Invisible Children is one of the case studies for the MAPP team, and I have been
following this group and participating in researching them intermittently since 2011.
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the YouTube video’s immense spread. IC was widely criticized for their depiction of a
white savior narrative, the omission of important facts (e.g., that Joseph Kony is no
longer in Uganda and that his child army is currently much smaller), and allegations of
financial misconduct. Given these harsh critiques, many saw the whole campaign as a
“scam.” Moreover, those who had spread the film—particularly young people—were
blamed in mainstream media and in online discourse as dupes, who had not done
sufficient research before pressing “share” (Kligler-Vilenchik and Thorson, 2015).
Without being prompted, Kony2012 was mentioned by ten participants in this
project, out of 27 interviews conducted after its release. It was mentioned even in the last
interviews, more than five months after Kony2012, suggesting the controversy’s long-
lasting impact.
22
Participants almost always presented Kony2012 as a cautionary example
of young people taking action without being sufficiently informed.
For example, Theo, a 15 year-old Nerdfighter and HPA member, was interviewed
one week after the release of Kony2012. He had shared the movie to his social networks
and even signed up to a Facebook group page planning to help “cover the night” (hang
Kony posters all over cities to spread awareness). But Theo felt the immediate pushback
online. Only one week later, Theo said he felt like Kony2012 had become the “elephant
in the room” that had to be addressed at their next HPA chapter meeting:
I’m just going to say like yeah, we can support the cause because this guy [Kony]
is a really bad guy, just don’t start throwing your money at them [Invisible

22
The leadership of both groups also referred to Kony2012, adding to its visibility within
these communities. Whereas Andrew Slack of the HPA generally supported Invisible
Children, and particularly Jason Russell after his breakdown, the VlogBrothers took a
much more critical stance. See John Green’s Tumblr post:
http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com/post/18888907871/kony-2012
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Children] yet, because you need to know much more. And, a lot of people have
addressed this, that the problem may be over-exaggerated and all that, so we’re
just going to tell people like, don’t get too invested in it yet. (Theo, 15,
Nerdfighters/HPA)
This critique further solidified for participants as time passed. Interviewed a few
weeks after Kony2012’s release, Kevin referred to a popular meme critiquing IC’s
supporters:
There’s this meme that had a college kid sitting there and he’s smiling and then
on top it said, “Watch the YouTube video,” underneath it said, “Become a social
activist.” And that’s really what happened, these people they don’t understand
what they’re talking about. They didn’t investigate the issue at all (Kevin, 27,
HPA).
Often, interview participants discussed Kony2012 to differentiate their own
communities from Invisible Children. They explained that, unlike IC, their own
communities encouraged young people to research issues and form their own opinions
before acting:
The Invisible Children movement, it offers a paternalistic movement in some
ways that asks kids to follow this and do this and follow this. Whereas the HPA
and a lot of other fandom activism organizations, the way they engage you is
more of an empowerment to all. You’re asking people to think, you’re also asking
people to act and you’re asking people to become involved. (Bethany, 20, HPA).
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Nerdfighters felt that being connected to a community where people dig in deep, do
research, and pool their information helps protect them from “jumping on the
bandwagon”:
Like Kony 2012 for example, I think that a lot of Nerdfighters did a really good
job of looking into that issue a lot deeper than the general population did and
instead of (…) instead of jumping on the bandwagon, we did a little more
research, and they are like, this is not working the way it should (Mona, 17,
Nerdfighters).
We can see how the practices and norms cultivated in these groups on the level of
members’ cultural participation—including an appreciation of learning, tolerance to
difference of opinion, and civility—make the community a safe space where young
people feel comfortable to learn about political issues, to form their opinions, and to
pursue a form of civic collective intelligence, while also being able to confess ignorance
or confusion.
Yet while these groups often strive to be safe discussion spaces, the fact that
many discussions are held on commercial online platforms that are open to all means that
the actual audience may diverge from that imagined by participants, and conversations
are often not limited to those in the community. As mentioned before, the broader
audiences populating some of these platforms—and specifically YouTube—are often
everything but civil. In my interview with him, John Green explained how the
VlogBrothers take active steps to maintain a safe space for Nerdfighter conversations:
John Green: The other thing is to make the comment section of the website, of
wherever you are, to make it safe, as safe as you can. Obviously, you can't make
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anything completely safe but you know, we just don’t allow racism and we just
don’t allow homophobia or attacks on trans-people or any of that stuff.
Neta: Is that by actively deleting comments?
John Green: Yeah, and banning people who make them over and over again.
The truth is it’s very few people, but it’s very loud because you can't tell but you
want to rise to answer it. And that gives these people attention, which in turn
makes them feel like it was useful to have said these terrible things because they
got what they wanted out of it I guess. So yeah, I mean that's something that we
try to do. Again though, I mean when you're talking about—I don’t know, 30,000
comments a week, obviously you can't do it on everything. That's tough then.
Feeling safe is important as these youth express themselves politically. Yet, when
we consider Warren’s (2001) work on democratic effects, we can see that safe spaces
may also be counter-productive for the goal of developing political skills. Previous work
our team conducted on Invisible Children argued that the ability to anticipate and rebut
counter-arguments is a crucial civic practice. In encouraging civil and friendly
exchanges, and creating spaces that are safe and sheltered, groups characterized by
participatory culture practices are nurturing trust and a shared identity, but may also
avoid more contentious moments that would prepare members for a broader political
discussions (Kligler-Vilenchik & Shresthova, 2014).
Closely related to this is the question of diversity. A friendly, non-confrontational
exchange is often easier to support when groups are homogenous, yet both the HPA and
Nerdfighters ideally strive toward heterogeneity and a diversity of participants across
several axes. If we consider these groups as beneficial channels for young people to
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engage in participatory politics, we have to question their politics of access, and ask who
is and is not included. In the following, I’ll consider inclusion across partisan differences,
LGBTQ identities and race/ethnicity.
Demonstrated through their collective responses on issues like marriage equality
and immigration rights, both the HPA and Nerdfighters tend towards socially liberal
stances. Still, neither group is exclusively liberal, and many members mentioned having
conservative friends.
23
Out of the interviewees from both groups, two or three identified
as conservative, though this identity was not clear-cut. Kevin, a 27-year old HPA
member, explained:
I'm one of the few conservative people on the team if you want to label me. But I
don’t label myself a conservative. I have lost touch on both sides of that political
line. But the majority of [his HPA chapter and related quidditch team], whether
it’s because they are gay or because they are social activists or whatever it is, they
seem to fall very far onto the liberal side. (Kevin, 27, HPA)
At times, Kevin’s political views clashed with others in his local HPA chapter.
For example, he was not a supporter of the HPA campaign to pressure Warner Brothers
to make their Harry Potter-themed chocolate Fair Trade. He advocated for a free market
approach instead:
There is this old joke that goes, if Republicans don’t like guns, they don’t buy
them. If Democrats don’t like guns they try and ban it, and that goes for -- you
could insert anything in there. […] If Warner Brothers doesn’t want to use Fair

23
I use liberal vs. conservative (rather than Democrat vs. Republican) as these are the
terms participants usually used to describe themselves and others in the group.
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Trade chocolate and you don’t agree with that, don’t buy their stuff. (Kevin, 27,
HPA)
Taking a minority stance can be difficult, and Kevin decided to just “stay out” of the Fair
Trade campaign. He has, however, been vocal on other issues. Kim, a liberal member of
Kevin’s HPA chapter, raised her difference of opinion with Kevin spontaneously in her
interview, but characterized this diversity of perspectives as a strength:
I was talking with Kevin and somehow jobs and the economy came up. […] He is
socially liberal and economically conservative, and he believes that Reaganomics,
the trickle-down effect, is a valid possibility for the American workforce, and I
don't. That's fine, we're allowed to disagree. He mentioned it and I was like,
“Well, why do you believe that works better than making more government jobs
for people who are out of work, which is what Obama has been doing?” He
explained. He understands that yes, it's putting people into jobs that wouldn't
previously have had jobs, and he was able to explain the spending differences and
stuff like that, and even though I still disagree with the principle of what he was
saying, I was able to better understand the fundamentals of the idea behind it… It
doesn't necessarily mean that I agree with it entirely, which is fine, because that's
what a conversation is about, but I was able to learn from it and that was more
important than whether or not I agreed with him. (Kim, 23, HPA)
Kim and Kevin’s willingness to listen to each other despite their differing political views
constitutes the kind of public-spirited talk (Eliasoph, 1998) many scholars look for. For
Kevin, it is the HPA’s ability to combine shared activist goals with friendship that helps
bridge potential differences:
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You have to define friendship, like, why are you friends with this person? Are you
friends because they do the same activism as you and it stops there? Because if it
stops there, that’s not really friendship. Friendship [means] somebody who cares
about the other person, or is interested in the other person. And so with my more
conservative views and their more liberal views, our views actually aren’t that far
off from each other. And I think that our friendship lies in it, we are friends, and
we’re not going to let our political views or our particular views or whatever get
in the way of enjoying that person. (Kevin, 27, HPA)
Negotiating a partisan identification has been a challenge for HPA’s leadership. As a
501(c)3 nonprofit, the HPA cannot engage in political campaigning. Yet, Andrew Slack,
the founder of the HPA, openly endorses Democratic candidates on his own Facebook
page with this disclaimer:
NOTHING that I express on my Facebook page reflects the opinions of the Harry
Potter Alliance. These opinions and views - all of them - are mine and not that of
the HPA. If you want to know what the HPA thinks, please go to the HPA
Facebook page! It's awesome!
While Slack is very clear about the separation between his views and those of the
organization, some HPA members have expressed discomfort with his explicitly partisan
political statements.
The VlogBrothers contrast themselves with the HPA’s approach in terms of their
partisan identification. For them, the main goal is being inclusive and taking a “big tent”
approach. As John Green explained in interview:
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We try harder—and this is a very difficult thing to navigate—we try harder to not
be partisan, which is not something that the HPA really cares about. They only
care about what's right. We want to include people in the conversation. We don’t
want to remove people. We don’t want to push people out of the conversation
even if we really disagree with them. We want to find ways to listen and the HPA
just wants to get it done, like they want to do what's right, and I have a lot of
admiration for that model. But we want to try to be as big a tent as we can while
still standing for the stuff that, not just that we believe in, but the stuff that sort of,
in my opinion at least, is like inarguably correct. (John Green)
The ideal of inclusivity is explicitly stated by the VlogBrothers in their videos—
we’ve mentioned the assertion of “if you want to be a Nerdfighter—you are a
Nerdfighter.” A critical reading could point to the VlogBrothers’ potential economic
incentive in widening their audience; as YouTube partners and as entrepreneurs, they
benefit financially from higher numbers of views. An alternative argument, however, is
that the VlogBrothers’ motivation for inclusivity earnestly reflects their educational and
ideological goals. An indication for this reading is the group’s attempt to increase their
inclusivity among “hard to reach” populations such as different racial and ethnic groups,
as well as their clear stance on some issues, such as LGBTQ equality.
The ideal of inclusivity is also very present when members talk about the group.
Lucy, a 20-year old white Nerdfighter, explains that it’s the shared interests that bring
Nerdfighters together, and trump potential dividing points:
I really don’t see, like, it doesn’t really faze me when I realize that someone, “Oh!
Maybe they’re a little richer than me or they’re Conservatives or they are
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Hispanic or anything like that.” I mean everyone wants—we’re all kind of geared
towards the same interests. (Lucy, 20, Nerdfighters)
Likewise, Daniela (also white) talks about both HPA and Nerdfighters being open
and welcoming. She attributes this partially to the groups’ nature as online communities
where some “noticeable diversity things” get lost:
I’ve mentioned many times of both communities being open and welcoming, and
I think that the fact that they are mainly internet based communities that some,
like, more noticeable diversity things that you would see in person are kind of lost
through text communication online. (Daniela, 23, HPA)
In my field work, I made particular efforts to reach members of minority
populations. One of these was Mona, an American-Muslim Nerdfighter. I immediately
noticed Mona at a large Nerdfighter gathering as she was the only one there wearing a
hijab, a headcover. Yet Mona, who is very active in the Nerdfighter community, told me
in interview that she doesn’t talk much to other Nerdfighters about her religious identity,
and that “it doesn’t seem relevant.”
To think through some of these assertions, we can draw on the work of Lisa
Nakamura and her colleagues about race in digital spaces. These authors use the
metaphor of the binary switch to discuss the visibility of race online. Online, they claim,
the race switch is either completely on—usually in the form of angry debate and heated
“flame wars,” or it is completely off—invisible, unmarked and undiscussed. When the
race switch is off online, which is most of the time, this is mostly due to an assumption of
whiteness, in which visibly asserting oneself as a minority is seen as controversial, as
stirring up argument and dissent.
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The argument that race doesn’t matter online—the argument that some of the
(mostly white) group members raised—is often found in popular rhetoric. But as Kolko,
Nakamura & Rodman (2000) assert, the race relations that accompany us in real life
don’t stop at the door when we go online. As they claim, “race matters in cyberspace
precisely because all of us who spend time online are already shaped by the ways in
which race matters offline” (p. 4). Of course, the invisibility of race as a topic—
particularly for young people—happens not only online. Cathy Cohen (2011) talks about
millennials and the myth of the post-racial society. Common conceptions about the open-
mindedness of youth today, she says, bely deep divides that still exist, and black youth in
particular are “skeptical about the idea of a post-racial anything” (p. 189).
These divides are apparent when we look at the demographics of these groups.
While online groups are often notoriously hard to characterize in terms of their
demographic make-up, Nerdfighters offer the rare opportunity of having granular data
about its participants: the Vlogbrothers conduct a yearly “Nerdfighteria census.” In the
2014 census, over 100,000 Nerdfighters participated—a remarkable response. As this
census shows, Nerdfighters are mostly high-school and college age (60% of Nerdfighters
are between the ages of 16-22) and mostly American. Nerdfighters are predominantly
female – in the Nerdfighter census, 72% were female and 26% male. The community also
has a significant number of people identifying as genderqueer, gender fluid or
questioning. In terms of race and ethnicity, the group is highly skewed in relation to the
racial and ethnic makeup of young Americans: 85% identify as white, 6.5% as Latino,
3.5% as East Asian and only 1.6% as Black.
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As the Nerdfighter census shows, racial and ethnic diversity is not a strength (and
the situation seems similar for the HPA). While these groups define themselves as
completely inclusive, their membership is relatively homogenous, with a majority of
white and middle/upper class participants. At the same time, while the minority members
of these groups interviewed acknowledged seeing few people of their own ethnicities
within these communities—often being the only one (the only African-American, the
only Muslim, etc.), none of those interviewed mentioned any noticeable barriers to their
participation, and none said they had ever felt excluded or marginalized. In Chapter 5,
we’ll further examine how this homogeneity may relate in complex ways to shared
popular culture interests.
Both groups have a stronger track record as spaces where young people feel
comfortable expressing and negotiating various sexual and gender identities. While
sexual orientation is also an identity marker that may be “invisible” online, in these
communities it’s visibly discussed. Jacob, for example, says: “There’s a huge percentage,
I think, of Nerdfighters that are identified as LGBTQ.” While this perception is not
necessarily based on accurate data, it reflects a visibility and centrality that we didn’t see
around race and ethnicity.
Many Nerdfighters and HPA members said their views around LGBTQ rights
were strongly shaped by having LGBTQ-identifying members:
I learned so much from there because yes, I am supportive of LGBTQ quality, but
I don't even live in a community in which it’s so prevalent, in which there are a
lot of LGBTQ people. So, I wouldn’t even know that many people who are of
LGBTQ identity, unless I know them online. So, reading these articles, especially
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about people who are genderqueer, I didn't know anything about that and I think
that really helped shape my understanding of the world and that educated me.
(Satya, 17, HPA)
Meghan also talks about learning about different gender identities and sexual
orientations by following LGBTQ-identifying Nerdfighters on Tumblr:
Tumblr is the place that I gained probably most of my knowledge about different
gender identities and sexual orientations… I follow a lot of people who are open
about their identity and sexuality, that I hadn’t really had a chance to or really
been exposed to otherwise. (Meghan, 23, Nerdfighters)
For Sheila, a 15-year old Nerdfighter, LGBTQ rights are particularly close to her
heart, as her father came out as gay when she was two years old. Sheila is also engaged
with the Trevor Project, which addresses gay youth’s challenges around coming out,
experiencing bullying and preventing suicide. Sheila’s local Nerdfighter group started an
“LGBT branch”:
With my Nerdfighter group, we actually started an LGBT branch of it… So my
friend runs that and she’s trying to organize like monthly meetings just to discuss
things if you’re either supporters or experiencing it, so I went to a meeting and it
was basically people talking about their coming out stories or, if they hadn’t come
out yet, their stories of struggling or whatever. And it’s really interesting, because
like, yes, we’re young kids and we’re teenagers and most of us are not even old
enough to drive yet in that group, but like we know who we are (Sheila, 15,
Nerdfighters).
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Vera (16), also a member of this LGBT branch, felt more comfortable in the
Nerdfighter group than at her school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, where she felt that gay
youth are separated out:
I mean like because a lot of us are part of the LGBTQ spectrum, like we're all a
bit gay pretty much. So, it’s really nice to have that kind of community and like
that support and stuff… And so it’s just nice to be able to [ask], am I the only one
who feels this way? And it’s cool that there are people who feel the same way as
you do about certain issues.
Vera’s references to the “LGBTQ spectrum” imply a nuanced perception of
sexual and gender identity that goes beyond simple dichotomies of gay or straight, male
or female. In Nerdfighteria, this perspective was built bottom-up from the personal
experiences of youth participants and their discussions, particularly on the social network
of Tumblr, but it was also amplified by the VlogBrothers.
In the Vlogbrother video “Human sexuality is complicated…,” (2012, October
12) Hank Green explains that “all dichotomies are false dichotomies: gender identity, as
well as sexual orientation and gender roles, are not binaries but rather a spectrum.” Green
mentions a new concept he learned about “on Tumblr, yesterday”—“romantic
orientation”: the question of who a person is inclined to form romantic, as opposed to
sexual, relationships with. What’s really important, Hank says, is “that we trust ourselves,
and we understand ourselves, and we love and respect ourselves, and that we grant that
same understanding and respect to the people around us.”

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Figure 10. “Human Sexuality is Complicated” – Vlogbrother video about gender and
sexual identity

On his “unfiltered backchannel” on YouTube, Hank shared that he was quite worried
about making this video (Hankschannel, 2012, October 11). He admitted he wanted to do
such a video for ages, but that it’s “scary, dangerous ground” because of people’s strong
reactions. In his interview, though, John Green identified this video as a particular
success:
It was a great video and it also welcomed lots and lots of trans-people into our
community who I think otherwise, you know, might never have discovered our
community, also a lot of people of color who are in the LGBT community really
enjoyed that video and felt like it was something that was made by a good ally,
for lack of a better term. And I think that made them feel welcome in
Nerdfighteria. (John Green)
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When the Vlogbrothers devote videos to this issue, it both amplifies LGBTQ
members’ voices, and further sanctions the issue as one that can be legitimately discussed
in the community.
For the HPA, being active around LGBTQ equality is seen as grounded in the
Harry Potter narratives. In March 2013, around the time of the Supreme Court’s hearings
around same-sex marriage, the HPA released a statement on marriage equality, authored
by Andrew Slack and addressed to “fellow members of the heterosexual community”:
While there are many Harry Potter fans against equal marriage who have asked us
to look at “both sides” of the argument, as if an argument had only two sides and
that was it, I’d prefer it if you and I together could look at our privilege for being
heterosexual in this society.
Straight people, Slack argues in this statement, do not confront the challenges of
coming out, do not suffer discrimination and even death threats for their sexuality, and
can take for granted basic rights such as the ability to marry the person you love. Typical
for the HPA, these issues were then connected back to the Harry Potter content world:
Let us instead look at each other as equals and learn from each other and take the
lessons that we have learned from Harry Potter about the power of love, to heart.
Harry Potter’s eleven years living in a cupboard for his identity as a Wizard
reminds us that no one should have to live inside of a closet for their identity.
Dumbledore, and we as readers, understand with great sympathy those like
Hagrid a half-giant and Lupin a werewolf, struggling to live in the closet because
of their identity. Dumbledore allows for them to come to Hogwarts despite the
objections of those who know of their identities – in the HPA we have spent years
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working to create an environment where those still living in and out of the closet
because of their sexual orientation will not be legally subjected to existential
intolerance and irrational prejudice.
Evoking the books helped the HPA to position LGBTQ equality as a basic right
rather than a political controversy.
To conclude, in this section we saw how the norms and practices of discussion
these groups cultivate on the cultural level can support members’ learning about issues
and forming of opinions around civic and political issues. When the community norms
are ones that appreciate learning, that tolerate difference of opinion, and that are civil and
friendly, the groups can create safe spaces for the cultivation of civic identities. At the
same time, from the perspective of enabling democratic effects (Warren, 2001), safe
spaces may not always be what we strive for. Safe spaces may mean that participants do
not learn how to defend their views against others with a more critical stance, as we
mentioned in relation to Invisible Children. Safe spaces may also be (even inadvertently)
more closed spaces in terms of the participants welcomed at the table. In this context, the
groups have been more successful with welcoming members of LGBTQ identities, than
around racial/ethnic diversity.
Conclusion: The wider applicability of mechanisms of translation
Participatory cultures are recognized as spaces for learning, creativity, and as
gateway opportunities for civic engagement (Jenkins et al., 2006; Ito et al., 2013). A large
body of work looks for the potential that spaces of engagement with popular culture hold
towards political goals (e.g. van Zoonen, 2004, 2005; Wojcieszak & Mutz, 2009).
However, this chapter shows that the transition from the cultural to the civic and political
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realms isn’t automatic, and is not always seamless. Models that assume that popular
culture spaces “breed” civic outcomes ignore the ‘transfer’ that needs to happen, in the
form of consequential connections between different spheres of engagement (Ito et al.,
2015). Mechanisms of translation alert us to the ways that the spaces, practices, and
language that young people use on the cultural level can be harnessed toward civic and
political participation—though the translation metaphor also helps us to recognize
moments where the connection breaks down.
This chapter identified three “mechanisms of translation” that aid these groups in
translating cultural connections into participatory politics: tapping content worlds and
communities, creative production, and forming opinions and discussion. First let’s
evaluate how these different mechanisms lead to outcomes representing participatory
politics—particularly mobilization, exerting voice, and developing civic identities—in
each of the groups (see Table 3).
Tapping content worlds and communities.
The HPA is organized around fans’ connections to a specific fictional narrative
which provides a shared reference point for engaging with real world concerns. These
parallels are employed by the leadership and by specific members, building on existing
fan practices. The HPA also successfully taps the fandom’s existing infrastructures (such
as conventions, quidditch leagues, Wizard Rock concerts, blogs, podcasts, and fan fiction
sites). These mechanisms help the group achieve participatory political outcomes,
including development of civic identities (e.g. feeling the world of Harry Potter helps
elucidate real-world concerns) and mobilization to specific actions (e.g. registering voters
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in Wizard rock concerts). On the other hand, such content world connections may limit
the group’s reach, a point we’ll further discuss in the next chapter.
For most members, Nerdfighteria is mostly understood as a social space—a
friendship- and interest-driven network (Ito et al., 2009). At the same time, the
VlogBrothers deploy many of their videos to alert and educate members about current
events and to articulate the common goal of “decreasing world suck.” Moreover,
Nerdfighters build on the infrastructures of their large community to mobilize toward
civic goals. These practices help participants to develop civic identities, and result in
successful short-term mobilizations, such as raising money for charities or creating videos
about non-profit organizations for Project 4 Awesome.
Creative Production.
The VlogBrothers model an approach that links between creative production for
entertainment purposes and that also intelligently discusses key civic and political issues.
Nerdfighteria encourages young people to create their own videos and addresses some
challenges young people often face when attempting to produce and spread their own
content (such as the audience problem). At the same time, there are challenges in using
spaces and genres designed for entertainment to express contentious political views, as in
the example of the evaporation of politics for Ruth, or Inez and the peanut butter. Thus,
the potential for political expression through Nerdfighters’ own creative production is not
always realized, or in some cases, results in political expression that is illegible to those
outside the group.
The HPA also inspires a range of creative production, including writing blogs and
producing audio podcasts which often explicitly tie cultural and political issues. The
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HPA, however, tends to be more centralized in their production, and their output may
reach much more limited audiences. In an attempt to reach wider audiences and give new
faces to the movement, the HPA has launched their vlog channel. Here, the challenge is
how to translate the non-profit’s civic goals with YouTube’s cultural language. Some of
HPA’s most successful videos connect political issues to fannish concerns, though this
narrative frame may also limit a wider discussion of political issues. The HPA thus
encourages political expression through its creative production, but struggles with
reaching wider audiences for their message. Moreover, while civic identities are
developed in powerful ways, the practice of production is not as widespread as for the
Nerdfighters.
Forming opinions and discussion.
Young people often feel that engaging in politics requires a level of knowledge
and understanding that sometimes feels unattainable. The HPA and Nerdfighters
overcome some of these challenges, yet struggle with others. Both groups help young
people develop their civic identities by identifying and learning more about political
issues. This also encourages political expression, though sometimes creating safe spaces
for participants means that participants do not receive sufficient training in defending
their viewpoint in the face of dissent. Diversity is a challenge for both groups in terms of
racial/ethnic makeup, but the groups’ successful inclusion of people with various LGBTQ
identities offers a possible model on how to make participants of differing identities feel
welcome.

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Table 3. Mechanisms of translation facilitating participatory politics outcomes

Mechanism of
translation
Participatory
Politics Outcomes
Group Evaluation of ability to
facilitate outcome
24

Tapping
content worlds
and
communities
Developing Civic
identity
HPA Strong – Content world helps
make sense of issues
Nerdfighters Moderate – VlogBrothers
raise civic issues, goal of
decreasing world suck
Mobilization

HPA Moderate – Specific content
world may limit potential
reach
Nerdfighters Strong – Successful short term
mobilizations to online action
Creative
production
Developing Civic
identity
HPA Moderate – Fewer members
engage in production, but
strong impact for those who
do
Nerdfighters Moderate – Many engage in
production, but challenge to
translate into politics
Political Expression

HPA Strong – Clear political goals,
challenge in translating to
cultural language
Nerdfighters Moderate – Sense that their
creative production is not the
“right venue” for political
expression
Forming
opinions,
discussion and
diversity
Developing Civic
identity
HPA Strong – Helps make sense of
issues and become informed
Nerdfighters Strong – Helps make sense of
issues and become informed
Political Discussion HPA Strong – Creating space where
political discussion is deemed
appropriate
Nerdfighters Moderate – Value civil
discussion but may limit it to
avoid exclusion

24
This is considered in aggregate, on the level of the group. It may, of course, differ
across individuals.
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This analysis shows that even when mechanisms of translation exist, they are not
always applicable to all participants, nor will they lead to all types of engagement and
action. Some mechanisms may be more suitable than others towards particular outcomes,
and when evaluating them, it is important to indicate which civic outcomes we’re seeking
(Warren, 2001). Moreover, we must keep in mind that we never see a one-directional
“transition” from cultural participation to political participation; rather, we see a careful
negotiation to preserve the balance between the two, within which cultural participation
is valued in its own right (Ito et al., 2015).
Considering these mechanisms may also help us to develop some generalizations
for other participatory culture groups. We can begin to examine these questions with one
comparison case, such as the efforts of fans of the animated series Avatar: The Last
Airbender (Lopez, 2012). When this series was turned into a movie, fans were outraged
that Asian characters from the show were supposed to be cast by white actors. The fans
not only organized collectively to protest and boycott the film, but also educated
themselves on the history of whitewashing, employed a strategy of comment-bombing to
publicize their concerns, and even continued to engage politically around white-casting,
beyond The Last Airbender.
The groups discussed in this chapter resemble fans of The Last Airbender in that
these are groups that that come together around shared cultural interests and, through that
shared ground, come to engage civically. In their process of turning into “fan activists” (a
concept we’ll further discuss in Chapter 5), fans of The Last Airbender can also be
characterized as engaging mechanisms of translation. One such mechanism was tapping
the content world and community, as when the leaders of the protest mobilized the
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community of fans built on existing infrastructures such as LiveJournal, and pooled their
resources to gain new information on the casting process. Another mechanism was
forming opinions and discussion: fans engaged in discussions that built on the content
world of The Last Airbender, but connected it to politically relevant questions of
representation and authenticity. Fans of The Last Airbender did not, however, particularly
engage in creative production as part of furthering their political goals. As creating videos
was not part of their repertoire of fan practices prior to their politicizing efforts, this was
not a path they chose when pursuing political goals either. Instead, the group brought
their political engagement into one of their prominent fan practices—cosplay (dressing
up in costume to perform characters from the show, see Lamerichs, 2011)—when they
maintained that this playful engagement with representation does not consist
whitewashing, as it is not a form of discrimination with economic repercussions.
The comparison of Nerdfighters and HPA with The Last Airbender fan-activists
suggests that, when looking across different fan communities that engage in civic and
political efforts, we will consistently expect to find mechanisms of translation in play,
though the precise mechanisms will differ from group to group, based on the cultural
practices prevalent in that group. Identifying the mechanisms of translation in play for
various groups may help educators and organizers attempting to mobilize group
participants to best harness existing cultural practices toward civic goals.
In this way, considering mechanisms of translation contributes to wider theory
building on the relation between participation on cultural and political levels. Moreover,
the concept is potentially applicable not only to members of participatory cultures—after
all, a minority—but also to the wider ways young people can link their participation in
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social and cultural spaces to civic and political participation—a direction we’ll further
consider in the conclusion of this project.
Earlier in this chapter, we considered the applicability of the notion of transfer to
the realms of civic engagement. As colleagues and I have argued (Ito et al., 2015), we can
think of transfer in relation to civic engagement in two ways: the first considers how in-
school learning of civics is applicable to out-of-school civic action, and the second asks
how popular culture spaces can further participatory civics. While this chapter has
focused mostly on the latter, the findings are highly relevant to the first notion, as well.
The forms of civic and political participation we have witnessed in this chapter, and will
continue to see across the dissertation project, can be characterized as alternative in that
they look and feel different than the kind of “good engagement” young people learn in
their civics classes. Many of these differences emerge because these forms of
participation are rooted in the kinds of practices young people are already engaging in on
the cultural level within these groups. The young people enact these forms of engagement
not because they learned them in school, but based on what they’ve learned from their
peers and through their cultural engagement. I would argue that around alternative
citizenship models, we may encounter a problem of opposite transfer—young people
who are engaging in alternative kinds of action online, may not be equipped to recognize
that action as ‘civic’ or ‘political’ based on narrow definitions learned in educational
settings. As we continue this project, we’ll further consider the need to widen our
understandings of possible repertoires of action. In the next chapter, we will further
investigate connections between cultural interest and participatory politics by digging
into two concepts—fan activism and the employment of content worlds.
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CHAPTER FIVE: FAN ACTIVISM AND CONTENT WORLDS
25

In the previous chapter, we discussed the mechanisms of translation through
which the same practices members engage with on the cultural level can be scaffolded
toward civic and political participation. Yet the very connection between popular culture
and participatory politics may seem to many surprising, even contradictory. In this
chapter we will dig in further into the nature of this connection by focusing on these
groups’ characteristic as a certain kind of participatory culture—as fan communities. This
chapter explores how the HPA, Nerdfighters and Imagine Better deploy popular culture
engagement toward political ends, describing the intersections—and possible
paradoxes—between fan communities and participatory politics. I will further dig in to
how these groups use fictional narratives and imaginary worlds in order to make sense of,
relate to, and act upon issues in our real world; while also considering ways in which
these practices are applied and adopted beyond the context of fan communities. Using the
concepts fan activism and content worlds, this chapter seeks to further understand the
model of engaging young people through popular culture as a form of alternative
citizenship.
Fan activism – Fan Enthusiasm Gone Civic
We’ve mentioned in Chapter 2 the argument made by Robert Putnam (2000),
voicing concern about the decline of civic associations as sites for the cultivation of
social capital, and citing the community bowling leagues of the 1950s as his emblematic
example. Putnam’s claims spurred more than a decade’s worth of scholarly and public

25
A version of this chapter will be published in the forthcoming book By Any Media
Necessary (Jenkins et al., forthcoming) under the title “Decreasing world suck:
Harnessing popular culture towards fan activism.”
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conversations around the forms of social bonds that might restore civic engagement.
While Bowling Alone paints a complex picture, citing economic distress, long daily
commutes, and generational change as possible culprits for an alleged civic decline,
Putnam places much of the blame (about 25% of it, to be precise) on media consumption,
and specifically on television. Putnam asks in some of his earlier work (1995, p. 678),
“how might television destroy social capital?.”
The groups discussed in this project make an opposite claim, representing ways in
which popular culture, rather than leading to a disengagement from public life, is used as
a resource around which young people may find connections to civic and political worlds.
In the previous chapter, we considered the properties of these groups as participatory
cultures. Here, we will focus on the groups as a particular kind of participatory culture—
as fan communities, which are by their nature social collectives. Putnam understands
television viewing as an individual experience, seeing time spent with entertainment
content as time away from social experiences. But, just like bowling leagues were above
all a way to bring people together, to use common activities to create a context where a
range of other conversations and actions could take place, fan communities perform
similar functions, with the added value that they provide shared mythologies—in the
form of content worlds—that represent potential bridges between participatory culture
and participatory politics.
Fan communities have long been early adopters of various tools and platforms,
which they use for purposes of creative production and circulation (Jenkins, Ford, and
Green 2013). Similarly, they have been on the fore-front of experimenting with the
connections between popular culture and civic engagement. Building on conversations
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within our Civic Paths team at USC, we have come to term this engagement as “fan
activism":
Forms of civic engagement and political participation that emerge from within fan
culture itself, often in response to the shared interests of fans, often conducted
through the infrastructure of existing fan practices and relationships, and often
framed through metaphors drawn from popular and participatory culture.
(Jenkins, 2012)
As the definition points out, similar to participatory politics, “fan activism” is
used to refer both to political participation, as well as to forms of more consensual civic
engagement, including charity. Fan activism is a way to harness the deep emotional and
cognitive enthusiasm many people have for popular culture toward engagement with real-
world issues. As we’ve seen in Chapter 2, many young people are renegotiating their
relationship with the traditional political process, often seen as ineffective, out-of-touch,
or—ironically—uncivil (see, e.g., Zuckerman 2013). Fan activism is a means to connect
and mobilize some young people toward collective concerns by building on the spaces
where they already gather, talk, imagine, debate and engage with each other.
The three case studies document fan activism as a practice, but also raise
questions about this concept’s boundaries, its strengths and limitations. How is fan
activism grounded in fan practice, and how does it extend it? When and how are practices
of fan activism adopted beyond the realm of fans? Does fan activism have the capacity to
shift how a broader public imagines the process of political change? To answer these
questions, I elaborate on the concept of fan activism, chart its roots and progression, and
describe it as a continuum between two modes: fannish civics, allowing devoted fans to
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connect their deep knowledge of a beloved text to social concerns, and cultural
acupuncture, building on sometimes more superficial references to resonant popular
culture texts to gain widespread public attention for issues.
Pre-figuring fan activism
The teenage girl fan of Madonna who fantasizes her own empowerment can
translate this fantasy into behavior, and can act in a more empowered way
socially, thus winning more social territory for herself. When she meets others
who share her fantasies and freedom there is the beginning of a sense of
solidarity, of a shared resistance, that can support and encourage progressive
action on the microsocial level. (Fiske 1989a/2011, 136)
In his description of the Madonna fan from the late 1980s, John Fiske describes a
trajectory from pop culture consumption to potential political action. The young fan’s
engagement with the text starts individually, when her recognition of Madonna as an
empowered woman inspires her own sense of empowerment. The next step is sub-
cultural participation: the fan meets others who share her fantasies and freedom,
developing a sense of shared solidarity and shared resistance. This collective identity, in
turn, is hypothesized to “support and encourage progressive action on the microsocial
level” (Fiske 1989b/2011, 104), the level of politics of everyday life.
Fiske’s suggestions were controversial at the time, often cited as relying on an
inflated sense of “semiotic democracy,” but based on current examples of fan activism,
we may ask if Fiske didn’t take his notion far enough: Fiske never envisioned that fan
identities could give birth to collective action on the macropolitical level, the politics of
societies. When HPA members, for example, connect JK Rowling’s “outing” of
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Dumbledore as gay to participation in phone-banking to promote marriage equality laws,
that is clearly an example of macropolitical fan action. At the time, however, Fiske’s
claims were met with overwhelming resistance, as he was criticized for substituting the
sphere of material politics with meaning-making (McGuigan 1992). Self-empowered
social behavior, critics argued, does not equal political action. Moreover, Fiske was
criticized for not being able to give empirical grounding for the trajectories he was
theorizing. Fiske struggled to find evidence for the connections between fandom and
social awareness, pulling from the burgeoning work of media ethnographers and claiming
that “the products of this tactical consumption are difficult to study—they have no place,
only the space of their moments of being” (Fiske 1989a/2011, 35). He believed that
popular culture was inspiring political thought and action constantly—but in the confides
of people’s private conversations, their interactions in front of the home television set,
and in their own consciousness, none of which were subject to outside observation.
Today’s new media environment, on the other hand, brings many of these once-
hidden meaning-making processes into much greater visibility. In the context of an
increasingly participatory culture, fans and other audience members publicly express
their interpretations of cultural texts online, circulating their subcultural creations to
friends and family through social networking sites. As online culture has brought fan
communities further into the mainstream, making them more accessible to wider
audiences, it also provides tools and platforms where fans can forge connections between
their cultural passions and engagement in social issues.
As Michael Saler notes in As if: Modern enchantment and the literary prehistory
of virtual reality (2012), fans have drawn connections between fictional worlds and real-
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world issues since the beginning of fan discussions. Saler examines early 20
th
century
genre authors, such as Arthur Conan Doyle, J.R. Tolkien, and H.P. Lovecraft, whose
followings paved the way for the emergence of modern fan culture. He describes how
these early fans conversed through letter pages of pulp magazines, or in direct
correspondence with each other, allowing them to playfully but collectively inhabit the
imaginary worlds that inspired their passions and curiosity. Saler terms these
conversations public spheres of the imagination, spaces where people came together to
discuss ideas, hopes, dreams, and fears, by mapping them onto shared fictions. These
imaginary worlds proved to be strong touchstones for the real world, precisely because
they were so evocative. Imaginary worlds enabled fans to experience strong sensations
and identifications which could open their minds to new experiences beyond their
everyday life worlds. Yet these works’ fictional status generally allowed participants to
avoid the exclusiveness, fervor or violence that marks, for example, nationally-based
affiliations. Instead, fans of different faiths conversed with each other, creating a public
sphere that’s more heterogeneous than found in many other social contexts.
The function of fan affinities for bridging differences surfaced often in this
research, and represents one of the strengths of fan communities as a productive space for
participatory politics. In the previous chapter we encountered the example of Kim and
Kevin and their connection through the HPA, despite partisan differences. Nerdfighters
also described how their shared identity as fans creates an environment where
heterogeneous discussion and disagreement can be achieved in a civil manner. Jacob
talked about having discussions with people he disagrees with, either because of their
strong religious or political views, and how Nerdfighteria enables these conversations:
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Nerdfighters are very -- we're very passionate about things but we're also very
respecting of other people’s opinions... I think most of the Nerdfighters if they're
approached by somebody who disagrees with them, they would be able to respond
in a more rational way… Most of the Nerdfighters seem to react in an intelligent
discussion as opposed to insults. (Jacob, Nerdfighters, 19)
As Saler’s historical examples suggest, connecting fictional worlds with real-
world issues is not a new phenomenon. Andrew Ross (1991) describes science fiction fan
organizations from the 1930s and 1940s which served as spaces to debate radical political
ideas. Helen Merrick (2009) explores the creation of a feminist science fiction culture
going back to the 1960s. Contemporary fan studies has likewise paid quite a bit of
attention to ways that fans discuss gender (e.g. Wills 2013), race (e.g. Gatson and Reid
2012), sexuality (e.g. Hunting 2012), and other politically relevant issues, through their
favorite texts. However, these political connections were usually aimed towards
expression, education and conscience-raising—they generally did not lead fans to “march
out in the streets” in pursuit of activist goals. Groups like the HPA, Imagine Better and
Nerdfighters differ from those earlier examples, in that civic goals are explicit, and
connections between fictional and real-world issues are used to motivate real-world
action.
Fans have also historically organized to protect their collective interests as fans,
defending their cultural productions from claims of copyright infringement or other forms
of censorship, rallying to keep favorite programs on the air, and these actions have
provided templates for other activist efforts, helping them to learn how to identify targets,
develop tactics, educate and mobilize supporters, in ways that could be directed towards
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real world causes. Such efforts may already be civic insofar as we think of efforts to
shape the cultural environment--such as promoting funding for the arts or protecting a
local landmark from demolition--as civic causes, but the kinds of fan activism we are
discussing here use these skills and infrastructures towards more explicitly political goals.
In this sense, fandom may represent a powerful training ground for future activists and
community organizers, as well as a current locus for action.
In 2012, members of the Civic Paths group at USC edited a special issue of the
Journal of Transformative Works & Culture dedicated to fan activism, which elicited
dozens of examples of fan activism from around the world. The special issue features a
diverse set of case studies, ranging from fans of The Colbert Report engaging in
collective action initiated by the political satirist (Schulzke, 2012) to the engagement of
Korean popular music (K-pop) fans in fundraising and volunteering (Jung, 2012). The
range of submissions underscored the resonance of the concept of fan activism and
motivated a continued elaboration of it.
Most of the examples of fan activism discussed so far focus on members of
fandoms. Yet, as Gray, Sandvoss & Harrington (2007) claim, our current media moment,
characterized by increasing technological possibilities to engage in fan activities, has
contributed to “the increasing entrenchment of fan consumption in the structure of our
everyday life” (8). Consequently, it may be helpful to consider the wider spectrum, from
those engaging in “emotionally involved consumption of a given popular narrative or
text” (Sandvoss 2005, p. 8) to the participants in complex, organized social communities
of fans. Some of the challenges faced by the case study groups involve whether or not to
broaden their target audience beyond the fan community to a wider public--a question I
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will address through the proposed distinction between two modes of fan activism: fannish
civics and cultural acupuncture.
Fan Activism as a Continuum: From Fannish Civics to Cultural Acupuncture
In the previous chapter, we saw many examples of the HPA mobilizing young
people to action through their connection to the Harry Potter fan community and content
world. We can understand these actions as a type of fan activism, which I would call
fannish civics—participatory political practices that directly build on fannish practices.
Fannish practices are activities conducted by members of fan communities in
relation to their object of affection, either collectively or on their own. The term fannish
comes from fans themselves to refer to practices of their community. Some well-
researched fannish practices include writing fan fiction (e.g. Busse and Hellekson 2006),
creating fan art, vidding (e.g. Coppa 2008), engaging in fan discussions and more.
Benjamin Woo (2012, 183) characterizes fannish practices as ones which involve forms
of criticism and connoisseurship, and which are charged with affection, pleasure, and
commitment or loyalty.
The HPA is strongly grounded in the fannish experiences of many of its members,
as part of Harry Potter fandom. Emerging alongside the popular embrace of the Web,
Harry Potter fandom has developed new media platforms and practices (Scott, 2010). The
community was among the first to use podcasting and blogs, to develop beta reading
practices to improve fan fiction, to distribute mp3 files (such as those of Wizard Rock)
through social networking sites, and to use machinima production practices to construct
fan vids. Through these practices, fans experience their fictional worlds in new ways,
while sharing them with like-minded others.
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Engaging in fannish civics is for some another manifestation of their fan
enthusiasm. For example, some members’ entry into the HPA was directly connected to
the void that was left when Rowling stopped writing new books and Warner Brothers
completed its series of screen adaptations. HPA member Kathy explained:
I was so invested in these characters… when the books were finally over, there
was nothing to do, I couldn’t give that up yet. I wasn’t ready. So, I joined this
community [the HPA] that was also just as invested and wanted to really use that
investment towards good things. I was like, good, I can be part of this at least. It
was still Harry Potter. (Kathy, HPA)
Fannish civics is strongly rooted within practices of a pre-existing fan community, which
includes not only a connection to a primary text, but a strong social bond. Stephen
Duncombe (2012) stresses community building as one of the practices of fandom that
most facilitates its connection to political activism. Indeed, as we also saw in the previous
chapter, one of the most common themes in all interviews was the centrality of the “sense
of community” (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2012)—the connections and friendships forged
between participants, precisely the values that Putnam said were cemented for previous
generations through their involvement in various civic associations.
Fannish civics succeeds most when it taps fannish practices that fans already
enjoy doing, such as talking about the books and films, dissecting the characters, and
imagining alternative scenarios, as well as when it builds on the strong social bonds
between members. At the same time, these characteristics mean that the main audience
for fannish civics are fans with deep levels of engagement, and those who are already
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embedded within a fan community. If the goal is to encourage participatory politics
among broader populations of young people, fannish civics can only go so far.
We can distinguish fannish civics from another mode of fan activism--that of
cultural acupuncture. Recognizing that the news media was more apt to cover the launch
of the next Harry Potter film than the genocide in Darfur, the HPA took an approach of
identifying key cultural “pressure points”—entertainment-related events that attract
public attention—and redirecting their energy toward real-world problems. Pinning
political and social causes to Harry Potter works not just with fans. It works because this
content world has a large following, is familiar to an even larger number of people, has
its own built-in mechanisms for generating publicity, and is apt to attract many
subsequent waves of media interest. Harry Potter constitutes a form of cultural currency
that can carry the group's messages to many who would not otherwise hear them and that
channels emotional investments. Cultural acupuncture can work, for example, through
grassroots production of new paratexts, such as fan videos, which divert the publicity
around blockbuster releases to a range of other causes.
The term cultural acupuncture was introduced by Andrew Slack to describe his
broader model of change:
Finding where the psychological energy is in the culture, and moving that energy
towards creating a healthier world…We activists may not have the same money
as Nike and McDonald's but we have a message that actually means
something…What we do not have is the luxury of keeping the issues we cover
seemingly boring, technocratic, and inaccessible. With cultural acupuncture, we
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will usher in an era of activism that is fun, imaginative, and sexy, yet truly
effective (Slack, 2010).
Slack came up with his model of “cultural acupuncture” back when the group was
working with Harry Potter as the sole text of reference. However, over time the real
testing ground for cultural acupuncture became the Imagine Better network.
As described in Chapter 3, Imagine Better was originally conceived as a way to
preempt a predicted demise of the Harry Potter fan community, with the idea of applying
the approach that has proven successful for the HPA to other fictional texts and
collaborations with other fandoms. While much of the HPA’s work constitutes fannish
civics, their work with Imagine Better has been experimenting with more use of cultural
acupuncture, marking a move from a focus on pre-existing fan communities to an
emphasis on reaching a broader public.
To further understand fannish civics and cultural acupuncture as different modes
of fan activism, I’ll examine two large-scale national campaigns that Imagine Better
conducted around the release of the first two movies in The Hunger Games series.
Whereas the first campaign uses fannish civics, the second moves further on the
continuum towards cultural acupuncture.
Hunger is Not a Game: A Lesson in Extending Fannish Civics
The Hunger is Not a Game campaign, launched around the release of the movie
The Hunger Games
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(2012), based on the bestselling novel series by Suzanne Collins,
was Imagine Better’s first effort to reach beyond the Harry Potter content world. The

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The Hunger Games series is set in the dystopian nation of Panem, where a wealthy
Capitol region thrives through its rule of 12 impoverished districts. The series follows the
protagonist Katniss Everdeen of District 12.
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campaign sought to connect the release of the movie to the cause of world hunger. As in
many of its previous campaigns, the HPA partnered with an established nonprofit
organization—Oxfam—which brought to the table its on-the-ground experience. Through
this partnership, the planned campaign included food donations, fundraising, awareness
raising and taking action to address systemic causes of world hunger.
Based on the HPA’s previous experiences, the campaign was designed as what I
have termed fannish civics, meaning its imagined audience consisted of dedicated Hunger
Games fans. While many HPA members identified as Hunger Games fans, they were not
necessarily actively involved in the Hunger Games fan community. Thus an early step in
the campaign’s planning was reaching out to members within Hunger Games fandom,
including several key fan websites, and eliciting their cooperation. Slack was hosted on a
popular Hunger Games podcast and even the name for the campaign was proposed by a
Hunger Games fan. Following the model of fannish civics, the campaign attempted to
reach these fans through spaces where they were already engaged.
However, if I’ve argued that fannish civics works best when it rewards fan
mastery, it is not clear that “Hunger is Not a Game” met this standard. The campaign’s
broad references to the movie and its themes did not build on fans’ deep engagement with
the text. Despite the attempts to involve those within Hunger Games fandom, Madison, a
Hunger Games fan who collaborated with Imagine Better, felt that the campaign only
resonated with some segments:
There is a group who thinks about these things and who understands sort of the
deeper underlying message of the book and who want to take that and use it to do
some good. But then, you have the fans who like the love triangle. They like the
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fact that she [Katniss, the protagonist] uses a bow and arrow and they don’t really
think any deeper than that. And I would love to be able to do more to sort of
make these people think more about the subtext and stuff, but I know that it’s
difficult. I think a lot of that has to come with age and maturity. So I'm hoping in
the future, we can do more to reach that segment of the fandom (Madison, 29,
Hunger Games fan and collaborator with Imagine Better).
Madison’s description of some Hunger Games fans’ reservations around fannish civics
should not be too surprising. In fact, when the HPA was launched within Harry Potter
fandom in 2005 it was met with much skepticism from those who believed that real-
world politics detract from the magic of the Wizarding World. Andrew Slack was seen by
some as an outside agitator, trying to manipulate the fan community for his own agenda.
Over time, however, Slack demonstrated his own mastery of the text, and thus his status
as a fan, an insider. As Slack (in Jenkins, 2009) explained:
One of the reasons why I was successful in beginning the Harry Potter Alliance is
because I’m such a hardcore Harry Potter fan. Had I not been such a passionate
Harry Potter fan, had I not been caring about this myth so much myself, I
wouldn’t have been able to translate the message as well.
Jenni, an HPA chapter organizer, shares her memory of seeing Slack’s well-worn
copies of the series’ books—evidence of his fan mastery:
Andrew is definitely much better at making links and metaphors between real
world issues and the events of the novels, he is great with coming up with very
specific links. He has very banged up and marked-up copies of the books. Most of
it is in his head, he recalls a lot of stuff on the spot which is unbelievable and for
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which I applaud him. I have good recall but not as good as him, or maybe I don’t
reread the books as often as he does. (Jenni, HPA)
On the other hand, when Imagine Better started the Hunger is Not a Game
campaign, it was clear that the organizers were not “insider” fans—at least not to the
same extent. In the aftermath of the campaign, Slack shares with his over 3000 Facebook
followers:
Just talked with a reporter who asked me what I thought of Katniss being cast as
someone who is white - when in fact, Katniss is mixed race. So maybe I was
projecting my white privilege or something on to this, but I had always thought
that Jennifer Lawrence's complexion matched Katniss pretty well to what I had
imagined. Is Katniss, in fact, mixed race? This is what I get for only reading the
books a handful of times instead of being able to recite them from memory like I
can with Harry Potter [my emphasis] (Andrew Slack, Facebook post, December
7, 2013)
When mastery of the content world is valued as social currency, such an admission may
position Slack as an outsider in the eyes of more hardcore fans.
Moreover, a surprising turn of events raised added tension around who the “real”
Hunger Games fans were. When the Hunger is Not a Game campaign received media
attention, notably coverage in the New York Times (Martin 2012a), lawyers for
Lionsgate, the distributor of the movie, contacted Oxfam and requested that they remove
mentions of the campaign as it was “causing damage to Lionsgate and our marketing
efforts” (Martin 2012b). Appalled, a member of Imagine Better created a petition calling
Lionsgate to “stop bullying its fans into complacency.” After the fans’ protest drew
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attention on social media and through additional media coverage, Lionsgate quickly
retracted their demands. For Imagine Better, this was a success, and the organizers
celebrated the power of fan activists over corporations.
The HPA had some history of taking a confrontational approach towards the
movie producers within their own fan universe—for several years, the group has been
trying to petition Warner Brothers, the producers of the film series, to transition their
chocolate into fair-trade chocolate—a success that was eventually achieved in early 2015.
At the time, though, progress with Warner Brothers was stuck, and their “win” over
Lionsgate was thus encouraging to the fan activists. But the confrontational approach
towards Lionsgate discomforted some within the Hunger Games fan community. Some
fans extended to the studio the same adoration and respect they felt toward the Hunger
Games narrative and its author. Lionsgate had courted and collaborated with Hunger
Games fan community leaders, and those fans felt it ungrateful to confront the
corporation. Thus, while Imagine Better worked closely with Hunger Games fans in the
planning stages of the campaign, this incident exposed frictions between the groups.
The Hunger is not a Game campaign points to some challenges in using fannish
civics to engage with other fan communities. Due to its embeddedness in fannish
practices, fannish civics requires deep knowledge of the specifics of the fan community
and mastery of the content world. These are not aspects that can simply be learned—they
are the product of years of being an “insider.” Moreover, the fans had to be prepared to
take action, often by learning to read the text through a political lens—as we discussed in
the previous chapter, this may be a learned skill. So, while Hunger Games is on the
surface a more overt political allegory than Harry Potter, this approach was not
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necessarily consistent with what dedicated fans were taking from the series. The Hunger
is not a Game campaign taught Imagine Better the challenges of mobilizing others into
fannish civics without being embedded community members.
The Odds in Our Favor: Engaging through Cultural Acupuncture
In 2013, with the release of Catching Fire, the second installment in the Hunger
Games film franchise, Imagine Better took a different approach that leaned more towards
cultural acupuncture. They attempted to broaden the engagement not by connecting to an
existing fan community, but rather by tapping the general public’s attention. The Odds in
Our Favor campaign, whose goal was raising awareness around economic inequality,
began by encouraging participants to upload photos where they show the “three-finger
salute,” a gesture symbolizing the districts’ resistance against the Capitol. Here Imagine
Better built on popular social media practices: this was the year that the “selfie”— “a
photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or
webcam and uploaded to a social media website”—was chosen as Oxford’s word of the
year.
The next stage of the campaign was triggered by some of Lionsgate’s marketing
decisions, and specifically a marketing tie-in with CoverGirl, who launched a makeup
line called “the Capitol Collection.” Imagine Better criticized Lionsgate for celebrating
the oppressive Capitol instead of highlighting solidarity with the oppressed districts, and
“turning an anti-classist epic into a platform for the novels’ villains” (Slack, 2013).
Imagine Better then launched a campaign linking the Hunger Games to what they saw as
its real message - social inequality - through the release of a YouTube video, called The
Hunger Games are Real.
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The video starts with a quote from Haymitch, who advises Katniss and Peeta,
contestants in the fictional Hunger Games: “From now on, your job is to be a distraction,
so people forget what the real problems are.” The video then shows some of the
marketing efforts for Catching Fire, which highlight the “hot guys” in the cast, only to
interrupt the scene with static and a disruptive black-and-white “rebel message.” Lauren
Bird, the spokesperson for the HPA, dressed in an austere black outfit to represent the
character of a rebel leader, proclaims:
Enough with the distraction, the Hunger Games are real.
Check it out: In The Hunger Games a small portion of the population controls a
majority of the wealth. People have full time jobs and still go hungry.
Think it’s fiction? Think again.
While the audio details the economic disparities in Hunger Games’ dystopian
world of Panem, the visual shows statistics of real-world economic inequality. For
example, the death of Katniss’ father in a mining accident is linked to the decline of
unionization in the United States; the corrupt justice system in Panem is connected to the
incarceration of African-Americans at six times the rate of whites in the US. Bird
concludes:
Does the Hunger Games have hot guys in it? Big fucking deal. It also has
something else. Us. People who want justice. President Snows of the world
27
,
your reign is coming to the end. You can try and distract us but it’s too late– the
fire has started and we will not stop. Not until the odds are in everyone’s favor.

27
President Snow is the evil leader of Panem.
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The video ends with a call to “join the resistance” and links to
oddsinourfavor.org, where viewers can participate in a range of real world actions,
including a script for engaging viewers at Hunger Games screenings in a conversation
about poverty and unequal pay. The video powerfully succeeds in linking the fictional
world to the real one, not only through text but through sound and imagery. The dramatic
“rebel message” interrupting the Capitol signal gives the video a particular resonance and
indeed, it came to be the group’s most widely spread video.
As we discussed in the previous chapter, producing videos with professional-style
quality had not always been one of the HPA’s strengths. In fact, The Hunger Games are
Real is the first HPA video that was produced using allocated grant money that enabled
the organization to employ a professional video production crew. In comparison to the
modest views of the HPA vlogs, discussed in the previous chapter, The Hunger Games
are Real reached the largest-ever viewership for an HPA video—over 450,000 views.
Most of these viewers, it seemed, were ones who haven’t heard of the HPA before.
Accordingly, however, the comments on the video were characterized less by discussion
and conversation as in the intimate HPA vlogs, and more by one-sided and often extreme
views, as is often the case with YouTube videos with a large viewership (e.g. the
comment by YouTube user richardparadox163: “Does anyone else think this video is
trying to incite a Communist Revolution?”).
In terms of its strategy and outcomes, the campaign is closer on the continuum to
cultural acupuncture rather than fannish civics, successfully riding on the wave of
Hunger-Games related attention through its resonant audio-visual style. Some of the
detailed references to specific characters and events from the stories did allow hardcore
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fans to go deeper than they could with the first campaign, but the video is also accessible
to anyone who had watched the movie and is familiar with the storyline, enabling the
campaign to broaden its reach beyond a fan community.
One could question, to what extent is cultural acupuncture still a mode of fan
activism, if the audiences it wishes to mobilize aren’t just fans. I would argue that
cultural acupuncture should be understood as a mode of fan activism when it is created by
fans and emanates from fannish ways of engaging with a text. Some uses of cultural
acupuncture may not constitute fan activism, if they are initiated purely as a way to
garner attention. For example, Melissa Brough and Sangita Shresthova (2012) describe
how protesters in the West Bank village Bil’in engaged in Avatar activism: they covered
their body with blue paint to resemble the colonized Na’vi race in James Cameron’s
blockbuster movie and approached an Israeli military barricade, chanting “sky people,
you can’t take our land.” Photographs and videos of the protest were circulated online,
garnering news media attention. This is a case of activists reconfiguring pop culture
content and using fan-like tactics to provoke attention, dialogue and mobilization. In our
terminology, this use of pop culture content for specific political goals is a form of
cultural acupuncture, but not fan activism. At times, however, activists—through their
more strategic use of popular culture—may find themselves becoming fans, as I will
discuss briefly in the conclusion to this chapter.
The relationship between fan activism and cultural acupuncture can be further
linked to the distinction between drillable and spreadable media (Mittell, 2013). Drillable
media is characterized by narrative complexity, encouraging die-hard fans to dig deep
into the story world to mine new insights. In contrast, spreadable media (Jenkins, Ford, &
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Green 2013) is characterized by “horizontal ripples,” often aiming more at the
accumulation of views than at long-term engagement. Accordingly, we can think of
fannish civics as that which addresses the most highly-engaged fans as its imagined
audience. The connections between the story world and real-world issues are often based
on an in-depth knowledge of the narrative, rewarding fan mastery and dedication. Based
on these characteristics, fannish civics will mostly activate those already engaged in
fannish practices. Cultural acupuncture, on the other hand, builds on the “attraction
model” of spreadable media. While still connected to the story world, it requires minimal
depth of story-world knowledge. With cultural acupuncture, the aim is to reach wide
audiences, and the campaign may occupy participants’ attention for a shorter span.
While making the spreadable/drillable distinction, Jason Mittell wishes to
discourage the normative stance that prefers drillability over spreadability as a mode of
audience engagement. Similarly, both cultural acupuncture and fannish civics should be
seen as viable models of fan activism, though they may be more suited for different civic
goals. We may consider these goals through the lenses of what Zuckerman (2013) terms
thick vs. thin engagement. Using a matrix consisting of two axes (see Figure 11),
describing engagement as thin vs. thick, and symbolic vs. impactful, Zuckerman defines
thin engagement as “actions that require little thought on your part: sign a petition, give a
contribution.” Thick engagement, on the other hand, asks “for your creativity, your
strategic sensibilities, your ability to make media, research, deliberate or find solutions.”

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Figure 11. Matrix of engagement. Source: Zuckerman, 2013.

Fan activism worked well for the HPA in engaging motivated members who were
integrated into the fan community and had been “trained” to read these texts through a
particular lens. Many of these fan activists were inspired to take actions requiring “thick
engagement,” such as opening local chapters, volunteering as HPA staff members,
organizing local book drives, or doing creative projects to spread the word. Their
participation in the HPA built on their pre-existing embeddedness in the Harry Potter fan
community. Arguably, cultural acupuncture may be a more productive avenue for
Imagine Better as it seeks to expand out to other audiences and other texts, as it requires
less familiarity with the practices and structures of each fan community and may resonate
with a wider public. Cultural acupuncture may also be particularly appropriate for causes
that require “thinner” engagement, such as awareness-raising, where reach itself is a
measure of success (Kligler-Vilenchik & Shresthova 2012). The spreadability of cultural
acupuncture may create entry points, inviting some participants into “thicker” modes of
fan activism; it may also inspire young fans, who see the texts they are passionate about
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and the activist work they’re doing spreading to wider, and more heterogeneous,
communities.
The Glue that Holds a Community Together - Content Worlds and Taste
Communities
As we’ve seen, while fannish civics and cultural acupuncture differ in the depth in which
they drill into a text, both connect fictional worlds to real world concerns. I now consider
how these groups use content worlds and shared tastes as the glue that holds their
communities together and will address the challenges these groups face when attempting
to broaden their base of support. If in the previous chapter, we saw how the HPA builds
on a singular and specific content world, we’ll now consider several variations on this
model.
The dissertation’s three case studies represent different uses of content worlds:
while the HPA focuses on one content world, Imagine Better attempts to resonate with
fans of different content worlds and to engage broader audiences. Nerdfighters, as we
will see, unite fans toward civic goals around broader cultural affiliations. What roles do
content worlds serve for fan activists? Do some content worlds lend themselves better
toward political goals than others? And how may content worlds limit the range of issues
and audiences these groups can address?
Public Spheres of the Imagination in Action
If we consider the texts that Imagine Better has worked with in its campaigns,
including Harry Potter, the Hunger Games, and Superman, they have an additional factor
in common, besides having new content released when Imagine Better was first
organizing campaigns. These are all texts which take place in an immersive “world” of
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their own, one that is both related and yet different from the real world. Building on
J.R.R. Tolkien’s concept of “sub-creation” (literally, “creating under”), Mark J. P. Wolf
(2012) characterizes such fictional worlds as “secondary worlds,” which use materials
from our “primary world” yet reshape and recombine its elements, creating a world that’s
at the same time recognizable, and different. Such worlds encourage fan creativity by
allowing fans to imagine alternative characters, sub-plots, and scenarios beyond the
canonic text, but still within its logic. When fans use these worlds to discuss, reimagine
and seek to change the primary world, they are participating in what Saler (2012) calls
public spheres of the imagination.
Matt Hills (2002, 104) uses the term hyperdiegesis to describe “the creation of a
vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly seen or
encountered within the text, but which nonetheless appears to operate according to
principles of internal logic and extension.” This characteristic of fictional worlds enables
fan activism to work not only with the existing characters and story plots, but to create
countless connections, even ones that don’t exist within the text, as long as they fit in the
world’s internal logic. We may see a distinction here between the different modes of fan
activism: while fannish civics may venture into such creative additions, cultural
acupuncture typically sticks to the canonic plot, and even more specifically to plot
components familiar to a wide audience.
There are many potential strengths to using fantasy worlds to make sense of the
real-world. Saler (2012) claims that due to their fantastical elements—what he calls their
as if status—fictional worlds may help challenge one-sided convictions people hold about
the real world. Van Zoonen (2005) discusses how interpreting fictional political
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narratives can facilitate people’s performance of citizenship, for example by imagining a
perfect society and an ideal political process that surpasses partisan differences. As Diana
Mutz (2006) argues, in many of our life contexts people are surrounded by those similar
to ourselves, and only rarely do they engage in discussions with people whose political
views differ from theirs. Yet, as we’ve already seen in the previous chapter, the
characteristics of fan communities may create a different climate: when discussions begin
around fictional content worlds, slowly forming into friendships, people may find ways
beyond the “echo chambers” that inhibit other kinds of political communication.
When done right, fictional content worlds can bridge ideological differences,
helping people to see a social issue in a different light and to reach some shared
understanding around it. But employing content worlds for activist goals can also be
fraught with challenges. One such challenge is finding the right balance between the
content world and the civic goal. While the HPA has been very successful at creating
real-world links to the world of Harry Potter, its attempts to broaden beyond the Harry
Potter universe have varied in terms of their depth of engagement with the content world.
One example is Imagine Better’s use of the symbolism of Superman as an “illegal
alien”- born on the planet Krypton but raised by American parents, having to hide his true
identity. Imagine Better attempted to tap this connection in their Superman is an
Immigrant campaign, launched around the release of the 2013 Superman movie Man of
Steel. As we’ve discussed in the previous chapter, Julian Gomez, a member of the HPA
and one of the campaign’s organizers, had publicly come out as undocumented through a
video blog for the HPA. A year later, in an op-ed for the Huffington Post, Julian
described his personal connection to the story of Superman and to the campaign:
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In the summer blockbuster Man of Steel, Superman struggles with his identity as
an immigrant, terrified that if he tells the American people that he's from another
place, they will reject him. I felt that same fear when I was old enough to
understand what it meant to be undocumented. Last year, I finally found the
courage to publicly speak about my undocumented status in a video blog that has
now been watched over 16,000 times. (Gomez, 2013)
For this campaign, Imagine Better partnered once again with Define American,
the project led by immigrant rights activist Jose Antonio Vargas, with the aim of “using
the power of story to transcend politics and shift conversation around immigration,
identity, and citizenship in America.” Imagine Better and Define American encouraged
people to share their stories of heritage and identity, sparking a conversation around
immigration reform. On the Tumblr page wearetheamericanway.tumblr.com, young
people were invited to upload pictures with descriptions of their family heritage, signing
with “I am the American way” and Superman’s signature S, branded with the colors of
the American flag. While the Tumblr page elicited participation, some fans felt that the
campaign did not tap the rich potential symbolism of the Superman content world. This
also relates to our fan activism/cultural acupuncture distinction--the campaign could
speak to and be comprehended by a wider audience, but did not engage the in-depth
passion of fans. At the same time, the very introduction of the Superman as an Immigrant
metaphor was able to bring a fresh perspective into the conversation around immigrant
reform.
Beyond the depth of engagement, there are other potential pitfalls when
connecting secondary worlds to participatory politics. The “internal logic” that make
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these worlds function, after all, doesn’t necessarily apply to our world, and making direct
comparisons may be problematic. There is a careful balance between which elements of
the story-world are taken up and which are left behind, and in some ways, this task may
be easier with a fantasy world than with a more realistic one. For example, when the HPA
call themselves “a Dumbledore’s Army for the real world,” this metaphor works to
convey the idea that these are young people coming together to fight for what they
believe for. Naturally enough, it leaves out the parts about practicing magic in order to do
so. But when Imagine Better uses the rebellion of the districts in Panem as a template for
action, one wonders if a revolution seeking to overthrow an oppressive government is
really the form of action the group is advocating. While the rebellion metaphor may be
resonant, it may carry meanings the activist organization does not wish to embrace.
This potential problem was manifested around Imagine Better’s use of the three-
finger salute. In Suzanne Collins’s dystopian world, the three-finger salute is originally a
symbol of solidarity and respect to others, but over time it takes up a more militaristic
meaning of defiance against an oppressive government. In The Odds in Our Favor
campaign, Imagine Better asked participants to submit selfies with the three-finger salute
to symbolize their resistance towards economic inequality. Yet the organization was
taken aback when global news reported that the three-finger salute is being used by
protesters in Thailand, opposing the country’s 2014 military coup. On the one hand, this
was a powerful example of cultural acupuncture happening spontaneously; on the other,
they were worried about the symbol they’ve attached themselves to being used in a
situation involving violent confrontations. Metaphoric resistance—in the context of
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democratic US government—is playful, but resistance to an oppressive dictatorship
carries a very different weight of risk and responsibility.
Beyond the challenges of connecting to specific content worlds one at a time,
Imagine Better faces the challenge of finding a common ground amongst fans of different
texts. In this model, fans are connected toward civic action not so much through a single
content world, but rather through their shared identity as fans (see Jenkins, 2011). When
fans move from one text to another, that is not a sign of their disloyalty or fickleness,
rather, it is a characteristic of fans as nomadic (Jenkins, 1992). They are not just “fans of”
a certain text—instead, “fan” should be understood as a subcultural identity, which shares
certain traditions and practices of the wider fan culture. When it seeks to move beyond a
single content world, Imagine Better attempts to build on the practices shared by fans as a
larger subculture, regardless of their primary text.
Beyond content worlds: Fan activism emanating from a “taste community”
Nerdfighters represent another model for broadening fan engagement with civic
issues, one that does not center on a specific content world. As we’ve seen in the previous
chapter, Nerdfighters come together not around a single content world but rather around a
broad shared identity as “nerds.” Without relying on a single content world, Nerdfighters
still manage to create a vibrant community of fan activists who translate their shared
interests, their shared practices, and their sense of community toward real-world action.
For example, the Project for Awesome (P4A) is an annual event in which
Nerdfighters (and other video creators) are encouraged to create videos about their
favorite charity or non-profit organization and simultaneously post those on YouTube.
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Project for Awesome was one of the first things most Nerdfighters mentioned when
asked how Nerdfighteria helps decrease world suck. Jacob explained:
I think most Nerdfighters realize at least after they’ve been a Nerdfighter for a
while that they’re part of a group that is actually actively decreasing world suck in
the literal senses. I mean, whenever someone asks me about Nerdfighteria, I
instantly list the Project for Awesome... because it’s just something that you want
to say, ‘oh, I’m part of this group that every year raises thousands of dollars for
charity in an awesome way.’ (Jacob, 19, Nerdfighters)
The first year P4A was launched, its goal was to somewhat rebelliously “take over”
YouTube’s front page for one day with videos of charities and nonprofits. Since then, the
project has been conducted in explicit partnership with YouTube. In the 2013 P4A,
Nerdfighters uploaded hundreds of videos and over 24,000 people donated money to the
“Foundation to Decrease World Suck” (a nonprofit charity created by the VlogBrothers)
through Indiegogo, a crowdfunding website geared towards non-profits—these were
mostly small donations, made by individual Nerdfighters. In 2013, the donation came up
to over $850,000, divided between the ten causes whose videos receive the most votes by
the community.
P4A encourages the mode of expression preferred by many Nerdfighters—video
production. The videos uploaded for the project range from those by semi-professional
“YouTube celebrities” (video artists well known within the YouTube community, though
not commonly outside of it), such as “WheezyWaiter,” to ones uploaded by young
Nerdfighters, who widely range in terms of their video-production experience. One video,
created by two boys in their early teens, was uploaded vertically, with their caption
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explaining “I know its sideways but there’s no way I’m shooting this again.” Striving
towards the inclusive ideals of a participatory culture, Nerdfighters promote creative
production by lowering the barriers to expression and encouraging all members to see
themselves as potential contributors.
P4A not only encourages Nerdfighters to upload videos, it also supports their
creativity through structural features: on projectforawesome.com, one of the ways to pull
up videos is by pressing “random video,” ensuring that each video has an equal chance of
being viewed. The website encourages viewers to comment as much as possible on the
videos viewed, with over 460,000 comments submitted to the 2013 videos. This practice
stems from the early days of P4A when “most-commented” videos would rise to the top
of YouTube’s browse page, but has been kept out of tradition, and to help videos by
lesser-known YouTubers become more popular in search results. “Comment-bombs” are
also encouraged through the 48 hour livestream, where the Green brothers and other
guests feature P4A videos and, with increasingly silly behavior, comment on them.
Through P4A and other campaigns, Nerdfighters represent a mode of fan activism
that builds on fan practices, a broad shared identity, as well as a wide but shared
“universe of taste,” while each individual chooses his or her own flavor or point of entry.
This diversity suggests an additional route to broaden fan activism over time.
The fact that Nerdfighters do not rely on one content world but instead on a wide
universe of taste and shared fan practices has helped to broaden their base of support.
But, while this description stresses the bottom-up nature of the Nerdfighter community,
over time the increasing celebrity status of one of the Vlogbrothers - John Green - has
significantly contributed to the growth of Nerdfighteria, in sometimes uneven bursts.
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When John Green started the Vlogbrothers project with his brother Hank in 2007, he was
already an award-winning author of two Young Adult books. His subsequent books,
however, rose to best-selling status much quicker, arguably fueled by the growth of the
Nerdfighter community. Green’s biggest success was The Fault in Our Stars, a Young
Adult romance novel about two cancer survivors, that was No. 1 on Amazon six months
ahead of its release date and debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times Best-Seller list.
The book was inspired by the real story of Esther Earl, a 16 year old Nerdfighter who
found friendship and support in the Nerdfighter community as she was struggling with
Thyroid cancer. Esther befriended John before succumbing to cancer in 2010, and, in the
Nerdfighter community, she became a symbol for warmth, friendship, and courage.
When asked by John Green what message she would like to convey to the world, it was
“tell the people you love that you love them.”
If the existence of the Nerdfighter community was mostly limited to “insiders,”
this changed somewhat in 2014 with the release of the film adaptation of The Fault in
Our Stars. The modestly budgeted movie earned $48M in its opening weekend, topping
blockbusters featuring Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie. The movie’s surprising success
drew significant media attention not only to John Green, but also—somewhat—to the
Nerdfighter community, albeit framed as a traditional celebrity-fan relationship.
Nerdfighters, who often relished in the sense that their community is a well-kept secret,
reacted to this publicity with mixed feelings. At a Vlogbrother meet-up session three
weeks after the release of the movie, a young teenager in a Nerdfighter T-shirt asked to
read out a question she prepared for John and Hank Green: “What do you think is the
relationship between the size of the community and the participation of its members?.”
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This question, reflecting the concern of many Nerdfighters over the sudden growth of the
community, summarizes many of the challenges that Nerdfighters, the HPA and Imagine
Better negotiate, in seeking what makes a community—one that coalesces around popular
culture—cohere, and what keeps its members engaged towards civic goals.
Some implications of content worlds
In the previous chapter, we discussed some of these groups’ challenges around
increasing racial and ethnic diversity. This question may be closely connected to these
groups’ reliance on content worlds. Fans have long been concerned about the paucity of
people of color participating in the structures of fandom—a discussion that scholarly fan
studies work has only recently taken up (see, e.g., the special issue of the Journal of
Transformative Works & Culture dedicated to race and ethnicity in fandom, Gatson &
Reid, 2012). Jenkins (2014) describes the awkward situation of panels at fan conventions
where white fans encircle a handful of minority participants, demanding to know why
there aren’t more fans of color. As Jenkins points out, the answer goes beyond decisions
on the individual level, and may operate “on a systemic or structural level to make it
harder for some to speak out as fans” (p. 97). This question is troubling in relation to
fandom as an opportunity for pleasure and learning, but it becomes even more pertinent
when we think of fan activism as a form of participatory politics, and of those who may
be excluded from it.
One form of informal, and inadvertent, boundary to participation that may be
functioning in the context of the Nerdfighters—as well as the HPA, who acknowledge a
similar skew in their membership—may be through the cultural distinctions of taste and
preference. Based on their shared “nerdy” interests, Nerdfighters can be characterized as
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a “taste community”, referring to a group with a communal preference in music, movies
or books (Van Dijck, 2009). Yet as Antoine Hennion (2007, 97) explains, the allegedly
natural affinity of fans towards their objects of passion “is actually socially constructed
through the categories employed, the authority of leaders, the imitation of intimates,
institutions and frames of appreciation, as well as through the social game of identity
making and differentiation.” Thus when Nerdfighters say they simply “like the same
stuff”, this claim may belie more structural forms underlying the groups’ affinity.
As Jenkins (2014) asserts, fandom mirrors larger forms of segregation in culture
at large. Bourdieu’s (1984) work on taste politics reminds us that taste is shaped by
access to certain experiences, by who is encouraged or discouraged from displaying
certain kinds of cultural preferences. And while Bourdieu focuses on class distinctions,
we can point to the ways that taste is racialized as well. Using Daniel Dayan’s concept,
we may think of Nerdfighters as “taste publics,” which are “generally focused on works,
texts, or programmes; the performance of these publics is generally 'verdictive'
(evaluative)” (2005, 54). Dayan also describes such groups as “identity publics” because
of the ways they forge common identities around those shared interests. While these
shared interests forge a powerful cultural resource for the group to build on towards fan
activism, it may also serve as a form of informal cultural exclusion—a point that is
particularly relevant when we see these groups as the basis for participatory politics.
One way this issue may be addressed is when these groups overtly take up racial
issues, either by the group leaders or through the initiative of members. In Nerdfighteria,
racial issues were brought more strongly to the foreground when both John and Hank
Green repeatedly discussed racial injustice in the context of the police killings of
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unarmed black men in 2014. For example, around the spread of the video of Eric
Garner’s death in a confrontation with police offers, John Green’s tweet of Garner’s last
words (I can’t breathe) was retweeted 38,000 times, and sparked a heated conversation
around race in America. A few weeks later, John’s video blog “Racism in the United
States: By the Numbers” (2014, December 30) responded to the “around 75% of white
Americans who think there is no racial bias in the criminal justice system” and “the slight
majority of white Americans who do not think racism is a significant problem in
America.” By bringing in statistical data, Green argued that “whether systemic bias
against African Americans exists in the United States is not really a debatable point.”
Green summarizes the long list of data points by stating, “while I think statistics and data
are really important, I also think it’s important to listen to the voices of people who have
been affected by racism. Data is cold in a way that humans are not and to really
understand the effects of racism on real lives of real people, we need to listen to these
people.”
An example for such an account by “real people” came a month later, when
Alanna Bennett (2015), a volunteer with the HPA who identifies as biracial, published a
Buzzfeed post entitled “What a ‘racebent’ Hermione Granger really represents.” In this
article, Alanna recounts her experience growing up reading the Harry Potter novels and
identifying with the female character of smart, bossy Hermione. But her identification
was met with a limit: “I related to her deeply, but like with so much of what I watched
and read, I couldn’t see myself in Hermione.” Alanna shares how she came to “train
[herself] out of seeing white as the default for fictional characters” and to imagine
Hermione as black—an imagination she found common to many others, who shared
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images of a black Hermione online (see Figure 12 for one example). The article received
particular attention when it was ‘liked’ on Twitter by J.K. Rowlings, a stamp of approval
the British author had used, at the time, for only a handful of Tweets. In the reactions to
Alanna’s article, many fans were cautious, claiming that seeing Hermione as black goes
against the canon, or expressing their allegiance to Emma Watson, the Hollywood actress
of the character, as a “true” representation of Hermione. Others supported every fan’s
right to read the characters in the way that resonates most with them. Alanna Bennett’s
article showed both the ways that exclusion through cultural boundaries may function,
and some ways that we can start to break beyond it.
Figure 12. Fan-art of a black Hermione. Source: Alanna Bennett (2015)

Conclusion
The three case studies of this project all offer models of mobilizing fan
enthusiasm toward participatory politics. Through their different characteristics (focusing
on one content world versus moving through multiple content worlds, mobilizing
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organized fan communities versus attempting to reach individual fans), they help us
refine our understanding of fan activism and the ways content worlds may inspire
participatory politics, sketching the boundaries for these terms and testing their limits.
This chapter suggests that fan activism can be understood as a continuum along two
different modes—fannish civics and cultural acupuncture—that, while closely related,
differ in their imagined audience, in the depth of their use of the content world, and in
their participatory political outcomes. While the HPA succeeded in mobilizing a highly
active fan community into fannish civics, the mode of cultural acupuncture may better
serve the group as it seeks to engage other popular texts and reach other potential
supporters through Imagine Better.
This chapter also dissects how fan activist groups utilize content worlds. Relying
on scholarly examinations of world-building as a literary practice, we see that fan activist
organizations may benefit from tying into rich, immersive and expansive worlds,
extending their logics to locate almost endless opportunities for real-world connections.
Such connections play to the fan community’s strength, enabling conversations across
ideological and cultural differences. At the same time, content worlds may limit fan
activism through the internal logic of their worlds, as well as through their rise and fall in
their popularity over time. Imagine Better presents one possible model to overcome this
limitation, shifting to new texts in order to tap new cultural “pressure points.” A different
route is suggested by the Nerdfighters, who engage in fan activism based on a wider
shared identity as “nerds” with similar cultural taste. Yet both groups also find that
connecting around popular culture content may limit their reach, in often unintended
ways.
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To connect our examination of fan activism and content worlds with some of the
existing work around use of media resources towards forms of civic engagement, I’ll
close by applying these cases to Peter Dahlgren’s concept of the civic culture
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circuit
(2003; 2009). Dahlgren (2003, p. 139) explains, “for a functioning democracy, there are
certain conditions that reside at the level of lived experiences, resources and subjective
dispositions which need to be met.“ As such, Dahlgren is interested in the sets of cultural
norms and practices that enable people to begin to engage as civic agents. Dahlgren
offers a circuit model comprised of six dimensions—shared values, a sense of affinity,
knowledge and competencies, practices, identities, and discussion— which help us
understand how citizens can use the media in a way that encourages (or hinders) their
civic engagement. The groups described here go beyond ‘pre-conditions’ to civic
engagement, using media engagement as a way to mobilize their members towards real-
world action.
To exemplify how these groups employ the “full circuit” of engagement, I’ll
examine the campaign that Imagine Better has conducted around the release of the third
installment in the Hunger Games movie series, Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014). Continuing
the theme of economic inequality, this campaign included aspects of awareness raising,
expression and action. To exemplify the links between the Hunger Games narratives and
the real world, the campaign calls participants to share how economic inequality has
affected their lives, using the Twitter hashtag #MyHungerGames. Yet in this campaign,
members are called not only to share their own stories, but to collaborate with a
somewhat surprising ally—“Fight for $15,” a nationwide protest of fast food workers

28
For a different take on the concept of civic culture, understood as the culture on which
people rely when problem-solving together, see Lichterman (2012).
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striking in demand for a raise in wages and the right to unionize. The oddsinourfavor.org
website explains: “These workers struggle with the same issues that workers in the
districts face: low pay, bad hours and working conditions, hunger, lack of affordable
healthcare, and more.” As a specific call for action, members were asked to visit a local
McDonald’s and hand out an information sheet about fair wage and right to unionize to
the manager. The campaign invited participants to take a selfie of themselves doing the
three finger salute, and share it, along with their experiences of the direct action at the
fast food chain, through the #MyHungerGames hashtag. It’s important to note: a
campaign like this definitely demands more than many young HPA participants feel
comfortable with. As Andrew Slack admitted in a write-up about the campaign in the
New Yorker, “some members have expressed social anxiety about doing this”
(Wiedeman, 2014). Yet the HPA attempts to build up their members’ confidence,
encouraging them to partake in actions they would otherwise be weary of, through the
inspiration of fictional worlds.
In this campaign, the focus is on equality, a shared value that HPA/Imagine
Better have identified as one of their key areas of action. The campaign begins by
targeting the HPA/Imagine Better membership, tied by an affinity building both on the
shared content world and the shared community structures. In a form of cultural
acupuncture, however, the campaign reaches beyond this community, trying to mobilize
larger audiences familiar, though not highly engaged with, the Hunger Games narratives.
The campaign helps participants to acquire greater knowledge regarding economic
inequality and fair wages, educating them through the allusions to the fictional narrative
coupled with real world labor and income data. Their identities as fans, as well as their
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identification with the protagonists of the Hunger Games, are mobilized toward their
engagement. Their action is scaffolded through concrete practices - building both on the
fannish practices they already love doing, as well as scaffolding them to participate in
new activist practices. The #MyHungerGames hashtag and the connection to the Hunger
Games content world through both language and visual symbols serve as opening
opportunities for discussion of these issues, with fellow fans and wider audiences familiar
with the franchise. The HPA thus not only completes the “pre-conditions” for political
engagement, but goes beyond it to harnessing these towards real world change.
Moreover, this campaign—through cultural acupuncture—went far beyond the fan base,
to activate and capture the imagination of those with only a superficial familiarity with
the Hunger Games. In fact, some union activists from Fight for $15 reported becoming
enthusiastic Hunger Games fans, through their engagement with the Odds in Our Favor
campaign.
In the next chapter, I’ll drill down from the macro level of the organizations to a
specific small group context, in which members of a local chapter of the HPA came
together to discuss how the narratives of Harry Potter relate to real-world issues. I will
use this case to contribute to our theoretical understanding of the mechanisms for
political talk in various contexts.
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CHAPTER SIX: POLITICAL TALK IN FAN SPACES
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Politics greatly impacts citizens’ lives. This axiom is often taken for granted by
scholars and pundits, yet it is not always apparent to everyday citizens. Theorists point at
political talk as a way for citizens to deepen their understanding of why the political
world matters to them, form opinions, and set the ground for taking collective action
(Barber, 1984; Habermas, 1989). Yet though we may agree with the importance of
citizens’ political talk for the healthy functioning of democracy (as not all do, see
Schudson, 1997), many social structures make such conversations difficult. While formal,
rule-governed deliberation has received widespread scholarly attention (e.g. Gastil,
2008), much less attention has been paid to the ways that people think and talk about
politics in everyday contexts.
Research on everyday political discussion has reached some mixed conclusions.
In their extensive quantitative project, Kim and colleagues (Kim, Wyatt & Katz, 1999;
Wyatt, Katz & Kim, 2000) were encouraged by their findings of a relatively talkative
citizenry—though much of this political talk is confined to the home. Eliasoph’s (1998)
ethnographic examination of political talk in a range of civic groups reached much more
worrying conclusions, painting a picture of citizens who avoid political talk in public
contexts, pushing it instead to whispers in back-stage contexts. What is largely missing is
a focus on spaces in which young people—the citizens of tomorrow—talk politics.
One reason we may be missing young people’s political talk is that it may occur
in unexpected places. In their analysis of online discussion spaces, Wojcieszak and Mutz

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A version of this chapter has been accepted for publication in the International Journal
of Communication, under the title “From wizards and house-elves to real-world issues:
Political talk in fan spaces.”

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(2009) find that the potential for political deliberation occurs primarily in groups where
politics is not the central purpose—groups around shared hobbies, interests and activities.
Building on a variety of examples, Wright (2012) calls us to study political talk in non-
political spaces, which he sees as new forms of “third spaces.” He explains that the
scholarly focus on formal political discussion has “ignored the spaces where the vast
majority of (everyday) political talk between ‘ordinary’ citizens is most likely to occur”
(p. 6).
An investigation of alternative spaces to partake in political discussion is
particularly important for young people, for reasons we’ve discussed in Chapter 2. Many
young people find political discussion controversial and divisive (Thorson, Vraga &
Kligler-Vilenchik, 2014), and the language of politics feels distant and irrelevant to them
(Buckingham, 2002). Moreover, some of the channels that in the past have socialized
young people into political discussion and participation, such as traditional civic
associations, are in decline among young people (Zukin et al., 2008). At a time when
people are increasingly skeptical and cynical towards the traditional political process
(Norris, 1999), alternate spaces where young people can connect their interests with the
realm of politics are crucial entry points into political talk and participation.
In the previous chapters, we examined the three different case studies on the
macro-level of the organization/group, and interrogated their mechanisms of translation
(Chapter 4), as well as their employment of content worlds towards fan activism (Chapter
5). In what follows, I drill down to a specific and bounded small-group context. In a local
Southern-California chapter of the Harry Potter Alliance, a 20 year old chapter organizer
devised and executed a six-week face-to-face “study group”, in which an
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intergenerational group of fans came to discuss, on very specific levels, how the narrative
of Harry Potter connects to activism and social change. This chapter hones in on an
ethnographic examination of political talk within this group, as a case of a “third space”
where popular culture interest can engender political talk. Based on detailed field notes
from the group’s meetings and interviews with its participants, this chapter suggests three
mechanisms that explicate, on the micro level, how popular culture contexts can engender
political talk: scaling up, broadening the political, and mobilization. Through these
mechanisms, group participants could overcome some of the barriers to political talk and
engage in vibrant discussions around burning social issues. This chapter also takes on a
more bounded task on the theoretical level—it seeks to build connections to political
communication literature, and to contribute specifically to conceptualizations of political
talk in various contexts.
The different genres of political talk
Perhaps the strongest proponent of placing conversation at the heart of
democracy, John Dewey saw civic interaction as the solution to the problems of modern
democracy. Dewey famously argued that to revitalize democracy, the essential need is for
“the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion.
That is the problem of the public” (1927, p. 208). His focus on the role of political talk
was both as a precursor for civic engagement, and as beneficial for individuals and their
social development.
The role of citizens’ talk in democracy has received renewed attention around the
turn of the century. The work of Jürgen Habermas (1989) brought on an interest in
deliberative democracy, in which communicative interaction among citizens is the central
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element. Most of this work has centered on deliberation as a formal, rule-governed
process whereby citizens engage in purposeful discussion for the sake of decision-making
(e.g., Gastil, 2008).
Critics of the deliberation literature claim, however, that this approach employs a
narrow definition of political talk, one that is limited to a specialized, formal mode of
discourse (Sanders, 1997). Eveland, Morey & Hutchens (2011) call us to go “beyond
deliberation,” to examine informal political conversation: individuals as communicators
within existing relationships. The focus on citizens’ everyday talk is a descriptive,
emergent one, which starts with listening to citizens. These studies have generally found
citizens making agentic use of the resources available to them, including both media
frames and personal experiences, in interpreting social issues (Gamson, 1992).
For scholars of everyday political talk, such conversations can promote civic
agency, even if they don’t fulfill the strict requirements of rule-governed deliberation.
Kim and Kim (2008, p. 53) call this “dialogic deliberation,” the process through which
citizens “freely interact with one another to understand mutually the self and others.” To
Barber (1984), it is the looseness and open-endedness of everyday talk that makes it
indispensable for democracy. Yet despite a general agreement on the importance of
political talk, only few studies examine it ethnographically.
One of the landmark contributions to the study of political talk is Nina Eliasoph’s
Avoiding Politics (1998), which we’ve encountered briefly in previous chapters. Eliasoph
asks how citizens create contexts for political conversation in everyday life. Individuals,
she argues, do not come naturally equipped for discussion, debate and disagreement—
they need to learn those skills. Civic organizations are the schools for this, “institutions in
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which private citizens can carry on free and egalitarian conversation, often about issues
of common concern, possibly welding themselves into a cohesive body and a potent
political force” (Eliasoph, 1998, p. 11). In another ethnographic study of political talk,
Kathy Cramer Walsh (2004) examines a group of senior citizens who meet every
morning to chat at a corner store. Walsh sees their informal interaction as “a way in
which people collectively develop tools of political understanding” (p. 2), a process of
interpreting or making sense of political life.
When specifically examining youth, political discussion in the home is recognized
as one of the socializing factors encouraging young people’s engagement (Zukin et al., p.
127). Engaging in political talk in private settings may help young people voice their
opinions in public settings, as well (Östman, 2013). This underscores the importance of
spaces in which youth can practice their political voice.
Political talk and its challenges
To examine youth’s political conversation, we must begin by defining “political
talk.” Wyatt, Kim & Katz (2000) distinguish between two types of “ordinary political
conversation”: political and personal. They define political conversation as discussion of
national affairs, state and local affairs, the economy, and foreign affairs. Personal
conversation, on the other hand, is that centered on education, religion, crime, personal
matters, and sports/entertainment. Yet Wyatt et al. also state that discussion with political
implications can take place during ‘personal’ conversations.
Eveland, Morey & Hutchens (2011) are critical toward such definitions of
political talk, which they see as suffering from poor measurement validity. To them, the
key question to answer is, how do people define politics in their daily lives?
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Ethnographic research attempts to answer this. To Eliasoph (1998), the defining element
is not talk that is about “politics”—for example, through the specific topics listed by
Wyatt et al.—but rather talk that is “public-spirited.” Public-spirited talk is open to
debate, devoted to questions about the common public good, and does not exclude
questions of oppression or differences of opinion. Wright (2012) argues that when
studying non-political spaces, traditional definitions of the “political” fail to capture the
everyday life-politics that takes place. Thus, the narrow definitions of political talk used
in quantitative research may not suffice to examine how people try to build connections
between private and public concerns or, in the terms of C. Wright Mills (1959), build
their “sociological imagination.”
Building the “sociological imagination” requires opportunities to talk politics, and
these are not always abundant. We mentioned previously Eliasoph’s (1998, p. 21) use of
the term political etiquette to refer to the extent to which public discussion is deemed
appropriate and desirable in different group settings. In many environments, Eliasoph
argues, discussing politics is considered inappropriate, and citizens pick up on these
social norms: “people implicitly know that some face-to-face contexts invite public-
spirited debate and conversation, and others do not; in contemporary US society, most do
not” (p. 6). Similarly, Mark Warren (1996) claims that most people refrain from political
discussion to avoid the “social groundlessness” of political space. People feel there is an
absence of known rules and standards for political talk, causing anxieties and
uncertainties around it. As we’ve mentioned several times, heterogeneous social
situations provide a particular challenge for political talk (Mutz, 2006). Dahlgren (2002,
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p. 8) summarizes: “political discussion can be uncomfortable and awkward, and it is
perfectly reasonable that most people in most circumstances tend to shy away from it.”
The anxieties around talking politics may be exacerbated when it comes to youth,
who may find political discussion controversial and divisive (Thorson, Vraga & Kligler-
Vilenchik, 2014), may have perceptions of themselves as not sufficiently informed to
engage in political talk (Thorson, 2010), or find politics alienating (Buckingham, 2002).
For these reasons, young people in particular may need to find ways to establish links
between their personal lives, their interests, and the political sphere.
Political talk for the self-actualizing citizen—and the fan
Young people’s skepticism toward politics may be part of a more widespread
phenomenon. As discussed in Chapter 2, the work of Lance Bennett and colleagues (e.g.
Bennett, 2008; Bennett, Freelon, & Wells, 2010) suggests that one way to interpret
youth’s mode of engagement is as the rise of a model of “Self-Actualizing Citizenship.”
This model is rooted in social expression, where personal interests are shared through
loosely tied networks and people engage in multiple forms of creative civic expression
(Bennett, Freelon, & Wells, 2010).
As we’ve discussed earlier in this project, it is clear why it would be important for
the self-actualizing citizen to connect politics to areas of interest and passion. If
citizenship is no longer primarily motivated by a sense of duty as was hypothesized by
the dutiful citizen model, young people need to be “persuaded” of the relevance of
politics to their everyday lives.
In the specific group we’ll consider in this chapter, we’ll see how, in interaction
(Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003), young people build on a fantasy world to facilitate and
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energize political conversation. John Street (1997, p. 16) claims about the broader
connection between popular culture and political communication: “The connection does
not just ‘happen’: we have to see it as being created and administered.” The case we’ll
consider is an intentional and strategic linkage between popular culture and real-world
issues on the micro-level of interpersonal conversations.
Method
30

This dissertation as a whole employs participant observation informed by the
logic of the “extended case” method (Burawoy, 1991) in order to contribute to theories of
alternative citizenship models. This chapter employs the same method with a more
specific aim of contributing to political communication theories around political talk.
Unlike the previous two chapters, it builds primarily on participant observation, with
interviews used as a secondary data source.
Participant observation is an appropriate method to capture political talk in
varying contexts. Employing it within the extended case method aims to reconcile the
advantages of participant observation with the possibility of generalization.
Generalization in this method is sought through theory building: the extended case
method seeks to improve the applicability of theory by explaining underlying processes
more closely. The case study underlying this paper was chosen as a case of a “third
space” in which popular culture interests are used to encourage political talk. My
observation of this site seeks to explicate the mechanisms through which young people,
through interaction, can bridge their shared interests and passions around popular culture

30
This chapter has its own methods section, as its key method of observation differs
somewhat from the general project.
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towards political talk; these mechanisms can potentially be generalized to encouraging
political talk through other areas of interest.
Specifically, this paper discusses participant observation in a face-to-face study
group
31
entitled “Harry Potter as a Tool for Social Change” (from here on, HPTSC). The
study group was part of the activities a local chapter of the Harry Potter Alliance, which
had recently opened in a Southern California city. The HTPSC study group was devised
and executed through the initiative of the chapter organizer, and met for six weeks at a
public library with each group meeting lasting around one hour.
As the group’s Facebook page explained, its aim was to investigate “how Harry
Potter relates to current sociopolitical and personal identity issues.” The group consisted
of five core participants who attended all group sessions, and five more casual
participants who attended one or two sessions. Of the participants, two were adults in
their 50s, who were more interested in the political aspect of the discussions; the rest
were youth in their teens and early twenties, all Harry Potter fans. While the books served
as the starting point for conversations, the group held in-depth discussions around
burning controversies, including Walmart’s labor practices, racism, slavery, and the 2012
elections. Political issues were raised and thoroughly discussed in every one of the
group’s meetings.
After receiving explicit permission from the group leader and all group
participants to participate as a researcher, I attended all HPTSC group discussions, and
took extensive field-notes, attempting to capture as much of the specific dialogue as I
could. Direct quotes from ethnographic observation stem from my research notes, and

31
The term ‘study group’ emerged from the group leader – it is equivalent to a discussion
group.
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indicate near-transcription. I volunteered to function as note-taker, and sent the group
leader an abbreviated summary of each week’s discussion. This allowed me both to
contribute to the group, and to feel more at ease while taking notes. In addition, I
interviewed almost all core participants
32
, asking both about their experiences with the
group and about their broader political involvement. While the group met for a limited
number of sessions, this bounded frame enabled me to observe the group process from
beginning to end. Based on the extended case approach, the ethnographic data was
analyzed with the aim of theory building. The analysis is presented through three
mechanisms, explicating how popular culture contexts can support political talk in small
group interaction.
“Scaling up”: Making connections to real-world issues
Of the multiple possible barriers to informal political talk identified by the
literature (Eliasoph, 1998; Warren, 1996), several factors may be particularly salient for
young people. One of these is a general alienation towards “politics.” As Maura, one of
the HPTSC participants, described in her interview:
Politics generally makes me think of just elections and all of the horrible
commercials they make about their opponents. And just, I don’t really like
politicians. It seems like all they do is worry about how to get re-elected.
Research often highlights the importance of contexts like civic classes as a space
in which young people can develop the skills to discuss politics in a supportive
atmosphere. But this ideal is not always met. Seventeen-year-old Astera, another HPTSC

32
One core participant expressed interest in being interviewed, but after the end of the
study group sessions did not respond to my requests.
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participant, explained in her interview why she prefers discussing politics at HPTSC than
in her civics class:
My civics teacher is not a fun person to argue with… I can’t tell if he is a bad
listener or he intentionally changes what you are saying, but somehow he
manages to take what you said, change it, and ask, “Well, is this what you said?”
“No, it’s not even a little bit of what I said”.
Given a feeling of alienation towards party politics, and the limits of formal
discussion spaces such as civics classes, young people may be lacking the kinds of spaces
in which to discuss politics with peers in a supportive—and enjoyable—context. I term
the process of crossing over from fictional worlds to wider public concerns scaling up.
This section considers different ways in which, in the group’s interaction, scaling up
facilitated political talk, yet it also looks at moments of “resistance” to scaling up.
HPTSC is an intriguing context in that its explicit purpose was to link fictional
worlds to political issues, or to scale up. The invitation to the study group read:
The [name of the HPA chapter] invites you to an informal study group on how
Harry Potter relates to current sociopolitical and personal identity issues. We will
progress to discussing how the narrative of Harry Potter can be used to promote
activism and social change.
While this invitation builds on the general approach used by the HPA, this group
was the first attempt to make these connections through a face-to-face dialogue between
participants. The idea for this group did not come from the organization top-down, but
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rather, the study group was the brainchild of 20-year old Erin
33
--whom we’ve met in the
introduction to this dissertation, where she was the leader of the excursion to Occupy
L.A.
34
Building on her extensive previous activist experience, Erin explained to me in
interview that she came up with HPTSC “to really open up a dialogue about how to use
these narratives as a tool to get other people involved in things.” Accordingly, Erin
intentionally structured the group discussion to facilitate scaling up, though whether this
succeeded or not depended on the group interaction.
One example occurred in week 4 of the study group. The group was discussing
the book Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which revolves around Sirius
Black—a convicted murderer, who Harry believes betrayed his parents and turned them
in to evil Lord Voldemort. Towards the end of the book, Harry finds out that Sirius is in
fact innocent, yet he is sentenced to receive the “Dementor’s kiss”—a removal of his
soul.
Erin introduces the topic: “Throughout the whole book, Harry wants to kills
Sirius. He thinks he betrayed his parents, that it’s his fault they died.” For several
minutes, the group holds a discussion that centers on the narrative: how Harry found out
Sirius did not betray his parents and befriended him, and how he decided to spare the life
of the real betrayer, Pettigrew. As the group considers Harry’s motives, Erin guides the
conversation:

33
Erin later presented this structure to organizers in the HPA who took the idea up
enthusiastically and are looking for ways to encourage other chapters to employ such
discussion groups.
34
The HPTSC study group took place about a year after the Occupy L.A. excursion
discussed in the introduction.
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Shelly: If he kills him he’s just as bad. Killing won’t bring an end to the suffering.
Erin: Harry’s idea about justice changes. Pettigrew can die, or he can be turned in
to the authorities. Seeing Sirius ready to kill changed him.
Tim: He saw himself in it.
Erin: We now have the death penalty – prop 34 on the California ballot. It would
replace death penalty with life without parole. In the Wizarding World, it’s a
story about death penalty. All the book we thought that Sirius needs to die, but we
found out he doesn’t, and neither does the guy who actually did kill Harry’s
parents.
Shelly: We put innocent people to death. Once someone is put into death row the
efforts to save them stop.
[10 minute discussion of the death penalty and proposition 34 ensues]
This conversation exemplifies successful scaling up, that was planned ahead and
structured by the group leader. Erin introduces the topic, enables participants to discuss
the narrative, then intervenes to scale up by linking the discussion to the upcoming vote
on proposition 34 in the California elections.
35
Through Erin’s guidance, this
conversation flowed from the story world towards a lengthy discussion of the death
penalty, one that included naming the legal standards for decision (beyond reasonable
doubt vs. preponderance of evidence) and referencing study findings about whether the
threat of execution deters crime.
Scaling up also took place without the group leader’s intervention. In the
following conversation, the group discusses the fictional characters’ differing modes of

35
The proposition eventually failed, maintaining the death penalty in California.
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activism. Note that Erin remains at the level of the narrative, whereas Michelle and
Astera engage in scaling up:
Erin: Harry… works with different sides in the books, he’s not willing to choose
just one cause. […] Unlike Hermione who focused on the house-elves
36
.
Maura: And she did it in the wrong way.
Michelle: That’s not true!
Maura: She should have done her research - the house-elves didn’t want to be
liberated.
Michelle: (Gets upset) That has been for years the argument for the enslavement
of blacks, that there were slaves who didn’t want to be freed. It’s clearly a
reference to that. But they had centuries of brainwashing.
Maura: Hermione should have first talked to the house-elves and convinced them.
Astera: If you upset those you are supposed to serve, it means you’re doing it
wrong. It’s like Invisible Children. If the Ugandans are upset about what you’re
doing, you’re doing it wrong.
In this example, the scaling up didn’t come from Erin, who planned to tackle the
topic of house-elves the following week. Rather, it was Michelle’s strong opinions that
led her to denounce Maura’s statement about the house-elves “not wanting to be
liberated” and linking that to slavery. Astera then makes a different real-world
connection: she references Invisible Children and the Kony2012 campaign that had
gained attention earlier that year (like we saw in previous chapters, this campaign is a
touchstone for many young people in these groups, mostly to distance themselves from

36
House-elves are creatures who devotedly serve wizards and witches. Hermione starts
the “Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare” to advocate for freeing house-elves.
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it). Astera is using Kony2012 to argue that activism in the name of others is not done
correctly if it upsets those you are “supposed to serve.”
While these are two successful examples of scaling up, the study group also
showed many examples of conversations that remained on the level of the narrative,
without ever connecting to real-world issues. It is important to note that such instances
are very valuable to the group. For many of the young participants, their strong
connection to the narrative was their motivation to attend the group in the first place. At
the same time, in some instances we find attempts to scale up, which were resisted. These
moments are worth paying attention to, as they explicate the challenges of scaling up.
One example is a conversation about the role of media and journalists in Harry
Potter. As several participants are trying to connect the discussion towards real-world
media, Maura remains strictly in the narrative world and her dislike of a specific
character:
Astera: Skeeter [a ‘tabloid journalist’ in the books] is the worse… She’s the
National Enquirer of the wizarding world. She makes up stuff, she thinks people
will be interested.
Erin: And are they?
Astera: Yes, that sucks even more.
Tim: Journalism is a business.
Erin: So is it just Rita, or…
Astera: She’s symbolic.
Maura: But it’s mostly just her.
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Erin: Is our anger misdirected? Maybe it’s bigger? Society made her role possible.
Could they get rid of her or would someone else just come along?
Maura: They should get rid of her.
The group discussion included additional attempts to connect the fictional worlds
to discussions of discrimination, racism, and incarceration—which were all subject to
“scaling down.” These examples point at a challenge inherent in connecting fictional
contexts to real-world issues: attempts to scale up may be “resisted.” It is interesting to
note that in almost all these examples, scaling down was done by a certain participant—
Maura. To understand what accounts for this, we may search for some insights from
Maura’s interview.
Maura, 21 years old, is quite far from your average political junkie. In her
interview, she explained to me why fantasy and magic are more interesting than real life:
“With magic, anything is possible… our world is kind of boring. You get a job, you grow
up and you start a family, that’s all there really is to life.” Maura had never engaged in
any form of activism or political discussion. The reason she attended the group meetings,
she explained, was that Erin invited her, and “it doesn’t require a lot from me, just show
up and talk about Harry Potter, I can do that.”
It is easy to be critical of Maura’s insistence to remain on the literal level of
fantasy rather than connect to real-world issues. An alternative viewpoint would be to
recognize the value of HPTSC, in allowing dreamy Maura to feel just as comfortable as
die-hard activist Erin. The real value of political discussion through popular culture
contexts lies in engaging those participants who are least likely to engage in political talk
elsewhere—and Maura may exemplify exactly that.
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Broadening the ‘political’
Earlier in this chapter, we considered several definitions of the political, including
Wyatt et al.’s (2000) distinction between ‘political conversation’ (including, e.g., national
affairs, the economy and foreign affairs) and ‘personal conversation,’ centered on
education, religion, crime, and entertainment. This distinction does not apply well to
HPTSC, where group participants discussed a wide range of issues as political. Often,
they talked about issues that wouldn’t be considered within Wyatt et al.’s definition of
politics, but they talked about them in a public-spirited way (as Eliasoph, 1998,
stipulates), connecting them to wider concerns, enabling difference of opinion and
interrogating oppression. The group conversation shows how slippery the
personal/political distinction is—conversations that start with personal issues can move to
political implications and back within seconds.
One of the interesting things to note about the conversations discussed in the
following section is that they aren’t about Harry Potter. The fictional world helped
members come together, feel a connection, and create an environment of trust; once
political etiquette was established, the group could have political conversations, unrelated
to the fictional narratives.
Consider the following conversation, where the group discussed rape. According
to Wyatt et al., this discussion would fall under “personal issues” as it is a discussion of
crime. Yet of course any crime is connected to social and cultural aspects, and has
implications for law, policy, and penal institutions. This is clearly exemplified in the
group’s discussion:

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Dave: Rapists go to jail, though I think they should be killed.
Erin: Rapists don’t always go to jail. Statistically, most of the time rape doesn’t
get reported. There is the culture of blaming the victim.
Astera: They say she was asking for it.
Maura: Especially if it was the husband.
Shelly: Because you’re considered the husband’s property. How do you prove that
your spouse raped you? Say that yesterday you had sex, and today you say no,
what’s the difference between the two days?
Dave: Consent.
Maura: Try to prove that to an all-men jury.
Astera: Try to prove that to anyone.
The fact that this discussion would not be considered “political” for Wyatt et al.
has wider implications than “measurement validity.” It is a dangerous distinction to be
making theoretically—it depoliticizes issues, divorcing them from their wider social
implications.
A central topic in the group discussion—identity politics—would most likely also
fall under “personal conversation” in Wyatt et al.’s distinction. The two main identity
topics discussed in HPTSC were LGBTQ identities and race/ethnicity. One of the group’s
conversations bridged the two: it started with a discussion of Laci Green, a YouTube
vlogger who used the term “tranny” to refer to transsexuals and received a lot of flak.
This led to the following conversation about the use of labels for different social groups.
The conversation was exceptional in terms of group participants’ willingness to admit
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their own uncertainties about appropriate uses of labels and to discuss a topic that is often
considered taboo:
Tim: There’s the question of labels. They have so much to do with the time and
context – queer, gay, black, negro, colored. People used these words in the past
when they were not offensive.
Maura: And people get in trouble for having used these words when it was still
acceptable.
Erin: Now I think ‘person of color’ is the most appropriate label.
Maura: Is ‘black’ accepted? I never know, some people say I should use African-
American but not everyone is African-American.
Astera: I can never decide. I generally use black and if someone is offended by it I
apologize.
Tim: It’s like Latino or Hispanic.
Erin: Which are very different things.
Shelly: And some people would prefer Chicano. But how do you know?
Tim: You ask.
In this conversation, participants discuss the topic of race, a topic that is
uncomfortable, and thus often avoided—particularly among young Americans. I
mentioned previously Cathy Cohen’s (2011) work about Millenials and the “myth of a
post-racial society,” in which (white) young people often think of race as irrelevant and
prefer to avoid the topic altogether. But unlike the avoidance of race/ethnicity discussed
in previous chapters—one that often functions through an assumption of whiteness—here
race was discussed head on. It is important to note that none of the HPTSC participants
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were black—the conversation may have looked differently if they were. Yet the group
wasn’t homogenous either—it included members of different sexual orientations,
different religions and different ethnic backgrounds. Moreover, the group’s tackling of
the issue was decisively different from assuming that we are “post-race.”
At another instance, the group linked race and discrimination to the prison
system:
Tim: There’s the problem of race in prison, young black men. I teach kids who all
know someone who is in prison. Some statistics say more than 25% of young
black men will spend time in prison. Some of it is just ‘walking while black.’
Astera: In my civics class we talked about it that up to 1979 in [local city], after
10 pm blacks would get arrested.
Tim: Informal curfew.
Neta: There’s the Bob Dylan song, Hurricane. It has a line – “if you’re black, you
better not show up on the streets.”
Tim: It’s a true story. This boxer who was arrested, he could have been a pretty
good boxer. He was in prison for 15 years and Bob Dylan took him up as his
project. But most people don’t have Bob Dylan writing songs for them.
According to the distinction made by Wyatt et al., all the group discussions would
be seen as non-political, as they use entertainment content as a starting point. Yet that
belies the many connections that people make between their “personal” lives and
“political issues”—these connections are what makes politics resonant for people. For
HPTSC participants, broadening the political goes beyond the question of scholarly
definitions, to actively valuing and encouraging a wide scope of discussions. It means
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including the broad range of topics young people are interested and passionate about as
important and legitimate. While group participants wouldn’t use that terminology, their
broadening of the political allowed a range of conversations to happen, and to be read
through a politically relevant lens.
Informal political talk is not just communicating about policy—it is about
understanding who you are, what your stance is, and building collective opinion.
Quantitative research enforces political/non-political distinctions out of methodological
necessity, because to measure political talk you need to distinguish it from social talk.
Yet ethnographic examination allows us to be attentive to the connections people make,
and how politics is made resonant by linking it to the personal. The moments in which
the personal turns into the political are exactly where we should focus our attention.
Mobilization—where does action fit in?
Much quantitative research on political talk considers it in relation to outcome
variables such as civic engagement or political participation (e.g. Eveland, 2004). In
ethnographic studies, there is a different conception of the relative importance of talking
and doing. In the Dewey perspective, political talk is valuable in its own sake—as a
collective good, for the development of citizens—and not only when it leads to
measureable “outcomes” such as voting. In Eliasoph’s study, political talk was valued
even more than social action. Eliasoph discusses volunteer groups whose focus on
“solvable issues” caused them to avoid discussions that seemed political.
This chapter suggests a middle ground between the two approaches, focusing on
attempts to link talk to political action, and examining whether and how these are taken
up by participants (in Chapter 7, we will discuss the utility of a wider definition of
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mobilization). Unlike Eliasoph’s volunteers, HPTSC group participants did not shy away
from discussing political issues, even when controversial. However, the group faced
challenges with translating these large concerns to actionable steps.
For Erin, the group leader, the purpose of HPTSC was very closely connected to
taking civic action. Erin envisioned a strong connection between talking about issues and
acting upon them:
I think if you're taking the time to continue to expose yourself and learn about it,
something in you is just going to, like, you won't be able to live with it. You won't
be able to -- you feel you have to do something.
The link Erin describes between learning, talking and doing is one that is
predicated on strong personal commitment. To her, learning about issues will necessarily
lead to taking action as one would feel strongly compelled to do so. Scholars agree that
engaging in political talk is linked to taking political action, though through other
mechanisms. Verba, Schlozman & Brady (1995) consider the value of participation in
civic associations for political participation. Such groups, they claim, are often the locus
of attempts to stimulate political involvement, through requests from others. Such
invitations are much more likely to be met with a positive answer when they come from
someone you know personally.
In HPTSC, group leader Erin often attempted to connect the issues the group
discussed to actionable steps, as in this example around Walmart’s labor practices:
Erin: I also wanted to show you another video – it’s a video the HPA did about
Walmart… They want to open another store in Chinatown and people are trying
to stop them. There was a teach-in on Thursday with students from Chinatown
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talking about why Walmart would be bad for their community. They come in with
low prices, take the small businesses out of business and offer no living wages, no
health benefits.
[After the video:]
Astera: Go HPA!
Maura: That was cool.
Erin: I wanted to show you that, to show how Harry Potter can help engage in
issues… On Saturday there is a march in Chinatown and I’m going, let me know
if any of you want to join. I will be train-pooling from the [name of station] at 9
am.
Astera: I have cross country in the morning but I might come afterwards.
Erin’s invitation remained unrequited, as did her additional mention of protests
around Walmart two weeks later, and an invitation to engage in voter registration for the
HPA. In her interview, Astera told me that she wanted to go to the Walmart protest but,
due to sports practice, couldn’t leave together with Erin, and felt uncomfortable going on
her own. Maura also cited practical obstacles to joining when I asked her about it: “I
would have loved to go to that protest against Walmart. I hate Walmart. But I didn’t have
a way to get there.” Busy schedules and limited access to transportation are often cited as
barriers to participation of young people, as are parental concerns—though at the same
time we can also question participants’ level of motivation.
Still, one possible value of these invitations may be an increased sense of political
efficacy. As Zukin et al. (2006, p. 118) show, most youth don’t see themselves as able to
make a lot of difference politically. About half of young people agree that “people like
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me don’t have any say about what the government does.” In terms of making change in
their communities, only 1 in 10 young people believe they can make a “great deal” of
difference, 4 in 10 say they can make “some” difference. Invitations to participate in
action, like those that occurred in HPTSC, may contribute to members’ sense that
“something can be done.”
While this wasn’t raised in group discussions, I discussed efficacy with some of
the group members in interviews. Maura, for example, talks about discrimination as a
social justice issue she feels strongly about. She explains:
For a while I just didn’t think that there was [anything I personally can do]
because what can one person do against all of the injustices of the world. It's a
daunting task. But there's other people trying and you can join them and just fight
together, raise people’s awareness to be like, “This is still going on, stop it.”
Participating in group discussions, and being invited to participate in action, may
have aided Maura’s sense that “there’s other people trying and you can join them.”
It may come as a surprise that when HPTSC members discussed actionable steps,
institutional politics was rarely on their radar. One of the possible concerns around the
self-expressive citizen is a disconnection from traditional spheres of politics. At the same
time, the group did not engage in a disavowal of the system. For example, the group
valued voting, and discussed voter registration as an actionable step the chapter can take:
Erin: What are we capable of doing in HPA? One thing is voter registration […]
Tim: Many people are registered to vote but the harder thing is to get them to
vote, especially the younger people. That’s where it really makes a big difference.
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You can get people registered but if you have 30% of young people voting you’re
lucky.
Shelly: So how do you get them to vote? How do you get them to care and learn?
How do you make it cool?
Erin: You write a book like Harry Potter and then you make the connections.
Maura: Or, you write Harry Potter, and then you tell people to vote.
Erin: Yeah, if JK Rowling would say vote, the whole fan-base would do it.
While the group agreed on the value of voting, those who search direct linkages
between the groups’ discussions and partisan politics may be surprised. The following
conversation, emerging in social chit-chat after the formal ending of a group meeting,
was the one time group members openly discussed their partisan identification, only to
reveal their ambivalent stance towards that identity:
Tim: You wouldn’t believe it, but I’m a registered Republican.
Shelly: I was, but I switched.
Maura: I am too, by mistake. I chose Democrat but somehow it came out
Republican.
Shelly: I feel like I’m a mole.
Maura: Me too, that’s why I don’t switch it. I like getting their materials.
Tim: My party drifted so far away from me the last 15 years. Both parties have
become more radical. The left is more to the center, but the right has gone so far
to the far right.
Erin: I think both parties are pretty similar.
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This conversation can be seen as a wake-up call to the common use of partisan
identification as a key variable in political communication research. Tim, who throughout
the group meetings expressed liberal views, recognizes the contradiction himself when he
asserts “you wouldn’t believe it, but I’m a registered Republican.” Shelly talks about
“switching” parties, showing the fluidity of this identity, often thought to be quite fixed.
Maura is a registered Republican “by mistake”—moreover, she has no intention of fixing
this mistake since she likes feeling “like a mole.” And finally, Erin, the political animal
of the group, claims that to her “both parties are pretty similar”—a statement we would
usually attribute only to those with the most limited political knowledge and interest. This
conversation, like many others the group held, shows how much we still don’t know
about the way that citizens make sense of political life. To understand political talk, we
need to start by listening.
Conclusion
The context of the Harry Potter as a Tool for Social Change study group is
admittedly an idiosyncratic one, even in relation to some of the examples we’ve seen in
previous chapters. Not often do dedicated fans, who have a mastery of a fictional text
fueled by a strong emotional connection, make such explicit attempts to connect these
towards a discussion of real-world issues within a face-to-face interaction. At the same
time, this unique context—and the political discussions it engendered—can teach us
much about the underlying mechanisms that can support vibrant political talk through
popular culture, particularly for young people.
One could ask—why did this group need Harry Potter? Why not just get together
and “talk politics”? Some of the group conversations, as detailed in the second and third
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mechanisms, never touched on the fictional world. At the same time, it was the fan
context—the love of the stories and the mastery of the text—that brought the
intergenerational group of participants together and enabled these conversations in the
first place. The connection to a fictional world helped create a context in which the group
could overcome the anxieties of talking politics, the “social groundlessness” of it
(Warren, 1996). Connecting these discussions to a text they’re fluent in allows them to
feel confident as contributors. For the group, fictional worlds proved especially helpful to
discuss issues that are often perceived as thorny, such as racism and discrimination.
Rarely would a group of strangers be comfortable talking about LGBTQ identities or race
relations openly—not only as a way to enforce in-group/out-group boundaries (Walsh,
2004) but in a public-spirited manner that pays attention to questions of oppression
(Eliasoph, 1998). Coming at these issues through the metaphor of fictional minorities—
werewolves and house-elves—enabled these taboos to be penetrated, though some
participants may resist those attempts. Moreover, once the group established its political
etiquette, in which public discussion was deemed appropriate and desirable (Eliasoph,
1998, p. 21), and based on the group’s wide definition of the political, a broad range of
discussions could take place that were of political interest to participants, many of them
not connected to fictional worlds at all. Yet, while some of these discussions were
connected to mobilization opportunities, these did not seem to be taken up actively by
participants. The value of the invitations to participate may have been in a heightened
sense of political efficacy, particularly given the ambivalent relationship towards
institutional politics.
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If indeed many young people are attracted to a model of self-actualizing
citizenship, in which they want to express their voice and connect their action to their
interests, we need to increasingly pay attention to contexts that bridge between political
worlds and different areas that are of interest to young people—whether they be popular
culture texts, games, social media, or other hobbies and interests. As Wojcieszak and
Mutz (2009) claim, young people are doing much of their political talk in spaces that
connect to their leisure interests, spaces they are often much more passionate about than
they are about politics.
Connections between popular culture passions and social issues are being made
on an everyday basis, in a variety of spaces in which people—and particularly young
people—are engaging, both online and off. Non-political online forums (Graham, 2012),
film discussion forums (van Zoonen, 2007) and YouTube comments (van Zoonen et al.,
2010) are only some examples of “third spaces” where political talk can happen, often in
unexpected ways (Wright, 2012). But theories of political talk have yet to specify the
mechanisms through which this connection works. Extending beyond the specific context
of HPTSC, this case study helps explicate the mechanisms connecting political discussion
to different areas of interest. The three mechanisms suggested in this chapter elucidate
how people can carve connections between private and public concerns, between non-
political and political contexts.
1. Scaling up (and down)
The process of “scaling up” can be understood as one of translation. In the case of
HPTSC, it was connecting a fantastical world to real-world issues, but we can use it to
think of any translation from a personal to a political context. Scaling up is particularly
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important for the self-actualizing citizen, to cultivate the feeling that politics resonates
with them. We also saw how the process of “scaling down” may operate, perhaps as an
inadvertent tactic of a participant who is uncomfortable with political discussion or more
focused on private than public concerns. To study political conversation in non-political
spaces, we need to identify moments of scaling up (or down), and understand the
mechanisms through which scaling up can be supported.
2. Broadening the political
In HPTSC, the group’s wide definition of the political allowed a broad range of
issues to be discussed in a public-spirited manner. Examining the group discussions
showed the broad range of issues participants considered as political, as well as the
muddiness of what quantitative scholars distinguish as personal and political (e.g. Wyatt,
Kim & Katz, 2000). In examining non-political discussion spaces, a narrow definition of
“the political” not only limits our analysis, but denies the ways that the political can be
widened. As Dahlgren (2002, p. 6) states, using a wide definition of the political “allows
for more avenues for interesting investigation since it keeps open the border-crossing
between the political and the non-political.”
3. Mobilization
Informal political talk can be seen as valuable in its own sake, or as a precursor
for other outcomes, such as civic participation. Quantitative research often uses talk
mostly as a variable predicting other outcomes (see Eveland, 2004). Ethnographic
research often values talk in its own sake, while paying little attention to the connection
between talk and action. This chapter suggests observing attempts to link talk to
mobilization and to institutional politics, and examining whether and how these are taken
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up by participants. Mobilization efforts can and should be examined in other non-political
contexts as well.
Increasingly, scholars argue for the need to more strongly connect the study of
popular culture with that of political communication (Dahlgren, 2006; Delli Carpini,
2013). Underlying many of these arguments is the claim that popular culture is too
powerful a force to disregard its role in political life (Street, 1997). In the previous
chapters, we’ve seen this connection happen as an organizational strategy, but honing
down to a small group context shows us the value of these connections on the level of
interpersonal interaction. For HPTSC group participants, popular culture served as a
resource to make politics something that is resonant, engaging, and relevant to their own
lives. In the next chapter, we’ll start concluding this project by going back to the concept
of alternative citizenship models, and asking how these case studies exemplify alternative
citizenship, and also which gaps they shine on this concept.
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CHAPTER SEVEN: REASSESSING ALTERNATIVE CITIZENSHIP MODELS
In the past few decades, the question of youth civic engagement has been at the
center of both academic and public debate. While many scholars have pointed to
decreasing levels of youth political engagement, citing lower levels of voting, news
consumption and trust in political institutions, other scholars make the argument that
younger generations tend towards different forms of civic and political engagement, ones
that are closely tied to their personal interests and social networks (e.g. Ito et al. 2009;
Jenkins et al. 2006; Kahne, Lee & Feezell, 2013).
One way in which this debate can be understood is under the general notion of
changing styles of citizenship (e.g. Bennett, 2008). A host of scholars, which I identify
under a shared paradigm of alternative citizenship models claim that in the current social,
political and media environment, young people perceive, express and act upon their
citizenship in ways that substantially differ from the conceptions of their parents’
generation, with important consequences to civic education, and to the larger political
system. Many scholars within this paradigm seek to point at the civic potential of such
models, while also being sensitive to their areas of weakness—an aim which this project
shares. However, I argue that this paradigm has paid insufficient attention to the
processes through which groups functioning within alternative citizenship models work,
and thus to factors that account for varying levels of participatory political outcomes
among them. The goal of this project, following the logic of the extended case method
(Burawoy, 1991), is to improve upon alternative citizenship models through an in-depth
empirical and ethnographic examination of the specific shapes that alternative citizenship
takes at the level of groups connecting popular culture interests with civic goals.
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This chapter will build on the empirical findings and observations made in the
previous three content chapters, as well as additional empirical data, examining the civic
and political participation of members of the Harry Potter Alliance, the Nerdfighters, and
Imagine Better, in order to point at what alternative citizenship models have failed to
explain so far. The goal is to improve on these theories by making them both more
specified and more widely applicable. The framework of alternative citizenship models
and the empirical observations will also be used to contribute to other bodies of literature,
including ones around associations and their democratic effects, online-based social ties,
and mobilizing structures.
The main argument I will make is that models within the emerging paradigm of
alternative citizenship have generally underestimated the importance of mobilized civic
communities. Specifically, I will claim that: 1. Many alternative citizenship models have
incorrectly assumed that social ties within these alternative community structures are
necessarily characterized as “thin,” with implications for these groups’ civic potential,
2. Those who stress alternative forms of participation have missed the importance of
mobilizing structures in order to enable civic action within such models, often assuming
that such action emerges spontaneously from popular culture experiences, and
3. Citizenship models are strongly shaped by the group context, and may be characterized
by various flavors of civic hybridity.
This chapter will begin with a quick recap of alternative citizenship models and
their key arguments, as well as the theoretical framework suggested by Mark E. Warren
around the democratic effects of associations, all discussed in detail in Chapter 2. This
will set the stage for a discussion of the three specific areas where alternative citizenship
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models may be lacking. This chapter will conclude by considering implications beyond
the kinds of groups discussed in this project, for thinking about networked individuals,
sites of socialization, and varying cultural contexts.
Alternative citizenship models and democratic effects - a brief reminder
Chapter 2 provided an in-depth discussion of alternative citizenship models,
including a frame through which to understand models of citizenship, a discussion of the
dominant legacy models, the idea of changing notions of good citizenship, and a survey
of 11 different suggestions which I consider under the emerging paradigm of alternative
citizenship models.
When we talk of alternative citizenship models, we are thinking of them as
alternative to traditional, legacy models of good citizenship, such as the informed citizen
(Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996) or the dutiful citizen (Bennett, 1998), which have
dominated many academic and lay ideas of what good citizenship means in the past
century (Schudson, 1999). While many have claimed that these citizenship models are in
decline (most famously, Putnam, 2000) alternative citizenship models argue that the
nature of civic and political engagement we are currently witnessing can more accurately
be interpreted as a change in citizenship styles. Chapter 2 provided a survey of a wide
range of suggestions within alternative citizenship models, each with their specific
flavor—I will not repeat this here, but rather will underscore the claim underlying this
paradigm: That ways to enact, or to imagine, good citizenship are not a constant, but
rather evolve over time, alongside social and technological transformation (Schudson,
1999). Following this argument, due to the radical socio-technological changes in the past
several decades, it comes as no surprise that conceptions of citizenship are bound to
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change as well. These broad societal changes are theorized as a move away from
cohesive social models, in which important aspects of the identity—including political
ideology—were mostly defined by one’s social grouping, and towards an era of more
flexible social group membership, in which self-identity is perceived as a reflexive
project (Giddens, 1991; Inglehart, 1997). Within such an era, the paradigm claims,
citizenship looks and behaves differently, as well, as something that can be chosen, rather
than ascribed (Bennett, 1998).
In Chapter 2, we also considered in-depth the framework suggested by Mark
Warren’s work on the democratic effects of associations. Nuancing the generally
accepted notion that attributes a general wide range of positive effects to membership in
associations, Warren argues that expecting civic groups to be able to produce all manner
of democratic effects at the same time puts them at an impossible task. Instead, he argues,
there are trade-offs among the different possible democratic functions an association can
achieve. Utilizing Warren’s typology of three broad areas of democratic effects, this
project focuses on developmental effects (effects on the capacities of democratic citizens)
and public sphere effects (contributing to the formation of public opinion), with
institutional effects—effects on decision-making and collective action—put on the
backburner.
Specifying this more selective goal is important as we’re moving on to the task of
reassessing alternative citizenship models. In what follows, I will be using the empirical
findings of this project to contribute to three areas in the alternative citizenship paradigm:
the nature of ties underlying alternative citizenship models, the underlying structures
needed to connect participatory cultural participation with civic and political
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participation, and the ways models of good citizenship are shaped by social groups and
by contexts and can be characterized by civic hybridity.
Alternative citizenship as mobilized civic communities
The nature of ties and their role in enabling groups to cultivate civic and political skills
In Chapter 2, I discussed the theoretical notion that we are currently undergoing a
disembedding of the social institutions that have previously defined many of our life
choices, so that the nature of affiliation become a matter of choice rather than being
socially dictated (Beck, 2007/2009; Giddens, 1991; Inglehart, 1997). If cohesive social
groups are indeed in decline, scholars are still in the process of making sense of the new
kinds of affiliations that are taking their place (see, e.g. Wuthnow, 2002).
The rise of new media is closely intertwined with this question. Some of the
earliest work on virtual communities thought of such groups as a replacement for the
strong ties traditionally attributed to small local communities (Rheingold, 1993). When
Howard Rheingold describes reaching to his online community for advice and support
when his child ran a fever late at night, these are the kinds of strong ties he’s thinking of.
On the other hand, the past decades have seen a re-valuing of the role of weak ties—that
can be particularly helpful in reaching certain goals, like finding a job—starting with
Granovetter’s classic work (1973), and again bolstered by the current era of digital
connection (e.g. Shirky, 2008).
Few of the alternative citizenship models I have surveyed in Chapter 2 explicitly
specify the nature of ties underlying the connections between citizens (in fact, these
connections are rarely treated explicitly in work around legacy citizenship models,
either). The exception for this is Bennett’s work on the self-actualizing citizen. Bennett
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(2007, 2008) sees the self-actualizing as differing from legacy citizenship models on
three levels: motivations to participation, preferred styles of civic action, and relationship
to media. Whereas the Dutiful Citizen sees civic engagement as a matter of obligation,
self-actualizing citizens are much more individually focused, “motivated by the potential
of personally expressive politics” (Bennett, Freelon, & Wells, 2010, p. 397). The sense
here is of a personalization of politics, where citizens address issues that reflect their
personal values and channel their personal interests, activated through “loose networks”
and “thin social ties” (Bennett, 2008, p. 14).
In Bennett’s later, more movement-focused work, some of the implications of
these networked connections are further fleshed out. For example, Lance Bennett and
Alexandra Segerberg (2011) describe a new logic of action—that of connective action—
where personalized content sharing across media networks can give rise to social
movements, without the need to establish clear collective identities or agreed-upon
messaging. In this model of action, most networked ties are seen as “thin ties” that
connect disparate groups and individuals. They are beneficial for creating large-scale
action networks, but may lack in creating a strong sense of identity and cohesiveness
within the movement, with the risk of movements becoming “chaotic and unproductive”
(Bennett & Segerberg, 2011, p. 25).
Are the social connections underlying alternative citizenship necessarily thin ties
and loose networks? And, more importantly, when and why does the nature of ties
matter? In the following section, I argue for complicating the distinction between thick
and thin ties, which doesn’t prove sufficient for the kinds of groups discussed in this
project. These groups cannot be simply characterized as having “thick” or “thin” ties.
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Rather, they create a context within which different members create a variety of ties.
While some of these connections are indeed “thin,” many participants in these groups
form networked ties that are extremely personally significant, by uniting on the basis of
shared passion for a popular text and shared participatory culture practices. The nature of
these ties can shape the ability of these groups to cultivate democratic effects. In Chapter
2, we discussed Warren’s arguments about cost of exit and its implication to the possible
democratic effects of an organization. If for many members, these groups are a
meaningful part of their social world and their self-identity, this may mean these
members have a stronger incentive to remain in the groups even in the face of challenges
and obstacles.
It is easy to fall into a dichotomy in which we imagine thick ties as supporting
meaningful activism, and thin ties as leading to meaningless “slacktivism.” For example,
when Malcolm Gladwell (2010) argued against the value of online activism, one of his
critiques was that so-called “Twitter revolutions” are based on thin social ties, which
undercuts their political resilience. Gladwell sets up a comparison between social media
activists of today and the civil rights activists of the past. Citing Douglas McAdam’s
work on the Freedom Summer (1988) as evidence, Gladwell highlights the point that
what enabled civic rights activists’ bravery was the degree of their personal connection to
the civil-rights movement—having close friends who took on risky action with them. In
contrast, Gladwell (2010, n.p.) claims, “the kind of activism associated with social media
isn’t like this at all. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties.”
Yet this set-up—thin ties lead to meaningless, unsubstantial activism; thick ties
“of the past” are the only way to enable “real activism”—is a deceptive one, and some
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models try to move beyond it. An example for such a model is Paul Lichterman’s (1996)
work on The Search for Political Commitment (which I discussed briefly in my survey of
alternative citizenship models). The book is a response to a dichotomy similar to the one
presented by Gladwell, the dichotomy between communitarian activism that is rooted in
obligation to a community, versus personalized politics that is rooted in individualism.
Lichterman argues that many theorists coming from a communitarian model envision a
sort of seesaw model, assuming a dichotomous distinction between the communal and the
individual, in which “as self-expression and public life become more important they pull
down morality, political dedication, and public virtue” (p. 10) This type of rhetoric often
claims that present ties are a decline from an imagined, “better” past. Based on
ethnographic research with four activist organizations, Lichterman’s work goes “beyond
the seesaw model” by examining commitment that is rooted in personalism—“shared
ways of speaking or acting that emphasize the personal self rather than its relationships to
specific communities or institutions” (p. 23). The culture of personalized politics was
found to facilitate activism in some ways, while limiting it in others.
Based on this project’s empirical case studies, I argue that, while the kind of
communities within which alternative citizenship takes place—often networked
communities—differs from the cohesive social groups imagined in the dutiful citizen
model, this does not necessarily mean that the connections underlying such groups
represent “thin social ties.” Rather, many participants create within these groups ties that
are meaningful to their social identity. As we’ve seen multiple times across the previous
three chapters, many members of these groups feel that they are part of a social
community, with a strong sense of intimacy, mutual trust, and a shared identity. This may
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have important implications to members’ sustained participation in these groups. To
examine the types and roles of social connections in these groups, let’s recall a few
examples from previous chapters, and add some new ones to the mix.
From my first investigations into the Harry Potter Alliance and Invisible Children,
one of my earliest findings was around the key role of the “sense of community” fostered
in these groups (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2012). This work was grounded in the
arguments that fan studies scholars have made about the role of social ties (e.g. Baym,
2000), but sought to further extend that work. Previous works on fan communities has
shown how cultural references create affiliations among people who are otherwise
strangers (Hellekson & Busse 2006), or, in Rhiannon Bury's terms (2005, 215), how they
enable connections with "like-minded others." My co-authors and I examined how this
social connection was used to further the groups’ civic goals. First and foremost, we
found that the “sense of community” is a key reason why young people become involved
with these groups in the first place. Many are initially invited by a friend, and often stay
involved at least partially for the enjoyment of being with their friends. When there are
challenges to their participation (say, when they have conflicting school commitments,
encounter barriers to their plans, or are simply bored), the social commitments to others
may often keep them coming and help them overcome the slump. The groups also build
on these communities in a second, more structural manner. Social fan communities often
create elaborate infrastructures—websites, mailing lists, Facebook groups, forums, etc.
Groups like the HPA deploy these infrastructures when mobilizing members toward their
civic goals.
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This “sense of community” was consistently reaffirmed by members interviewed
for this project, and was found to function very similarly for members of Nerdfighters.
Many of the young people I’ve talked to saw other members of the group as their most
valued social connections, the people they turn to when they are in need. In Chapter 5 we
encountered Kevin, who talked about his HPA-affiliated quidditch team being “each
other’s best friends.” For him, these friends are “the first person you turn to” when in
need of social support. Other members recalled talking to their friends from Nerdfighteria
or HPA about difficult issues such as parent’s divorce or illness, bullying, anxiety,
depression, uncertainties about one’s sexual or gender identity and many more.
One of the reasons that social ties are particularly important for young people in
these groups is that for many of these members, finding close friends in not always an
easy task in their “off-line” lives. This point was particularly important for some of the
younger members of these groups, who, being in high school, have relatively little control
over their social circles. Theo (15) says that when he got into Nerdfighteria, “I started
having a social life, which is pretty new to me…”. He explains that before finding
Nerdfighteria,
It was a really shallow friendship… This was like, “Oh, we’re in the same class.”
Now… I joined Tumblr and I met this entire community. And then, we had
completely—our interests overlap so much and you can talk about anything and
they would understand it, so that makes it really easy to make friends.
Sheila (15), a Nerdfighter and HPA member, says:
I’ve never had like such close friends that I know care about me and like
genuinely are into what I'm doing with my life and where I'm going. And now
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that I have those friends, I feel more like assured with myself and I feel like I can
make a difference through this community in helping out with people.
Daniela (23) felt like an outsider at school, but found that Nerdfighters was “a
community full of outsiders.” For many of these young people, dealing with the many
challenges of contemporary young adulthood, the relationships they have with others in
these groups are a central part of their lives, their self-identity, and sometimes even a life
line. They are far from weak ties.
Part of the question around the nature of affiliations connects to whether these are
online-only relationships or whether they “bleed in” to “real life.” Nancy Baym and
Andrew Ledbetter’s (2009) work on interpersonal relationships on a music-based social
network site argues that when online ties are strong, then, given a choice, people would
choose to move some of the relationship offline and have it manifest physically. This is
true for many participants in our case study groups as well. As we’ve seen in previous
chapters, the HPA has local chapters that have both social gatherings and come together
for campaigns and actions (ranging from beach clean-ups and toy drives to phone-
banking for marriage equality). The Harry Potter as a Tool for Social Change group
discussed in Chapter 6 was entirely a face-to-face group (only some of the members used
a Facebook page, and only as a form of coordination)—an exception to the usual nature
of these groups. Nerdfighters don’t have formal chapters, but across the nation (and the
world) there are around 200 informal local groups, many of which hold physical meet-
ups as well (see Figure 13). Much of my research took place in physical gatherings where
members of these groups chose to come together and spend time with each other in
person.
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Figure 13. Map of Local Nerdfighter groups in the U.S. Source: www.nerdfighteria.com

At the same time, for some of the members of these groups, coming together
physically is not an option, for different reasons. Inez (16) lives in a small town on the
border with Mexico, where she is the only Nerdfighter she knows of. Calvin (25) has
participated with the HPA for over a year while being stationed in the Navy in Guam.
Still, such remote participants have often found ways to express their ties and
relationships with other members in multiple ways. In the study mentioned before, Baym
and Ledbetter (2009) have found that relationship strength is strongly predicted by how
many different media people communicate through, while each medium added, in their
quantitative measure, a quarter point in closeness. Ledbetter (2014) formalizes this notion
as media multiplexity, which asserts that “dyads with stronger ties use more media to
maintain their relationships and, simultaneously, employing more media in relationships
may strengthen relational ties” (p. 363). Caroline Haythornthwaite’s (2005) work on
media use and tie strength, which lies at the root of media multiplexity, further suggests
that within a group, use of media conforms to a unidimensional scale (p. 6), meaning that,
those who use only one medium use the same one medium; those who use two tend to
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use the same second medium, etc. Haythornthwaite interprets these dimensions as
suggesting several tiers of media use, each supporting ties of different strengths.
Accordingly, in our case study groups, there is a variety of possible ties between
members. There are base-line forms of communication that are shared between most in
the group (i.e., watching the VlogBrother videos for Nerdfighters, being on the email list
for HPA), with varying ways of deepening the connection—of which face-to-face
meetings are a possible, but not only, route. Remote members who cannot meet face-to-
face will often communicate with others through a variety of media. Inez communicates
with her Nerdfighter friends not only through the Nerdfighteria Ning and forums, but also
through vlogging together on a collab channel. Daniela is a member of the subgroup of
Nerdfighteria called Catitude, and sees them as her “Nerdfighter family.” She first met
some of her Catitude friends while being together on online livestreams, moved on to
communicate with them through Twitter, and would have “heart-to-heart conversations”
throughout the night on Skype. So even online-only ties can be maintained through a
multitude of media, as an evidence of (and possible cause for) their strength.
On the other hand, some of the ties in these groups definitely are weak—as
participatory cultures, these communities are characterized by low barriers to entry
(Jenkins et al., 2006). The norms of conversation within them open up the possibility to
meet and talk to a range of different people and obviously, only few of those connections
become strong ties. These weak ties have many of their own strengths. For example,
several Nerdfighters mentioned learning about how it (really) is to live in another country
by chatting with foreign Nerdfighters. Weak ties also mean that you are peripherally
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connected to people who are different from you in several aspects—a potential asset for
heterogeneous discussion, as we’ve discussed before.
To summarize the nature of affiliations in these groups, we see that tie strength
shouldn’t be characterized as a group-level variable, but rather an individual-level one.
Participants within these groups exhibit varying levels of tie strength, and varying natures
of affiliations, which can range from loose networks, but which can also lead to
meaningful social belongings and a sense of strong shared identity with other group
members. So rather than conceptualizing groups underlying alternative citizenship
models as characterized by thin ties, we can see them as contexts that can support a
variety of ties, including ones that are strong and meaningful for members’ self-identity.
But how does this relate to the ability of these groups to further participatory politics?
When does tie strength matter?
For this question, we can hark back to Mark Warren and his work on democratic
effects. As we discussed in Chapter 2, under the Neo-Tocquevillian paradigm, there is
often the assumption that positive democratic effects are best achieved through “thick
association based on face-to-face relations.” This assumption is most strongly made in
the work of Robert Putnam (1993, 2000). To Warren, this assumption is wrong. “It
injects an unnecessary parochialism into the concept, while overlooking the democratic
benefits of socially ‘thin’ associations” (Warren, 2001, p. 40). Instead, Warren offers a
complex typology, which seeks to predict “how specific associational ecologies enhance
or constrain democracy” (p. 13). Warren doesn’t use tie strength as a separate category,
but many of his distinctions around the characteristics of associations hark to this issue.
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One related distinction Warren makes is the degree to which the association is
voluntary. A voluntary association is one in which bonds are “held together by chosen
normative allegiance rather than by other kinds of force” (p. 98)—according to this
definition, the groups we’re considering are obviously voluntary. At the same time, the
voluntary/non-voluntary distinction is seen as a scale rather than a binary, where “the
degree of nonvoluntariness can be represented by the costs to individuals of exiting the
association” (p. 99), including security, livelihood, identity or care or shelter. Another
distinction Warren makes, relevant to our interest in the nature of affiliation, regards the
“constitutive media of association,” or ways of making collective decisions and
organizing collective actions. Our case study groups would fall under groups whose
constitutive media of association is through communication and social resources (which
Warren calls ‘social media’—a confusing name given today’s terminology). Warren
claims that groups that are based on social connections may often become overburdened
when dealing with conflicts of political significance. Based on these factors, Warren
claims that one of the key characteristics of associations that shape their ability to enable
democratic effects is that of ease of exit. When exit is easy—that is, members can leave
with little costs in terms of their identity or livelihood—members have little incentive to
stay when faced with different challenges, obstructing the association’s ability to
cultivate certain kinds of democratic effects.
Warren would probably categorize the kinds of groups we’re looking at as
voluntary associations, where the constitutive media of association is social, and thus
where exit is easy—a point I will soon challenge. Based on these characteristics, he
predicts that such groups would be beneficial for some kinds of developmental effects,
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but less so for others: They should be good at enhancing a sense of political efficacy, and
they provide opportunities to receive information. They may cultivate “pre-political
skills,”
37
by giving individuals space to represent themselves to others, or when they are
in situations that demand a political response (consider the example of the activists
around Avatar: The Last Airbender in Chapter 4 and how they came to mobilize in
response to the casting decisions for the movie). Yet in Warren’s theorizing, such groups
will have low potential for developing political skills in their members. The reason is that,
due to the ease of exit, situations of conflict within the group will be resolved not
politically, but through members’ exit. In other words, if members don’t like what the
group is doing, they won’t discuss it with others and try to shape the group’s agenda but
simply leave—with the implication that the group’s ability to cultivate political skills will
be limited.
Let’s recall, though, that voluntariness is a scale, and so is ease of exit. Costs of
exit can include costs to one’s self-identity. So if, as we have shown, for many
participants these groups are central in terms of the strength of connections they have
made to others, and in terms of their self-identity (recall how Nerdfighters think of
themselves as “certain kinds of kids” or how HPA members feel they have found “like-
minded others”), this means that exit is more prohibitive, and the association has more
wiggle room in terms of allowing members to experiment with the cultivation of political
skills. Moreover, just like we said that within these groups we can see a variety of ties,
thus ease of exit can also vary at the level of participants—some members of the group

37
The notion of “pre-political” skills is similar to Dahlgren’s use of the civic culture
circuit as providing the “pre-conditions” for civic engagement (2003), as discussed in
Chapter 5.
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may perceive cost of exit as higher than others, based on personal investment and
individual tie strength. Those who are most socially connected to others in the group may
be the ones most likely to stick around even as the organization pushes them beyond their
comfort zones. For others, the group may offer other, more low stakes, opportunities for
participation that over time may increase their sense of civic agency.
As an example, let’s consider the campaign that Imagine Better conducted around
the third installment in the Hunger Games movie series, Mockingjay - Part 1, discussed
at the end of Chapter 5. As a reminder, in this campaign Imagine Better collaborated with
“Fight for $15,” a protest of fast-food workers striking in demand for fair wages and the
right to unionize. The campaign called participants to take direct action by visiting their
local McDonald’s and handing out information sheets about fair wages to the manager (in
addition to taking a selfie with the three finger salute and sharing it with the
#MyHungerGames hashtag). We mentioned Andrew Slack’s comment in The New
Yorker that “some members have expressed social anxiety about doing this” (Wiedeman,
2014). Addressing a retail manager, in-person, with a confrontational activist message is
indeed a high stakes move that many of the young members of the HPA would be wary
of. Yet many other HPA members took part in a different aspect of the campaign—
sharing their own experiences around economic struggles and even hunger on Twitter
through the #MyHungerGames hashtag. Here, many members shared, under their own
name, personal stories of economic struggle—including hunger, homelessness, lack of
basic living conditions—defying strong-held stereotypes about poverty (and many of the
perceptions of popular culture fans as upper middle class).

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Figure14. Tweets using the #MyHungerGames hashtag

In a conversation with Nick Couldry about the HPA’s campaign in collaboration
with “Fight for $15,” he suggested seeing the direct action at McDonald’s as a limit point
to the possible action repertoire of a group like the HPA. It may, he claimed, show the
“upper range” of the kinds of actions members of such a group are willing to undertake.
This is a powerful argument. At the same time, throughout my years of researching these
groups, I have seen them time and again push on such limit points.
In the past, a similar limit point was reached around phone-banking for marriage
equality. Several years back, the HPA had a Wrock for Equality campaign including a
concert, as well as participation in phone-banking to persuade voters in Maine to vote in
favor of marriage equality. Lucy (20) who at the time had recently opened a local HPA
chapter with her good friend Katelyn, really wanted to go to the concert but couldn’t. She
recalls:
Basically I had read the blog post that was explaining Wrock for Equality and I
was like, “Oh, that would be really cool to go to the concert for it, but it’s in
Maine and I don’t live there.” And then they said that you can do call-ins instead
of actually going to the event and you can still help out with the cause. And as I
mentioned I really, really, believe in equality, including for marriage. So I just
thought, “You know what, why not give it a shot? If I can change any one’s
mind, it might help out a little bit.” So I decided to do it and I had Katelyn with
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me. So every time we finished with the call I'm like, “Oh my gosh, this is so
exhausting.” We’ve got -- getting either people hanging up on us or explaining
that it’s wrong for one reason or another. She kept getting all the religious freaks
who are like, “It’s going to destroy the institution of marriage,” and just all of that
nonsense. But it was very, very much worth it.
The story Lucy tells is very much one of boundary-pushing. Lucy says she’s
adamant about her stance on marriage equality, but she had never before tried to persuade
anyone to vote a certain way. Lucy did it because she wanted to do something about
marriage equality—and she couldn’t come to the concert, but she could call people on the
phone. And she had Katelyn, her good friend, participating with her.
Katelyn and Lucy were surprised to find later that they had won the House Cup
for having logged the most phone-banking hours: they had each logged 4.5 hours of
phone-banking, adding up to 9 hours. She says, “it was so weird finding out because I
obviously thought there’s someone else that was going to get it. We only had two
members of us…”. Lucy says she realized that her actions did add up together and “it felt
like I at least helped make a dent in the issues. And it made me feel like maybe this is
going to go somewhere.”
Lucy was so surprised because she assumed many others would take up the
invitation to phone-bank. They did not. It is a difficult and intimidating endeavor. Not
many HPA members went to McDonald’s managers and handed them information sheets,
either. In Chapter 6, we saw that most of Erin’s invitations to mobilize the HPTSC
group—to come to the protest against Walmart in Chinatown, to register voters—were
unrequited. Yet remaining involved with these groups means that members keep
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receiving these invitations and at times, like Lucy, they might take them up. These groups
are also good at offering young members a host of other ways to get involved, many of
them lower-stakes (attending the concert, posting a three-finger-salute selfie), that may
over time help them build up the confidence to participate in higher stakes action as well.
The nature of affiliation is central in this regard. In Chapter 4, we saw how often
the commitment to other collab members helped Nerdfighters overcome the challenges of
video production. Similarly, making a commitment towards good friends to show up or
take action is a strong incentive, and even intimidating civic action is less intimidating
when you do it with your good friends. Warren sees “social media”—in the sense of
associations built on social relationships—as being “overburdened” by political goals, but
these groups show us that strong networked ties can also be the locus where action is
achieved through interpersonal commitment.
To conclude this first section, alternative citizenship models are not necessarily
built around weak ties. They can be built on a scale of possible ties, including very
personally meaningful ones. It’s not clear yet whether and how these new forms of
affiliation are taking the place of the (imagined?) cohesive ties of the past, but we know
that the mere fact that they are networked does not preclude them being thick. At least
according to Warren’s typology, tie strength does matter for certain kinds of civic goals.
Strong ties make for more difficult exit, which means members may persist in the face of
challenges and—over time—may push their own boundaries and gain valuable political
skills.

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Mobilizing structures
Alternative citizenship models, almost by definition, defy some of the formalized
aspects usually associated with civic organizations. Along with the mistrust of institutions
(Bennett, 1998), organizations within such models may refrain from clear hierarchies,
and allow for emergence of informal leadership (see Bimber, 2003; Flanagin, Stohl &
Bimber, 2006). As we’ve seen in previous chapters and will further elaborate on here,
this flexibility can be important in allowing such groups to navigate the scope of their
possible civic action (think, for example, of Erin’s flexibility in coming up with HPTSC
in Chapter 6). At the same time, I will argue that the focus on the “alternativeness” of
these citizenship models pays insufficient attention to the extent to which structures need
to be in place in order to enable civic action to happen. Alternative citizenship models
often look for the “potential” for civic action in spaces designated for other purposes—
hobbies, fan interests, affinities, yet—as we’ve argued in Chapter 4—this is not an
automatic transition. Rather, different mechanisms are needed to enable the translation
from popular culture interests to participatory politics. In this second section, we’ll recap
some of these examples and show how, within alternative citizenship models, civic action
needs to be structured, both on the micro level of individual interaction, and on macro
levels of groups and organizations.
Many scholars within the scope of alternative citizenship models are interested in
finding connections between popular culture interests or, more broadly, the things that
people do for fun, for leisure, or sociality—and the worlds of civic and political
engagement (e.g. Graham, 2012; van Zoonen, 2005, 2010; Wojcieszak & Mutz, 2009).
We’ve discussed before why this is an important move. Legacy models of citizenship
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imagine citizenship as emerging from a sense of social obligation. From early age on, the
(hypothetical) dutiful citizen is socialized to learn her role as a good citizen—one who
follows the news, one who is informed about the political happenings of the day and can
make rational decisions between various candidates, one who participates civically
through local, face to face organizations—through the example her parents set, through
schooling in the education system, through role models in the media
38
(Jennings &
Niemi, 1981). We can debate the extent to which this was an actual historical reality or an
imagined model, but in this scenario, being a good citizen is almost not a choice, it is a
social role one grows up into.
39

However, given the processes I’ve discussed of individuation and the loosening
of social structures of tradition, the new alternative citizen purportedly does not grow up
with the same sense of obligation. Some hypothesize the alternative citizen as obligated
mostly to their own drive to self-express, to be “who they really are.”
40
Acting on one’s
citizenship is perceived as one possible lifestyle choice (Thorson, 2010). Within this
context, as discussed in Chapter 6, self-actualizing citizens need to be “persuaded” of the
relevance of the political world to their lives, and to find new and different entry points
into civic participation. This premise underlies the work of several scholars yet, as I
argued in Chapter 4, many such models ignore the complex form of transfer that needs to

38
It is very likely that this model was also re-enforced through and around the popular
culture central for these generations—an interesting direction for future research.
39
This scenario is, in some ways, similar to what I have experienced growing up in Israel
of the 1980s, where one of the key obligations for the dutiful citizen—indoctrinated from
early age on—was the (literal) duty of serving in the military. I will return to this in the
conclusion of this chapter.
40
Though recall Lichterman’s (1996) argument that commitment can also be rooted in
individualized expression.
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happen—the fact that moving from popular culture interests to participatory politics is
not an automatic move.
In this project, I addressed this linkage in length through the concept of
mechanisms of translation. Mechanisms of translation refer to the ways that the same
practices that are honed in the context of online participatory culture can serve to extend
participatory politics. Mechanisms of translation are about using ideas, terms and
practices that are legible in one context to support the comprehension of another context.
In Chapter 4 I identified three mechanisms of translation, including tapping content
worlds and communities, creative production, and forming opinions, discussion and
diversity. We saw how employing popular culture practices on the one hand enabled
young people’s participation—for example, when vlog channels encouraged young
people to produce content in the face of challenges—but on the other hand, were
sometimes a barrier to this participation, as when Inez’s smearing of peanut butter on her
face made her political message incomprehensible to an outside observer.
But mechanisms of translation may not go far enough in stressing that
connections between cultural and political participation need to be actively brokered and
supported through leadership and institutionalization. To further highlight this point, I’d
like to employ a classic social movement concept—that of mobilizing structures—and
discuss its relevance to these groups, and to alternative citizenship models more widely.
Within social movement literature, mobilizing structures are understood as “these
collective vehicles, informal as well as formal, through which people mobilize and
engage in collective action” (McAdam, McCarthy & Zald, 1996, p. 3). Examining
mobilizing structures focuses on the meso-level of groups, organizations, and informal
235
networks, and asks how their organizational dynamics shape their ability to achieve their
goals. Work on mobilizing structures is rooted in two theoretical perspectives within
social movement literature (McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, 1996). One is resource
mobilization theory, which focuses on how social movement organizations (SMOs) bring
in money, supporters, alliances, and attention of the media, as key resources that are
crucial for an SMO to be effective. Within this theory, organizational structure is
understood as key to a movement’s success—dissent and grievances alone will not ensure
that a movement will attain its goals. A second theoretical tradition underlying
mobilizing structures is the political process model. This model emphasizes that social
movements are goal-oriented, political forms of action that often aim to challenge a
central state, and look for opportunities to do so.
For our purposes, mobilizing structures highlight the role of organizational
structures and the ability to mobilize to action given opportunities as central to an
organization’s success. Success, in this model, is defined mostly as the achievement of
the movement’s goal—what Warren (2001) categorizes as institutional effects. Yet due to
the focus of this project on developmental and public sphere effects, I will examine the
role of mobilizing structures in enabling organizations to cultivate their members’ civic
agency and to create structures for political discussion for them.
In what follows, I’ll look at two instances of mobilizing structures for such
purposes—one of micro-mobilization, and one of mobilization on the macro level of
organizations.
Mobilizing structures on the level of individuals. For an instance of micro-
mobilization, I’d like to return to the example we started this project off with—that of
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Erin, Jo and Natalie’s excursion to Occupy L.A.—and will examine the coordination
behind this somewhat-unusual HPA event. As a reminder, the initiator of the Occupy
L.A. excursion was Erin, the group leader of HPTSC (a year before she initiated her own
local chapter of the HPA and the HPTSC discussion group). At that time, Erin was a
relatively new participant with the L.A. Order of the Phoenix (LAOP), the Los-Angeles
based chapter of the HPA.
The LAOP as a chapter generally tended to shy away from politics, and preferred
the confines of charity and volunteerism—a tension we’ve touched on several times. In
interview in July 2010, shortly after they started the chapter, Ashley and Millie, the
chapter organizers, who are a married lesbian couple, were asked whether there would be
issues that they wouldn’t touch on with the HPA. Talking about their own involvement
with gay rights, they said:
We’re a new group, and we’re assuming that the people who join are going to be
open-minded about equality, but we don’t want to put any weirdness out there. So
we stick with things like the environment, cancer. Everyone agrees that cancer is
bad.
Over a year after that interview, the LAOP maintained their focus on charity.
Their main planned chapter campaigns for that year, aside from numerous social events,
were “Run for Her,” an event to support ovarian cancer research; a children’s toy drive
before Christmas; and “Accio books,” the HPA’s yearly book drive. However, the
flexibility of the organization in enabling informal leadership allowed individual
members to shape and widen the range of issues and activities the chapter could
participate in.
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Erin, at that time, was a college undergrad who had just joined the LAOP—going
to Occupy L.A. would be her third event with the group. It was easy to notice that Erin
was significantly more politically interested and involved than most members in the
group. My first encounter with Erin was when I carpooled with her and other LAOP
members to an HPA event a few days before the Occupy Wall Street protests began in
L.A. Erin spent most of the one hour drive analyzing the aims of the protest, discussing
protesters’ techniques in order to not get arrested, and criticizing Twitter for suppressing
Occupy tweets from showing up in trending events. Erin told us that, although she didn’t
know anyone there, she was planning to attend the first night of the protests and spend
the night at city hall because “it’s important to be there the first night.” At the HPA event
that evening, when people were sharing their experiences with the Harry Potter Alliance,
Erin described how “Harry Potter taught her to act because he wasn’t afraid,” and
connected this to attending Occupy L.A. for its first night.
A few days after that event, an online interaction occurred on the Facebook page
of the LAOP that is instructive to the way mobilizing structures play out on the micro
level. Erin posted the following message on the LAOP’s group Facebook page:
I don't know if anyone else might be interested in this, but I'd kind of like to go to
Occupy LA *with* HPA friends. There was finally mention of Occupy Wall
Street in today's HPA vlog, and I'd love to see Andrew Slack [the founder of the
HPA] say something in support of the occupants. I went by the camp-out
yesterday, and there's a tree there with a sign that reads, "What's your vision?" and
all kinds of creative and love-inspired responses hanging on the tree. It's totally
people trying to "imagine better." But unofficially, it'd be cool to go with cool
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people (hint: Potter fans) and check out what's happening together. And maybe
nerd out just a little in house robes/etc. Would anyone be interested in coming
with me?
Given the LAOP’s focus on charity events, going to Occupy L.A., particularly in
the first days of the movement when its nature was unclear, was definitely outside of the
chapter organizers’ comfort zone. While the goals of the movement weren’t always
explicit, Occupy Wall Street was clearly a political movement, and supporting it was thus
a political move. Moreover its civic style of protest was very disparate from the
fundraisers the LAOP usually participated in. Ashley, the main chapter organizer, seems
to have “felt out” Erin’s invitation to attend the protests, and at first she did not respond
to it. Yet after Erin’s initial Facebook post received 2 likes and 3 comments from
members expressing interest, Ashley seems to approve the suggestion, and writes: “Rock
on Erin! make it happen.” This encouragement from the chapter organizer structured Erin
into taking her rather vague invitation and making it concrete. Erin responds with an
unsure “well, when are people available?” As people again express their general interest,
Ashley scaffolds Erin with a formal approval when she says:
Ok, so Erin, since you're the instigator of this post, just pick a date/time and a
landmark by which everyone can find each other and I'll send an announcement
out to the whole chapter. :)
After some more tentative suggestions from Erin and another push toward
concretization from Ashley, Erin is finally “forced” to be specific. She sets two dates for
the event, supplies a meeting place and a number to reach her. Ashley then resends this
invitation to the whole chapter as a “formal LAOP event announcement.”
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This interaction exemplifies how the flexibility of organizations like the HPA can
allow individual members to widen the scope of possible activities a group rooted in
participatory culture can engage in, and can push the group beyond its comfort zone, in
this case, of charity work. At the same time, Erin, the “instigator,” needed the structure
and support from the chapter organizer, both in turning her vague invitation into a clear
way for members to participate (with dates and locations, for instance), and in receiving
“formal approval” and thus legitimization for the event.
Thinking about mobilizing structures within alternative citizenship models is
related to work such as that of Flanagin, Stohl & Bimber (2006) on the changing nature
of collective action enabled through networked media. One of the dimensions in which
networked collective action is changing, these authors claim, is the mode of engagement
that shapes interaction between members. They describe mode of engagement as ranging
on an axis between entrepreneurial to institutional. Most collective action literature
assumes a highly institutional organizational culture, where there is a patterned set of
normative rules of engagement within the organization, and all participants are expected
to follow these practices. Institutional engagements thus constrain the degree to which
individual members can bring their own agendas to the focus of the organization’s
efforts. On the other hand, in an entrepreneurial mode of engagement, individual
members enjoy high opportunity—and high responsibility—to set the agenda for, and
form of, collective action efforts. Flanagin et al. claim that networked communication can
also enable hybrids between these forms.
Mobilizing structures can be conceived as one such hybrid, in which alternative
citizenship groups enable the entrepreneurial efforts of individuals, but scaffold them
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through institutional support. This combination of entrepreneurial opportunity with
institutional support has implications for the ability of these groups to encourage their
members’ civic agency and to provide a sphere for engagement. Politicized members like
Erin can, within such a structure, be empowered to shape the bounds of possible action
for the whole organization. In the example discussed here, it was in the form of a one-
time event but, as discussed in Chapter 6, the political discussion study group that Erin
structured was adopted by the national organization and was offered to other local
chapters to apply. Mobilizing structures thus shape not only an organization’s ability to
seek institutional goals, but also its developmental and public sphere effects.
Mobilizing structures on the level of organizations. While this instance can be
understood as an example of mobilizing structures functioning on the micro level, we can
think of the importance of mobilizing structures on the macro-level as well, in the
comparison between the HPA and the Nerdfighters. We’ve mentioned a few times across
this project how the Nerdfighters conceive one of their informal goals as “decreasing
world suck.” Here is a pretty typical definition of this vague goal, supplied by
Nerdfighter Meghan:
I think decreasing World Suck—it has kind of two different ways that you could
look at it. Kind of taking control of the “bad things” in this world that may
include anything from war, inequality and what have you. A lot of people may
have different perspectives on what those sucky things might be. I feel like there
are a lot of general human issues that a lot of people can agree on are generally
sucky and kind of getting rid of those. And then of course in turn, increasing
world awesome and adding a lot of things to this world that are really great. For
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instance, personally, I think that increasing world awesome was passing the
Affordable Healthcare Act.
The VlogBrothers often discuss decreasing world suck in their videos, and some
of the Nerdfighters’ campaigns on the national level are geared toward that goal (for
example, Project4Awesome, described in Chapters 4 and 5, where campaign members
are encouraged to upload videos describing their favorite charities and non-profit
organizations to YouTube). Yet while decreasing world suck is a goal members identify
with, and one sought during specific campaigns of the Vlogbrothers, my participant
observation within both local and online venues of Nerdfighter gatherings showed that—
without structures of mobilization—it is very difficult to make this goal concrete.
41
This
has been confirmed through my following of a host of Nerdfighter groups online, but to
exemplify more vividly, I’d like to discuss some of the interactions within a local
Nerdfighter group I’ve followed closely for six months, the Orange County (OC)
Nerdfighters. The interactions within this group question the extent to which a civic goal
can be achieved in a group brought together by cultural affinities, without clear
mobilizing structures.
At the HPA, local chapter events are often a mix of fun and some civic-minded
action or talk, for example, fundraisers, book drives, discussion groups, or parties at
which future volunteer action is planned. This was not, however, the case with most OC
Nerdfighter gatherings where their face-to-face events—a Halloween party, a trip to the
observatory—were purely social. Nothing in the group’s interaction pointed to civic-

41
A similar argument is made by Bennett and Segerberg (2011) when referring to the
challenges of networked social action that is based on personalized content sharing across
media networks—lacking traditional organizational structures, such networks run the risk
of being “unproductive.”
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mindedness, and the most political issue discussed at events was hippies’ status as a
counterculture.
Additional evidence points to the OC Nerdfighters’ status as a social meet-up
group (rather than a civic-minded one). On their Facebook group page, they state:
We are the Nerdfighters of Orange County and we deserve to know eachother and
get together and do Awesome things together... Make friends, get together, do
videos, and, of course, Don't Forget To Be Awesome...
In my online interaction with Joanna (25), the organizer of the meet ups, there
was a telling miscommunication when I first requested her permission to attend the
gatherings. In addition to the IRB approved letter, I gave Joanna an additional vague
description of my research: “I'm really interested in the Nerdfighters as part of my
research on online-based groups and how they may be related to people's interest in
social issues.” Joanna replied that I’m welcome to come, and added: “I'd be interested to
see the results of the study eventually. Online friendships becoming real life friendships
is defiantly [sic] an interesting thing.” The way that Joanna missed my intent with
“interest in social issues” seems to point at the extent to which this is out of her purview
in her perception of the group, a point that was corroborated in the interview with her.
The local OC Nerdfighters was not, in any observable way, a civic minded group.
Yet, interestingly, several members of the group did express interest in civic action and,
in fact, did become civically involved in other contexts. One way that this happened was
through the structures of the HPA. At least three OC Nerdfighters I’ve met had found out
about the HPA through Nerdfighteria, and have opened or worked on opening chapters of
the HPA at their respective high-schools. Such chapters, as part of their affiliation with
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national HPA, are structured into explicit civic action and mobilized to participate in
national HPA’s broad civic goals. Through the national organization, chapter organizers
are given guidance and support on how to run their groups; what kind of campaigns to
participate in; how to register as an organization in the school, etc. Speaking with other
members of the HPA, such institutional guidance and clear, actionable steps helped
young people who felt they wanted to become involved, but didn’t know how (Kligler-
Vilenchik et al., 2012).
What then, may be different about the context of the HPA versus the
Nerdfighters, that may account for their more explicit civic action? I would argue that it’s
not necessarily different motivations of members, but rather the more formal
organizational structures, on both the micro-level and macro-level, that help the HPA
take members’ general willingness to participate in “bettering the world,” concretize and
mobilize it. The focus of alternative citizenship models on the extent to which young
people defy formal institutions may have blinded these theories to the importance of such
mobilizing structures, including, on the individual level, structuring of individual
initiative, and on the group level, organizational structures such as training and
institutional backing.
Understanding mobilizing structures in this way may also contribute to the social
movement conceptualization of the term, by highlighting its role not only for the ability
of an organization to reach its institutional goals, but also for its ability to shape
members’ civic agency. To exemplify this, I’ll consider the relations between the two
concepts mobilizing structures and mechanisms of translation.
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When I started working on describing the mechanisms these groups use to
translate between their cultural practices and participatory political goals, I originally
used the concept ‘mobilizing structures’ (unaware, at the time, of its origins in social
movement theory). When presenting that work-in-progress to the researchers of the
Youth & Participatory Politics network, I’ve received pushback on my use of the term
from Cathy Cohen, one of the P.I.s and a prominent political science scholar. Her main
argument was that, while the process I was describing was an interesting one in terms of
encouraging members’ participation in these groups, it does not constitute ‘mobilizing.’
Rather, mobilizing needs to be more narrowly understood as ‘getting people to action’—
getting them to vote, to show up at a rally (or, according to the dictionary definition at
least, to war). Based on this feedback, my work on mechanisms of translation, as
evidenced in Chapter 4, took a somewhat different approach, identifying how cultural
practices can scaffold participatory politics across a range of outcomes, including
mobilization, but also political discussion, political expression, and development of civic
identities. In that sense, mechanisms of translation can be seen as encompassing
mobilization as one of its possible outcomes.
From a different viewpoint, however, the relationship between the two terms can
be seen as reversed. Mechanisms of translation are one possible way to bridge
participatory culture into participatory politics, by building on the same practices that
members of participatory culture groups already enjoy doing. Mobilizing structures can
then be seen as the wider term. As we’ve discussed, McAdam, McCarthy and Zald (1996,
p. 3) see mobilizing structures as formal and informal collective vehicles through which
people mobilize and engage in collective action—so mechanisms of translation can be
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subsumed as one of these vehicles. But for that, the possible outcome of mobilizing
structures needs to be widened, to include not only actions such as showing up in a rally,
but also those other outcomes such as political discussion, political expression, and
development of civic identities.
The difference may lie, again, in our outcomes of interest. Much of social
movement and political science literature sees institutional effects as the key outcome of
interest. If we are mostly interested in these kinds of effects—action that affects
collective decision-making through representation or resistance—it’s understandable why
mobilization will be narrowly understood as a call for action, and why a group’s ability to
mobilize will often be seen as the golden standard to evaluate it. But the picture is
different if we broaden our purview to consider the role of developmental and public
sphere effects. In this case, mobilizing can take on a wider definition, as in mobilizing a
group of young people who are not very politically-inclined to engage in a political
conversation, or to develop a sense of civic agency. Such actions are something that
members need to be structured into, or mobilized to—so it is a form of call for action, but
with a wider definition of “action,” one that includes talking, or even coming to perceive
of oneself as a civic agent.
Consider the example of HPTSC in Chapter 6. The group’s members came
together first and foremost as fans of Harry Potter. Getting them to discuss the relevance
of Harry Potter to social and political issues was already an act of mobilization,
something that needed to be structured by the group leader and by other members through
the process I called scaling up. In that chapter, I also discussed how group members were
invited by the group leader to participate in political action—and how many of these
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invitations were not seized. Yet bringing these people together to a context where they
discussed issues and could be invited was a precursor, without which mobilization to
action couldn’t occur. Verba, Schlozman, & Brady (1995) argue that non-political groups
are valuable as a locus for invitation for political participation. Yet, based on the findings
of this project, I argue that—at least for young people—an intervening stage between
participating in a “non-political group” and being mobilized to political participation (e.g.
showing up at a rally) is to come to see yourself as a civic agent and coming to see the
relevance of the political world to your life.
Brought together, this section makes two theoretical contributions. The first is to
literature considering connections between popular culture affinities and participatory
politics. To this literature, the concept of mobilizing structures points out that those
connections aren’t automatic, but need to be scaffolded and structured. Mechanisms of
translation are one such connection, building on the practices young people already love
doing and harnessing those toward participatory politics. But mobilizing structures—
organizational structures, informal leadership and institutional backing—are key for
making these connections happen.
The second contribution is to the concept of mobilizing structures as used in
social movement literature. Here, my claim is that, when considering the political
relevance of non-political groups, and when taking into account developmental and
public sphere effects, mobilization should be conceived more widely than a “call to
action.” Before members in such groups can be effectively “mobilized” to participate in
political action, of the kind that achieves a group’s institutional goals, members in such
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groups first need to be “mobilized” to think and talk about themselves as civic agents
who can relate to the political world around them and can imagine making a difference.
Civic hybridity - the many shades of the civic
The third section of theoretical contribution suggests that citizenship models do
not function as binaries (traditional vs. new, civic vs. political, civic vs. popular), but
rather can take on hybrid forms. Andrew Chadwick (2014, p. 8) argues for the notion of
hybridity as a powerful way of thinking about politics and society, as:
A means of seeing the world that highlights complexity, interdependency, and
transition. It captures heterogeneity and those things that are irreducible to simple,
unified essences. It eschews simple dichotomies and it alerts us to the unusual
things that often happen when the new has continuities with the old. The original
Greek sense of the hybrid as something that questions conventional
understandings and the accepted order suggests how the metaphor usefully
unsettles some of our fixed conceptions. Hybridity is inevitably associated with
flux, in-betweenness, the interstitial, and the liminal.
Hybridity, as Chadwick further argues, alerts us to “the unusual things that
happen when distinct entities come together to create something new that nevertheless
has continuities with the old” (p. 9). In this section I consider three ways that these
groups are characterized by civic hybridity, each bringing together distinct entities: a
hybrid between different citizenship models (legacy/alternative), a complex relationship
between the civic and the political and, finally, the way the civic/political builds on the
popular and on engagement with media.

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Table 4. Forms of civic hybridity
Hybrid Entity 1 Entity 2
Hybrid 1: Hybridity
between Legacy/alternative
citizenship
Legacy citizenship models:
informed citizen, dutiful
citizen
Alternative citizenship
models
Hybrid 2: Civic/political
hybridity
Civic participation Political participation
Hybrid 3: Hybridity
between the civic/political
and the popular
Civic/political participation Participatory culture and
popular culture

As I’ll argue, all these hybrid forms are strongly shaped by the group context, and
are the outcome of a process of learning and socialization—which may account for why
we see them manifesting in some situations but not in others. My argument in this section
thus begins with a discussion of socialization into citizenship norms, before moving on to
these three different types of civic hybridity.
Socializing into alternative citizenship models and civic hybrids. How do
young people come to hold certain perceptions about what it means to be a good citizen
and how a good citizen should act? In Chapter 2, we considered Kjerstin Thorson’s
(2012) interviews with young college students about their civic and political lives. Some
of her findings were puzzling. Thorson spoke to young people who were very active in
college political life—student body president, editor of the school newspaper—but did
not recognize their own actions as political. Thorson (2010) suggests that the ability to
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recognize one’s own actions as having wider social implications has to do with the
breadth of participants’ citizenship vocabularies, understood as “the resources that
different young people have for thinking about and understanding their own actions and
potential for action” (p. 73). Vocabularies that are broader, she argues, are more likely to
enable their holders to “to conceive the ‘political’ ramifications of even quite personal
actions” (p. 6).
For another example of a civic disconnect, we can conceive of young people who
identify social issues that matter to them, but who do not consider how the digital tools
they typically use for personal and social purposes can be used to address those issues.
Christina Evans (2015) refers to this as a lack of digital civic imagination. Interviewing
youth about issues that mattered to them in their communities and how these could be
addressed, she found that 20 of the 25 young people she talked to had to be prompted to
think about the role that digital media—which they profusely use in their personal lives—
could play for these purposes.
Thorson’s and Evans’s findings point at the crucial role of socializing contexts for
alternative citizenship. The young interviewees both of these researchers spoke to were
not anchored in a shared group context. They exhibited different kinds of disconnects:
disconnecting one’s own actions from notions of the ‘political,’ or disconnecting civic
and political issues from digital action. Alternative citizenship models often imply that
young people are almost by nature “inclined towards” or “attracted to” self-expressive
digital practices, ones that can also be pursued towards civic goals. But the breakdowns
suggested by these researchers point us to a crucial question, one not addressed by
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theories on alternative citizenship models: Where do people learn alternative models of
citizenship? Where are they socialized into them?
42

Kjerstin Thorson and I have examined this question in a recent co-authored piece
(Kligler-Vilenchik and Thorson, 2015). In this article we ask, what is the process through
which ideas and conceptions about good citizenship change over time? We propose that
changing conceptions of good citizenship can be viewed through the lens of the frame
contest (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). In this model, different conceptions of good
citizenship, conceptualized as frames (Pykett et al., 2010), can be seen as vying with each
other for dominance, each sponsored by different constellations of actors and resources.
We consider this question empirically through the case of Kony2012, the social
change campaign launched by Invisible Children, which has already been mentioned in
this project. This campaign—and the half hour movie that launched it—can be seen as
proposing a hopeful image of the networked citizen (a form of alternative citizenship
model) in which a few concerned citizens can inform others of a pressing issue, in which
personal connections can motivate action, many small acts aggregate to large-scale
influence, and voice can be powerfully leveraged through networked communication. Yet
this hopeful image was countered online with counter-frames, which read the campaign
through the lens of the dominant informed citizen model (Schudson, 1999), and
dismissed its networked action as meaningless “slacktivism.” These counter-frames were

42
This is similar to the critique of the term “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001) that
conceives of young people as “’native speakers’ of the digital language of computers,
video games and the internet.” Encapsulating a range of problems with this term, Jenkins
(2007) asserts that this term masks the different degrees of access and comfort with
digital media experienced by different young people, as well as the need for structures to
educate young people into best practices of engaging with new media. Similarly, I claim,
alternative citizenship is not an automatic mode young people are “born into” but rather
one that needs to be learned and supported.
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proposed not only by activists and media pundits, but also by individuals expressing their
opinions through user-generated content, notably humorous, cynical memes (see
Shifman, 2013). So even people steeped in digital culture, ones who purportedly would
be the target for the message of the networked citizen, were not persuaded by this frame,
but instead resorted to traditional notions of who the good citizen is and how they should
act. We summarize:
Beliefs about good citizenship are normative: they entail judgments about what
kinds of behavior are valued and which are not, and therefore are deeply
entangled in competitions over political power. From this perspective, we can
think of changing models of good citizenship not simply as a neutral process that
happens over time based on social and technological change, but as a contest for
dominance. The framing of the good citizen manifests a political struggle, in
which the frames that elite actors put forward shape the range of acceptable acts
that citizens can take on. (Kligler-Vilenchik & Thorson, p. 15)
As an organization, Invisible Children, in this scenario, served as one context in
which young people were socialized into a certain, alternative conception of good
citizenship. Our previous work with members of the organization found that they
exhibited a strong belief in their power to do good through aggregating small acts and
through increasing awareness (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2012). Many of these members
continue to support IC, even after the critique the organization encountered around
Kony2012 (Shresthova, in Jenkins et al., forthcoming)—because they were embedded in
a group context that helped them understand their actions within a recognizable model of
citizenship.
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The idea of the power of the networked citizen resonated far beyond IC’s original
members, as evidenced by the countless young people, who shared Kony2012 on their
social network sites (Lotan, 2012) and tweeted it at celebrities, accounting for the
movie’s incredible spread (Quilty-Harper, 2012). Yet, when thrown in competition with
the frame of the informed citizen, expressed through harsh critique, the networked citizen
model proved as not sufficiently culturally engrained, and many of these newly-acquired
supporters quickly moved away from the organization (as was the case for Theo,
mentioned in chapter 4). A similar distinction may be at work between the students
Thorson (2010) interviewed, those who could not see their actions as political, and some
of the young people interviewed in this project, who do recognize their actions with these
groups as activism (though they do also often resist the term political, as we’ll further
discuss below).
The context of Kony2012 also shows how citizenship models are in flux, reacting
to critiques and to current events (Kligler-Vilenchik & Thorson, 2015). The critiques
launched against the young people sharing the Kony2012 video in the aftermath of the
campaign, a critique we interpret as relating to the dominance of the informed citizen
model, also shaped the perceptions of interviewees in this project. As mentioned in
Chapter 4, in the aftermath of the Kony2012 campaign, almost half of the young
interviewees brought up this event, without being prompted. They used the example of
Kony2012 and Invisible Children as a contrast to their own organizations and their modes
of actions, explaining why they were not paternalistic like Invisible Children, why they
were not jumping on the bandwagon like those who widely shared Kony2012 but rather
had informed themselves collectively. The context of Kony2012 as an external, highly
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visible event highlighted to them the characteristics of their own models of citizenship,
and also prepared them to respond to critiques towards their own actions. In addition to
the group context, external events can help crystallize one’s own guiding models of
citizenship.
In the absence or weakening of the strong socializing factors that—according to
models such as the dutiful citizen—brought young people into the political world in the
past—their social grouping, their parents, their school, their local, commonsense civic
associations
43
—the young people in these groups seem to have formed many of their
ideas about good citizenship, about their roles as civic actors, and about the routes to best
achieve their ideas about bettering the world, through the online-based participatory
cultures they belong to. Just like legacy citizenship models needed structures and
contexts that helped them shape participants’ conceptions of good citizenship, alternative
citizenship models are likewise something that young people need to be socialized into.
Simply being steeped into youth online culture does not create blueprints for action as
alternative citizens automatically.
Being embedded in a group like the Harry Potter Alliance, Nerdfighters or
Imagine Better gives young people the opportunity to be socialized into a form of
alternative citizenship, and to be able to recognize it as such, even in the face of

43
Of course, we shouldn’t overstate the weakening of these institutions. Schools, for
example, are still a central socializing institution, whose conceptualization of civic
engagement shapes ideas of who the good citizen is (e.g. Westheimer & Kahne, 2004).
Schools may also be shaping hybrid civic models, for example when service learning
programs and required community service volunteer hours are main manifestations for
civic participation, while civics classes focus on the working of governments and realms
often far from the experience of students. Examining which sites cultivate alternative
models compared with sites that cultivate legacy models is a productive direction for
future research.
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challenges from others. We will see the importance of the group context within each of
the three forms of civic hybridity we’ll now discuss.
Hybridity between legacy and alternative citizenship models. The
conceptualization of alternative citizenship models as distinct from or contrasted with
legacy models is often taken for granted by many of those utilizing these models, but this
binary distinction is not a necessary requirement. Empirically, attempts to categorize
citizenship styles based on such distinctions have had mixed success. Some of the work
of Bennett et al. (2011) categorizes civic websites, finding that they are more suited to
assumptions of dutiful citizenship than to self-actualizing citizenship. But using these
distinctions for the models “in people’s heads” proves more difficult. In Thorson’s (2010,
2012) work, she originally attempted to categorize young people’s citizenship
vocabularies according to categories such as the dutiful vs. self-actualizing citizen, and
found them insufficient to make sense of the “many ‘messy’ models” of citizenship she
encountered (p. 75).
What do these case studies tell us about a decline of legacy citizenship models, or
the rise of alternative models?
In some ways, the behaviors and perceptions of members of these groups provide
additional evidence that legacy citizenship models are in decline. The young people I
talked to, while showing a commitment to bettering the world in different ways, did not
uphold the “civic duties” of informed or dutiful citizenship—most of them did not follow
the news regularly, definitely not through traditional channels (recall the skepticism
toward the news media expressed by Tara in Chapter 4); they made choices between
candidates but not necessarily through an elaborate rational process of research. And, as
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we saw in chapter 6, their positions were not clearly shaped by their belonging to
cohesive social groups.
In Bennett’s conceptualization, the self-actualizing citizen is characterized as
distrustful of news media and politicians, suggesting a skepticism toward the traditional
political system in general. But, as Norris (1999) claims, we can interpret such skepticism
as the thought process of critical citizens, who may distrust political actors and certain
government institutions, but still have a high satisfaction with the way democracy is
working and a basic attachment to the nation. Giddens (1991, p. 23) explains how in the
context of high modernity, “various attitudes of skepticism or antagonism toward abstract
systems may coexist with a taken-for-granted confidence in others.” Consistent with this
idea, members of these case studies upheld the importance of voting, and they endorsed
the value of informed citizenship—Kony2012 served to highlight this.
Members of these groups did exhibit many of the characteristics we’d attribute to
alternative citizenship models, but these were combined with conceptions stemming from
more traditional models. They showed a distrust in some political institutions and
politicians, though coupled with a basic trust in the democratic system (Norris, 1999).
They showed a tendency toward self-actualizing citizenship in the sense of valuing
“creative civic expression” (Bennett, Freelon, & Wells, 2010, p. 398) and promoting
information and action within a set of trust peer-to-peer relationships (Bennett, Wells, &
Rank, 2009), but also valued voting. They endorsed ‘engaged citizen’ norms (Dalton,
2009), valuing being active in associations, being active in voluntary groups, helping
people who are worse off, and independently forming one’s own opinion—though at the
same time, as Thorson (2010) found in survey data, many of them also upheld duty-based
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citizenship norms, seeing obeying the law, for example, as an important behavior of good
citizens. The young people in this project in many ways perceived that there are different
“levers of change” (Zuckerman, 2014), believing that exerting power on government is
not the only route towards change, but that online activism may be an alternative form of
power. Yet, as shown around the example of Kony2012, the pushback around this event
led many of them to question the effectiveness of online action and to hop on to the
bandwagon of criticizing online activists as slacktivists.
In short, their conceptions of good citizenship do not clearly follow one model or
the other, but rather exemplified civic hybridity. Their hybrid conceptualizations of good
citizenship seem to mix between alternative and traditional conceptualization of the good
citizen—and they don’t see those as contradictory. Rather, they live comfortably side by
side.
We can see an example for this duality in the way the HPA incorporates into its
repertoire both the expressive actions that would fall under alternative citizenship models
(creating videos, tweeting in support of a cause, writing about your own experiences)
alongside with actions sanctioned under the informed or dutiful citizen model. For the
latter, a salient example is the HPA’s assertion of the value of voting.
As a non-profit organization that is committed to non-partisanship, the HPA
participates in voter registration through “Wrock (wizard rock) the Vote” campaigns. As
briefly mentioned in earlier chapters, for this purpose, the HPA partners with successful
wizard rock artists who go on national tours. The artists take with them on tour voter
registration forms supplied by the HPA, and are met on their various stops across the
nation by local HPA volunteers who take the forms from them and register concert-
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attendees to vote. In my field work, I accompanied members of the LAOP chapter to one
such voter registration event. Five members of the chapter (which, as a reminder,
carefully avoids “controversial issues”) showed up as volunteers for the event,
encouraged concert-goers to register as voters and discussed the importance of voting
with them. The group did not register many voters that day—most of the people they
talked to were either already registered, or were under 18—but participating in the action
itself affirmed the value of voting for both the participating volunteers and the audience.
Similarly, in the HPTSC discussion group from Chapter 6, while the participants
showed very ambivalent stances toward partisan politics (Democrats being registered as
Republicans, Republicans feeling unaligned with their own party, and the most political
participant of the group claiming she does not think there is a difference between the two
parties), the group still affirmed the value of voting. This was exemplified by their
discussion on how to increase voter turnout (one of the suggestions—get JK Rowling to
endorse voting) and their decision to engage in voter registration as a chapter activity
(though none of the participants eventually did it). So, for HPA members, certain
politicians can be seen as corrupt, and politics is seen as divisive, but the value of voting
is upheld.
As alternative citizenship models claim, and as empirical data confirms (see, e.g.,
CIRCLE, 2014), not all young people acknowledge the value of voting. This points,
again, at the role of the group context in socializing participants into certain civic norms.
It’s important to note, though, that not all youth civic groups will socialize into the same
civic norms.
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Figure 14. A “Don’t vote” stand, an image widely circulated in Libertarian circles
(source: Gamber-Thompson, 2012)

Contrast the HPA, for example, with libertarian youth (Gamber-Thompson,
2012). In her study of youth active in the Student Liberty Movement, Gamber-Thompson
found that many of them were categorical non-voters, who eschewed voting not because
they were not informed about politics or did not care about it. Rather, they held the view
that, due to the stagnation of the current political system, social change will be better
achieved through educational than electoral means. Making a cost-benefit analysis of
electoral engagement, the libertarians in Gamber-Thompson’s project decided that “the
cost of taking the time to register, educate [themselves] about the candidate, and go to the
polls did not make it worthwhile to vote” (p. 52)—it would have little impact on the
outcome of the election and would have no effect on their lives. Figure 14 is an
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illustration of the idea that for these civically active young people, voting is seen as a
waste of their energy—and they’re eager to persuade others of this point.
So while being embedded in a group context is key for being socialized into
certain citizenship models, not all social contexts—even civic-minded ones—will yield
the same perceptions of good citizenship. This points us again to the context-dependency
of citizenship norms—new norms and perceptions of good citizenship don’t appear out of
thin air, rather they are the product of a process of socialization. The groups in this
project cultivated a citizenship model of civic hybridity, including aspects of both
alternative citizenship and of legacy citizenship, which were not seen as contradictory.
Rather, self-expressive citizenship was envisioned as another channel to enact values that
generally corresponded with those cherished by traditional citizenship models.
Civic/political hybridity. The second form of civic hybridity within these cases
refers to the connections (and disconnections) between the civic—in particular
charity/volunteering—and political activism.
In Chapter 2, we discussed the theoretical distinction between the civic and the
political, a central distinction in political science literature. For some researchers in this
paradigm, the civic/political distinction holds the key to understand the state of young
people’s engagement (Zukin et al., 2006): young people are shown to be active in civic
engagement but are disconnected from political participation. On the other hand, youth
engagement researchers coming from a more educational/developmental view, argue for
encompassing definitions that combine the two concepts (Youniss et al., 2002). The
concept of participatory politics, which has been chosen as the key term for this project,
likewise brings together practices traditionally distinguished between as civic or political.
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Here, the key distinction is between institutional political activities—activities that are
performed by deference to elites or formal institutions, such as signing a petition, raising
or donating money, or “liking” the Facebook page of a politician—versus participatory
politics as an “interactive, peer-based” form of participation to exert voice and influence
on issues of public concern, including actions such as starting or joining a political group
online, contributing your own political opinion, commenting on a newsstory, etc. (Cohen
& Kahne, 2012).
The findings of this project call for a somewhat different approach, one that
maintains some distinction between the civic and political but values, and examines,
both. I see value in maintaining a distinction between civic and political engagement,
because, for the young people in this project, the patterns of engagement differed along
these lines. Generally, participants in these groups felt more comfortable with actions
perceived as charity or volunteering (which we can interpret under a somewhat wide
definition of “the civic”) than with those associated with contentious politics. This was
exemplified in Chapter 4, when we saw that many of the mechanisms of translation were
more geared towards civic outcomes—developing civic identities, engaging in
discussions—than to participating in actions geared toward governmental politics.
Mentions of partisan politics were the exception rather than the norm for most
participants in this project, as we saw in Chapter 6. Moreover, many of them felt a
discomfort towards the very term ‘political.’
This excerpt from my interview with Bethany (20), an active volunteer with the
HPA who spends much of her time and energy with the organization, is a somewhat-
representative case in point. In her interview, we were discussing her perceptions of
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different terms, and talked about her ideas about the term ‘activist’. Bethany claimed that
she would see herself as an activist, maybe not the best activist, but sort of a crazy
activist since she’s very dedicated—“if you could give me a plane ticket to Darfur, I’ll
probably take it.” At the end of a prolonged statement around her mode of activism,
Bethany says: “you’re talking to someone who’s become disillusioned with politics in the
last year.” She explains:
Politics right now is so far from what it used to be. It’s the idea of having
discourse about what is right, what we need to do in terms of policy, having that
discourse and then electing the people to do that. [But] I think political now
carries a connotation of controversial. Politics has to be controversial.... I am fed
up with the idea that people are not only insulting people’s policies, they are
insulting people as people… Politics focuses too much on re-election and not
enough on creating effective policy that is reflective of their beliefs as
politicians… So that has disenchanted me into it. This solution, to me—I’m away
from it now.
Bethany’s assertion of herself as someone who is active with a civic organization,
who sees herself as an activist and even a “crazy activist,” but who clearly distances
herself from the language of the political, has recurred with many of the young people I
interviewed (and manifested similarly for many of the other case studies we’ve looked at
in the MAPP research team, see Jenkins et al., forthcoming). When thinking about these
young people, simply merging the distinctions between civic engagement and political
participation would do scholars of youth engagement a disservice. We would miss the
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places where these young people are active, as well as their skepticism and even
revulsion from the political.
Instead, what this project suggests is a) a consideration of the civic which values
it on its own right, as well as b) examining ways in which the civic can lead into the
political. Point b) is hardly a new one—the classic work of Verba, Schlozman & Brady
(1995) focuses on linking political life to social life, by tracing how participation in civic
groups creates the skills necessary for political participation or creates sites for
recruitment. Yet for these authors, the main question they ask about civic life is its role as
a conduit towards political participation. The reason is that their main goal or outcome of
interest is political representation.
For my project, my main goal or outcome of interest is different, focusing on
developmental and public sphere effects. Some of these goals may actually be best
achieved by groups that are based on friendship, that pursue shared goals by tapping
shared cultural resources, where young people feel like they fit in, are valued, trust
others, and want to work together—as opposed to groups aggressively pursuing a fervent
political ideology. In Warren’s framework, groups like Nerdfighters and HPA are
beneficial toward “forming, enhancing and supporting the capacities of democratic
citizens” (p. 61).
Yet while these groups may help young people come to recognize themselves as
civic actors and to find pathways into civic life that resonate with them, these youth are
still embedded within political institutions, where governments are still a powerful
(though far from exclusive) agent shaping citizens’ lives. Representation, in such a
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context, is still key. Choosing a path of engagement that simply bypasses partisan
politics—in my reading—will not serve these young citizens’ benefit.
For this reason, I argue for the importance of a continued engagement with the
classic goal of asking how the civic—but more widely, the popular (as I’ll soon
discuss)—can contribute toward political engagement. In the empirical examples we’ve
discussed, we saw how the flexibility of these organizations can help to permeate
boundaries between the civic and political, when certain members bring in more overt
connections to the political and are enabled to do so (think of Erin and her suggestions to
go to Occupy Wall Street or to start the HPTSC study group). But this same flexibility
can also limit politics when certain participants shy away from it, as the example of the
chapter organizers of LAOP. Charity/volunteering can create entry points for those
participants who feel more comfortable with it, to contexts where they may be
encouraged and persuaded to participate in activities of a more political nature. One of
the strengths of these groups is offering participants a range of possible activities, where
young people who do not feel comfortable with the language of politics can experiment
with alternative conceptions that can help them feel more at place. The groups discussed
here are unique in creating these spaces by building on the popular and the fantastical—
leading us to the third aspect of civic hybridity.
Hybridity between the civic/political and the popular. The third and last notion
of civic hybridity exhibited by these groups concerns creating spaces that connect the
civic/political with other realms, those of the popular, of fantasy, leisure, interests and
social affinities. As explained in detail in Chapters 4, 5, and 6, these groups build on the
existing practices of fans, and on the connections to rich popular content worlds, toward
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participatory politics. For the purposes of this concluding section, I’d like to consider
how this notion of civic hybridity means that we cannot simply distinguish spaces,
contexts, or groups as ‘popular/entertainment based’ or ‘civic’—rather, the case study
groups exhibit how connections to the civic and political can grow out of unexpected
spaces, and the potential of the popular in creating these connections. One way of
identifying these connections is through these groups’ “style.”
The concept of “group style,” offered by Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman
(2003, p. 737) refers to “recurrent patterns of interaction that arise from a group’s shared
assumptions about what constitutes good or adequate participation in the group setting”.
The concept of group style is highly valuable in highlighting the extent to which the
“civicness” of a group is determined not by its a priori categorization as “a civic group”
but rather by the patterns of interaction among members. This notion is particularly
beneficial for groups exhibiting ‘civic hybridity’ in the sense of being spaces for
connecting the popular with the civic and political. In previous work (Kligler-Vilenchik,
2012) I have suggested that for such kinds of groups it is not helpful to seek to determine
whether they “are” or “are not” civic, but rather we should be looking for “civic
instances”: periods or moments of civic participation, in the context of participation that
is otherwise friendship and interest-based; as well as for “civic orientations”: instances in
which members, in interviews or everyday conversation, express a desire or stress the
importance of helping others or benefiting a wider community, whether or not this is
expressed in concrete or immediate action.
This notion resonates with more recent work by Lichterman & Eliasoph (2014)
which refines the group style framework by focusing on civic action, conducted within
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civic scenes. As mentioned in Chapter 2, civic action refers to participants “coordinating
action to improve some aspect of common life in society, as they imagine society”
(Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014, p. 12). The idea of civic scenes in which civic action is
conducted improves on the group style framework. It recognizes that even within the
same group, there may be multiple “scenes” with multiple “styles.” Actors may engage in
scene-switching practices in which they act based on different styles in different contexts,
even within the same group.
Civic hybridity in the sense of connecting between popular culture and the
civic/political brings us to the role of media for these groups. As discussed in Chapter 6,
many scholars have argued for the potential of popular culture and entertainment to help
people make connections to the political (e.g. Delli Carpini, 2013; Street, 1997), but
empirically, these connections are not always easy to find. For example, Couldry,
Livingstone & Markham (2007) investigated, in the context of U.K. of the early 2000s,
how media can contribute to democratic engagement. One of the questions they
examined was the role of popular culture in encouraging public connection—their focus
(in this early internet era) was on celebrity culture. They claim:
We found however no cases where discussion of celebrity culture was linked by
diarists [their participants filled out media diaries] to any issue requiring public
resolution, contradicting the claims of earlier researchers that celebrity culture
may be an alternative route into politics, particularly for the young (Couldry,
Livingstone & Markham, 2007, p. 253).
These claims, while seemingly at odds with the findings of this project and some
of our broader work (Jenkins et al., forthcoming), are in fact not surprising. As I’ve
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argued earlier in this section, it is the group context that socializes young people into
certain models of good citizenship. Likewise, as we’ve seen multiple times across this
project, it is the group context that helps young people make consequential connections
between the worlds of popular culture and the civic and political realm. As we’ve seen in
the previous chapters, young people do not necessarily forge these kinds of ties on their
own. It may be worth repeating this quote of 17-year old Astera from Chapter 4, talking
about how it was her experience with the HPA that sensitized her to connecting the
fantastical world of Harry Potter to its political implications—a “learned skill” she then
further applied herself:
A lot of it, I only started to think about once I found the Harry Potter Alliance
[…] But now that I’ve thought about it that way for the first time, I realize that
there actually are a lot of parallels, that aren’t even that far of a stretch, and I’m
trying to think about all books I read more like that. I’m making them more real
and applicable.
Such practices of connecting the political to the fantastical are not new. As
discussed in Chapter 5, we can trace their roots to science fiction fan organizations from
the 1930s and 1940s which served as spaces to debate radical political ideas (Ross, 1991),
or in the creation of a feminist science fiction culture going back to the 1960s (Merrick,
2009). But in the current media environment, such moves—that were previously limited
to specific audiences and were made out of sight of mainstream practice—are coming
into much greater visibility (Jenkins, 2006). The participatory practices of actively re-
appropriating culture that, in the 1990s, were pioneered by “niche audiences” such as
popular culture fan communities (Jenkins, 1992; Penley, 1991), have, in the digital age,
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been adopted by many. As online culture has brought fan communities further into the
mainstream, making them more accessible to wider audiences, it also provides tools and
platforms where connections can be forged between cultural passions and engagement in
social issues.
Which brings us to another distinction between this project’s findings and those of
Couldry et al.—one that concerns the meaning of ‘media’ in these different projects.
Couldry et al., in U.K. of the early 2000s, focused on media as mostly consisting of TV
and newspapers. For this project, on the other hand, media takes on a different meaning,
one which includes broadcast and print media, but where the main locus of action lies in
online participatory cultures which allow participants to take an active role in engaging
with, and producing, culture, understood as part of everyday life (Williams, 1958). In this
context, the question of ‘how can media contribute to democratic engagement’ takes on a
different answer, one that should be sought for not on TV channels, in newspapers, or in
journal diaries of individuals produced for the request of researchers, but rather on
YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and the other spaces where people’s active
engagement with media is happening. The kinds of connections we’re looking at are
rooted in participatory cultures—our next question may be, how to encourage them in
broader contexts.
Concluding thoughts – alternative citizenship and models of democracy
A key point made throughout this project is that in order to evaluate associations,
we need to know what democratic effects we are seeking of them (Warren, 2001).
Similarly, to evaluate models of citizenship, we need to know what our goals are. What
268
do we want from citizens? Who is a good citizen? To answer these questions, we need to
go deeper and indicate the models of democracy we’re functioning within.
As we mentioned briefly in the introduction to this project, models of democracy
serve as an underlying layer of theory, giving content and shape to different citizenship
models. The idea of who a good citizen is and what she is expected to do differs
according to our underlying model of democracy—though these are often not explicated
(see Strömbäck, 2005). Within legacy citizenship models, for example, the goal is to
cultivate a citizen who supports the democratic process—though really more as a
spectator than a participant. The legacy citizenship models discussed throughout this
project—the informed citizen, the dutiful citizen—can be seen as functioning within
models of competitive democracy, in the sense of a competitive struggle for the people’s
vote. In such a model, it is generally “political elites that act, whereas the citizens react”
(Strömbäck, 2005, p. 334).
Some critics would claim that many young people today don’t even uphold the
basic requirements in order to give an “informed reaction” to the actions of elites (e.g.
Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996). Yet it seems that many alternative citizenship models are
actually operating with a different model of democracy in mind, one that more closely
represents participatory democracy, a model that purports that:
Democracy thrives when people engage in public life and different types of
political action, when they bond through their activities, and when they develop
democratically sound attitudes. Therefore, democracy can never be built or
sustained from the top of society, it has to be built and sustained by the actions of
a large number of people. (Strömbäck, 2005, p. 336)
269
In contrast to notions of participatory democracy, competitive democracy can be
seen as offering a very limited role for citizen participation. Moreover, this already
narrow role is further stunted when we consider perceptions of the political system as out
of touch, ineffective or corrupted. In the introduction, we considered Zuckerman’s (2014)
claim, that the shifting engagement in civics may be the product not of a disinterest in
civic participation, but rather citizens’ disinterest in “feeling ineffectual or helpless” (p.
155).
When we consider the participatory cultures within which the young people in
this project are steeped in, it is easy to understand where they might form expectations for
more voice and agency. These are young people that, in the context of new media, feel
that they have found an avenue to express themselves, to voice their opinions, and to
participate in shaping the culture around them. So perhaps it is not surprising that they are
dissatisfied with the narrow role offered to them by competitive democracy. Being
socialized into norms and ideals of participatory culture may encourage young people to
seek a more participatory democracy as well.
It is generally understood what the requirements are of a ‘good citizen’ under the
informed or dutiful citizen model. But, in contrast to the normative nature of models such
as the informed citizen model (where our notion of what we’d like to see guides our
interpretation and evaluation of actual citizen’s action), our current understandings of
alternative citizenship are mostly descriptive, trying to make sense of a phenomenon in
flux, while making few normative assertions about what it is we’d like to see.
What is the normative side of alternative citizenship? What does a “good”
alternative citizen look like? This question is one we are still seeking to answer—one
270
which may require finding a new balance or relationship between individual expression
and collective commitment than the one envisioned by the dutiful citizen model. Once we
answer what it is we are hoping for, the next question will be to ask, what are the
necessary requirements of “good alternative citizens” and, furthermore, what supports are
needed—in terms of skills, resources, social contexts—to help them be able to meet these
requirements. The normative question also undergirds the importance of suggesting a
category like alternative citizenship models, tying together a host of arguments made by
scholars who are not always talking to each other or even aware of each other’s work.
Recognizing alternative citizenship as an emerging paradigm can get us started in a
conversation in which these key questions can be asked and addressed.
To support alternative citizenship as a viable citizenship model, one that can
guide people’s behavior and their perception of a good citizen—and as a viable
alternative to the legacy models of citizenship—we must continue the process of
understanding and refining this model, both empirically and normatively.
Limitations and Future directions
The groups described in this project are a very specific manifestation of
alternative citizenship models, though—as I hope I have succeeded in showing—a
fascinating one. Not only are these young people grounded in participatory cultures that
build on their shared interests, shared identities, and encourage their development as
cultural producers on their own right—but these groups also explicitly employ these
practices towards civic and political goals. Admittedly, these are idiosyncratic cases. But
these unique cases can teach us a lot about the empirical manifestations of alternative
271
citizenship models within group contexts, and the mechanisms and structures that need to
be in place for such groups to succeed in cultivating citizens and achieving civic goals.
As I’ve sought to show throughout this project, the group context is central to the
actions and orientations of the young people I’ve talked to. For many of them, becoming
involved in these groups has had a transforming effect on their lives (see Kligler-
Vilenchik et al., 2012 on narratives of self-transformation). Such groups are not the
panacea for the ills of democracy, but they do suggest one possible route forward, by
showing that tying participatory politics to the passions, interests and social worlds of
young people can be an alternative mode of political socialization. If we accept the value
of such connections, this leads us to ask how the lessons learned from these groups can
be applicable to making other connections between personal and political realms.
As we’ve mentioned a few times throughout the project, it is a minority of young
people who are engaged in participatory cultures of the kind discussed here (not to
mention, groups explicitly attempting to build on participatory culture to encourage
participatory politics). Returning for a moment to the mechanisms of translation diagram
introduced in Chapter 4 (Figure 15), let’s focus on the node that received little attention
throughout this project – that of networked individuals (Wellman et al., 2003).
As explained in Chapter 4, networked individuals are thought of as young people
who interact with other individuals and groups in multiple ways but are not (or perhaps,
not yet) members of participatory culture groups. It is important to emphasize—these are
the majority of young people. If we want to get these networked individuals to our
participatory politics “outcomes of interest,” we can take two routes, according to the
diagram—one is encouraging their inclusion in participatory cultures, through
272
recruitment and sustained participation, where they can then ideally engage in
mechanisms of translation; the second is to seek alternative ways to encourage their
participatory political activity independent of participatory culture groups, as per the
yellow arrow on the left. Let’s briefly consider these two routes.
Figure 15. Mechanisms of translation - diagram

Not all young people would necessarily want to become involved in participatory
culture groups
44
. While there are a variety of groups catering to a variety of interests,
these would most likely not resonate with all young people. But, as the empirical case
studies of this project show, many young people benefited from “discovering”

44
As briefly mentioned in Chapter 2, this dissertation generally follows an understanding
of participatory culture as a subcultural form of participation within groups with shared
norms and practices. The move that Jenkins, Ito & boyd (forthcoming) discuss towards
broadening the term to refer to more “ordinary” forms of participation, such as taking
selfies or participating in online forums, resonates with the call to consider “networked
individuals” in this project, and is a productive move given the goal to broaden the
benefits of connecting popular culture engagement and participatory politics.
Mechanisms of translation:
- Tapping content worlds and
communities
- Creative production
- Forming opinions and discussion
Networked
Individuals
Recruitment
Sustained
Participation
Participatory
Politics
Participatory
Culture
Participatory politics
outcomes:
- Mobilization
- Political discussion
- Political expression
- Development of civic
identities
273
participatory cultures as an alternative route, not only to civic engagement, but first and
foremost for social inclusion and identity formation. The potential of participatory
cultures to encourage participatory politics is only one of the advantages of such groups.
As such, we should continue work that seeks to both understand the various benefits of
such groups, as well as ways to make their benefits applicable to young people’s
institutional connections to worlds of education and career (Ito et al., 2013). Moreover,
we may want to consider additional ways of outreach to educators, parents, and young
people themselves, to make such groups more known and to acknowledge their value.
Anecdotally, while most parents of the young people in this project encouraged their
children’s activities, others were suspicious and skeptical of what their kids are doing
“online”—parental perceptions of youths’ participatory culture engagement is a fruitful
avenue for further research.
The second route considers ways that young people may become involved in
participatory politics, independent of participatory cultures. Such work is, of course,
being done by a host of scholars examining “youth political engagement” or “online
political activism.” But the insights from this project shine a different light on the efforts
to understand youth engagement. The key insight is the benefit of making citizenship and
politics resonant to young people by connecting it to the spaces they’re already active in,
the people they already enjoy engaging with, and the things they’re already interested in.
A case in point is examining the potential of popular social media platforms like
Facebook as sites for political conversation (Thorson et al., 2014; Vraga et al., 2015). We
should be looking at myriad examples in which the things young people enjoy doing and
274
spend time and energy towards can be harnessed towards the outcomes we’d normatively
want them to engage with.
A different direction for future research emanating from this project pertains to
the manifestations of alternative citizenship in varying global contexts. Many of the
claims around alternative citizenship are rooted in the U.S. context, where the “new”
styles of citizenship we see are an outcome of both technological changes, and specific
cultural norms and contexts (e.g. norms around the appropriateness of political talk, see
Eliasoph, 1998). Some of these may look very different in varying cultural contexts.
The Israeli case is interesting in this regard. Israel represents a fruitful potential
case to examine emerging forms of political participation, as the political reality plays a
dominant role in the lives of everyday citizens, with political attitudes and identities
central to perceptions of self and others (Maoz et al., 2002). Israel is also characterized by
different norms about the appropriateness of political talk and its role in public life
(Liebes, 2001). This raises interesting theoretical questions. Alternative citizenship
models are strongly related to conceptions about a theorized decline of legacy models.
Yet in Israel, I would argue, a dutiful citizenship model is still strong, and the two models
live side by side in a different state of civic hybridity. Examining participation in this
context can help us parse through aspects of alternative citizenship that are shared among
different societies as well as those that are culturally specific; as well as help to tease out
the role played by technology in this regard (Mor, Kligler-Vilenchik & Maoz,
forthcoming). I am excited to begin to examine some of these questions in my old/new
academic home.
275
Alongside significant societal and technological transformations, a growing
paradigm of scholars claim that citizenship styles, and conceptions of good citizenship,
are changing as well. Rather than lamenting the decrease in the “legacy” citizenship
models, scholars within the emerging paradigm of alternative citizenship models describe
new ways in which young people perceive and perform civic and political action.
Alternative citizenship models can be understood as an academic attempt to make
sense of a phenomenon in transition. While there is some agreement on a general
direction in which this change is going, scholars disagree on the particular ‘flavors’ of it,
and empirical and theoretical contributions like the ones made in this project can help
chart this direction. But the question to ask is not only an empirical question of “what is
out there,” but rather a theoretical one of “how do we interpret what we see” and a
normative one of “what do we want to see” and how do we get there. Researching
alternative citizenship models is not only an empirical and theoretical move, but a
normative one. Given the widespread agreement on inherent problems within traditional
functioning of government and politics, seriously considering alternative models is not
only a reaction to “fads” of young people, but is also an ideological, critical move.
We need to find new ways to help young people into the political world. The
groups examined in this project show us some directions forward.
276
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APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW GUIDE – ROUND 1 INTERVIEWS

Discussion Guide
Pseudonym: _______________________
Interviewer: _____________________________
Interview Date: __________________________
Organization Name/Pseudonym:_____________________________________
[Make sure interviewee is comfortable, establish rapport, introduce yourself
personally, explain background and confirm choice of name or use of pseudonym.
Confirm spelling of organization name.]
Include the following: Thank you very much for your participation in this research study.
This study is interested in groups like HPA/IC and the people that join them. We are
really interested in your story so there are no right or wrong answers. This is a voluntary,
information interview. Please feel free to skip any questions that do not apply or you wish
to skip, and please expand on areas that you think would help us get a better
understanding of your experience. Also, I want to remind you that all your answers will
not be associated with your name (unless you expressly choose to be identified directly).
Do you have any questions?
Your story of involvement (in this section we get to know the respondent. We start to
get a sense of where they come from, what their interests are. This is important
background information and we want to get as much information as we can. At the same
time, it is the beginning of the interview and it is important to make the respondent feel
comfortable.)

Tell me a little of yourself. Where do you come from? How would you describe yourself?
Where did you grow up?
What do you like to do? (hobbies, general activities)
What kinds of activities or interests do you do on a regular basis? (may be combined with
above question)
Along the way, try to cover:
What do you do? Basic life situation information (student, working, age group)
What is important to the respondent?
Where they go for news and information about interest
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Clubs, afterschool centers, or online, sports, fan groups, sites that support this
interest
How they connect with others who share their interest
Organizing, volunteering, collaboration, leadership related to interest
Attendance at conventions, meet ups or competitions related to
interests/experience
If they have a reputation or are "known" for their expertise or work
What are some things that are important to you?
Story of own involvement (in reference to mapping)
How did you come to be involved with HPA/IC? (through friends, events)?
Why did you choose to be involved? (probe reasons for joining the group - friends, fun,
the issues it dealt with etc.)
Elicit a narrative of how they got started and where they are going with the interest.
How did you get started?
And then what happened?
What do you like about HPA/IC? probe the narrative of Harry Potter and IC
media respectively)
Probe for who supported interest along the way: family, friends, colleagues, and
educators
Probe for if interest was discouraged/stigmatized by family or peers...
How long have you been involved?
How has your role changed over time? Are there different things you have done?
How much time do you typically devote to HPA/IC?
Describe your activities (if there is such a thing) with HPA/IC. [If there isn't a typical
day/or week per se then probe the kinds of activities carried out, with whom, how the
communication/organization happens, whether the scope of involvement is formal or
informal)
What do you do?
How do you do it?
Where would you normally be doing it?
Would you be working with people in the same room or are they somewhere else? How
do you communicate?
How do you decide that it's time to stop?
Who decides what you do on any given day?
302
Think of a project or cause you were recently involved with in HPA/IC. This could be an
event you attended, a cause you contributed your time to, an issue you chatted about with
others (not sure if these are the right examples).
How were you involved in this project? what did you do around it? where was this mostly
done? how much time did you invest in this? how were others involved in this project?

Learning
Were there specific things you had to know? Learn? How did you learn more/get
better?
Can you think back and remember a time when you didn't know how to do something
(complete a task or an activity needed of you) as a member of IC/HPA? Was there
something that was difficult for you? Did you figure it out? How?
Looking back, what have you learned through your participation in IC? Are there any
specific (individual or social) skills that you picked up? How did you pick these skills
up (observation, training, informal mentoring, on the job)?
Could you see yourself learning these skills elsewhere?
Could you see yourself re-applying what you have learned to other situations (which
ones, when and where)? Could you have picked these skills up in other places
(organizations, people)? If so, which ones?
Do you have someone who has functioned, formally or informally, as your mentor in the
organization?
How would you compare the ways you learned skills through the organization with the
ways you learn in school? In a work setting?

Story of the organization in their own words (in this section we explore how the
respondents perceive the organization.)

Let's talk a little about HPA/IC itself. Describe the mission of [HPA/IC] in your own
words? What is the ideal world in HPA/IC terms?
Speaking from your experience, what does the group do?
Where did it come from
Does it have a main objective? What is the goal?
Does the group engage with particular issues?
Who are people in it? How would you describe your relationship to them?
How does it work? How does one join?
How is it organized? Are there particular positions?
Are there rules?
How do you define if you are part of the group? What does it mean?
What do the members share? Do you think membership means different things to
different people in the group?
How is information shared?
How does the group communicate?
How do activities get planned? discussed?
Can you describe your activities within the group?

303
Personal Change/Perceptions of Public Awareness/Action
(It may be that this section gets integrated into the earlier section, but for now I wanted
to draw it out as a separate category. As you speak to the respondent watch for words
that refer to modes of civic action/political action/civic engagement and probe.)

When you described HPA/IC you said that the key goal of the group is to [insert their
own words here]. Could you speak a little more about that?
What did you mean by ....
Is this important? Why?
Do you know other groups that do something similar to HPA/IC? How are they
different/similar? (probe for modes of operating/goals/sense of group/content worlds)
Have you ever volunteered or gotten involved in a particular social issue or
cause (outside HPA/IC)? was this a requirement for school or a church group?
How did you hear about it?
How was this different/similar to HPA/IC? (probe specific details related to participatory
cultures)
Mapping Exercise: You have just told me a little about yourself. Now I would like to do
something a little different and (hopefully) fun. I am going to ask you to draw a diagram
(map or chart or drawing) of your life for me. What would be in your life, Where would
you be in relation to these activities? So where does HPA/IC fit into this picture? (ask
the respondent to locate HPA/IC)

Now, I would like to talk about a hypothetical version of you.
The first one is you, today, if you had not become involved with HPA/IC.
Who is this person? How would you describe them? What does this person do/spend their
time? What do they like? What kinds of friends do they have? What skills do they have?
(if you interview a person who has left the organization, you can add a second person as
the person when they were involved with HPA/IC)

What do you think you want to do next?
Will stay in involved in HPA/IC?
Do you think your role in the organization will change moving forward? How?
How do you think you may or may not apply what you have learned with HPA/IC
What is next for you?
Concluding the Interview
Thank you very much for participating in this interview. Is there anything else you would
like to add? Any questions you have about any part of this project? (Make sure
respondent has all relevant forms, contact info for project leader etc and has signed all
relevant release forms). Thank you again for your time.
304
APPENDIX B: SUMMARY OF PARTICIPANTS – ROUND 1 INTERVIEWS

Table 5. Summary of HPA participants in Round 1 Interviews

Interview # Pseudonym Gender
1 Pat F
2 Virginia F
3 Katie F
4 Caitlin F
5 Jenni F
6 Maggie F
7 Sam M
8 Anna F
9 Camilla F
10 Melissa F
11 Sandra F
12 Lena F
13 Catherine F
14 Jane F
15 Dana F
16 Maya F
17 Kathy F
18 Dana F
19 Davia F
305
20 Carry F
21 Stacy F
22 Ashley F
23 Millie F
306
APPENDIX C: INTERVIEW GUIDE – ROUND 2 INTERVIEWS

Pseudonym: ___________________________
Interview Date: __________________________
Organization/Group Name:_____________________________________

[Make sure interviewee is comfortable, establish rapport, introduce yourself
personally, explain background.]

Do you agree to having your interview audio recorded?

Background:
● Tell me a little about yourself. How would you describe yourself?
● What do you like to do? (hobbies, general activities)
● What kinds of activities or interests do you do on a regular basis? (may be
combined with above question)

Along the way, try to cover basic life situation (how do they spend most of their time, age
group, etc.) (Here get at whether they see themselves as belonging to HPA /
Nerdfighters / both)

● What is important to you in your life?
● What kind of activities are you involved in? (clubs, after-school centers, online
communities, sports, fan groups)
● What media do you generally use (for news? for fun? to connect with other
people? to get information? How and where do you do this?)
● Where and how do you connect with people who share your interests?
● Do you take part in organizing, volunteering, collaboration, leadership related to
interest?

Mapping Exercise: This exercise explores the role of [name of group] in the
respondent’s life.

● You have told me a little about yourself. To start us off, I would like to do
something a little different and (hopefully) fun. I am going to ask you to draw a
diagram (map or chart or drawing) of your life activities and the things that matter
to you in your life for me. What would be in your life, Where would you be in
relation to these activities? What media do you generally use?

So where does [name of group] fit into this picture? (ask the respondent to locate [name
of group] on the map)

307
Story of own involvement (Here we discuss the story of how the respondent got
involved with [name of group])

● How did you come to be involved with [name of group]? (Through friends,
events)?
● Why did you choose to be involved?
● Have you been involved with similar groups before? (interest-based / voluntary /
activist / faith)

(Probe reasons for joining the group - friends, fun, the issues it dealt with etc. Elicit a
narrative of how they got started and where they are going with the interest.)

● How did you get started? And then what happened?
● What do you like about [name of group]?

(Probe for who supported interest along the way: family, friends, colleagues, and
educators. Probe if interest was discouraged/stigmatized by family or peers...)

● How long have you been involved? Did you think in the beginning you would be
involved for such a long/short time? What happened/changed?
● How has your role changed over time? Are there different things you have done?
● How much time do you typically devote to [name of group]?

Describe your activities with [name of group].

● What do you do?
● How do you do it?
● Where would you normally be doing it? What media technologies do you use?
● Would you be working with people in the same room or are they somewhere
else? How do you communicate?
● Who decides what and how much you do on any given day?

Think of a project or cause you were recently involved with in [name of group]. This
could be an event you attended, a cause you contributed your time to, an issue you
chatted about with others.

● How were you involved in this project? What did you do around it? Where was
this mostly done?
● How much time did you invest in this? How were others involved in this project?
● How do you use the internet as part of your activities with the group?
For what purposes?
Which tools do you use? Facebook, twitter, blog, tumblr etc.
● When do you meet people face-to-face?
Is that important? Why?
308

Story of the Organization: In this section, we explore how the respondents perceive
the organization.

Let's talk a little about [name of group] itself.

● Speaking from your experience, what does the group do?
● Where did it come from?
● Does it have a main objective? What is the goal?
● How does it work?
● How is it organized? Are there particular positions?
● Are there rules? How did you learn these?
● How is information shared?
● How does the group communicate?
● What media, platforms, or applications are central to the group’s operations? (get
a list and probe for importance)
● How do activities get planned? Discussed?

For Nerdfighters:
I have heard Nerdfighters using different vocabulary. Can you explain to me, for you:
- What does it mean to be a ‘Nerdfighter’?
- What does it mean to “decrease world suck”? (if doesn’t come up: What is
“world suck”?)

For HPA:
- Getting at the role of the Harry Potter narrative / the link to the fan community
- What is the demographics of the group?

Membership

Now we are going to talk a little about the members of the group.

● How does one join?
● How do you define if you are part of the group? What does it mean?
● What does it mean to be a member of [name of group] Do you think membership
means different things to different people in the group?
● How would you describe a “typical member”? Is there such a thing?
● Are the people you meet through [name of organization] different from people
you meet other situations (school, neighborhood etc.)?

Your Learning

Can you think back and remember a time when you didn't know how to do something
(complete a task or an activity needed of you) as a member of [name of group]? Was
there something that was difficult for you? Did you figure it out? How?
309

● Do you have someone who has functioned, formally or informally, as your mentor
in the organization? How do you communicate with this person?
● How would you compare the ways you learned skills through the organization
with the ways you learn in school? In a work setting?
● Could you see yourself re-applying what you have learned to other situations
(which ones, when and where)? Could you have picked these skills up in other
places (organizations, people)? If so, which ones?

Organization Worldview: For all of our case studies, we will include specific questions
and probes that will allow us to inquire more deeply about: the racial, ethnic, gender and
class based worldviews encouraged (and possibly challenged) by the organization,
demographics and diversity of the organization (as perceived by individual members)
and the ways in which these connect (or perhaps differ from) the self defined
racial/ethnic identities of the respondents. The worldview probes will also allow us to
explore the ideals perceived by the respondents.

● Many groups act and set goals based on certain ideals. How would you describe
the ideals of [name of group]? What is important?
● What world does [name of group] perceive? What change is needed? What is
important? What injustice exists?
● What would an ideal world look like (locally, online, internationally)? Who would
be included? What would they do?
● What is [name of group] role in this world?

Personal Change/Perceptions of Public Awareness/Action: In this section, we drill
down further to inquire about the respondent’s personal worldview. We will ask how this
personal worldview coincides with/differs from the one advocate by the case study
organization. In particular, we will probe the ways in which the respondent's world view
grows out of their own background and experience (this should allow us to explore more
personal views on and experiences with race, ethnicity and diversity). We will then ask
how involvement in the group affects the way respondents see themselves in their
neighborhood, within their various communities, beyond the united states etc.

● What would your ideal world look like? Locally? Online? Or internationally?
● What action is needed to get us there?
● What is your role in this world?
● How does [name of group] fit into this world?
● Do you know other groups that do something similar to [name of group]? How
are they different/similar? (probe for modes of operating/goals/sense of
group/content worlds)
● Have you ever volunteered or gotten involved in a particular social issue or cause
with one of these other groups? (ask respondent to give examples)

310
● (If involved in other groups) How was this different/similar to [name of group]?
(probe specific details related to participatory cultures)

Final Probes
We now have some final questions that we would like to ask you.

● When you hear the word “citizen” what qualities and behaviors come to mind?
What does a citizen do?
How, if at all, is a citizen different from a neighbor, a community member,
resident, person born in a given country, etc.?
What kinds of personal qualities does a citizen have?
What do you consider yourself a citizen of?

● What does being an activist mean to you?
Do you consider yourself an activist? If YES, in what ways? If NO, how would
you describe yourself with regards to your activities and involvements?

● What do you define as civic engagement?
● What does political mean to you?
What do you do offline/online that you would consider to be political?
Is your work with [name of group] political? (Is the group political?)

● (Ask this question if race has not yet come up in the interview. If race has come
up, return to how it was mentioned and probe as described below). We are
interested in the role (if any) race may play in people’s thinking about their
communities and what they get involved in. We’ve talked about different aspects
of your involvement with [name of group]. In your experience with this group, has
race come up at all?

● If race come up, can you describe when and how? Is it a factor in the kinds of
issues the group focuses on? Is it a factor in the dynamics within the
group/organization?
● Is race important to you personally? (Probe for importance of race in subject’s
identity, sense of solidarity with others, and salience of issues of racism and
discrimination to subject)

Return to mapping exercise

We have spent the last [insert time], talking about you and your involvement with [name
of group].

Let’s look back at the diagram you drew for me.
What would happen is [name of group] suddenly disappeared from this map/diagram?
311

Imagine a version of yourself that had not become involved with [name of group].
● Who is this person? How would you describe them? What does this person
do/spend their time? What do they like? What kinds of friends do they have?
What skills do they have?
(if you interview a person who has left the organization, you can add a second person as
the person when they were involved with [name of group])

● What do you think you want to do next?
● Will stay in involved in [name of group]?
● Do you think your role in the organization will change moving forward? How?
● How do you think you may or may not apply what you have learned with [name of
group]?
● Looking back, what have you learned through your participation in [name of
group]? Are there any specific (individual or social) skills that you picked up?
How did you pick these skills up (observation, training, informal mentoring, on the
job)?
● Could you see yourself learning these skills elsewhere?
● What is next for you?

Concluding the Interview
Thank you very much for participating in this interview. Is there anything else you would
like to add? Any questions you have about any part of this project? Thank you again for
your time.
Pseudonym: ___________________________
Interview Date: __________________________
Organization/Group Name:_____________________________________

[Make sure interviewee is comfortable, establish rapport, introduce yourself
personally, explain background.]

Do you agree to having your interview audio recorded?

Background:
● Tell me a little about yourself. How would you describe yourself?
● What do you like to do? (hobbies, general activities)
● What kinds of activities or interests do you do on a regular basis? (may be
combined with above question)

Along the way, try to cover basic life situation (how do they spend most of their time, age
group, etc.) (Here get at whether they see themselves as belonging to HPA /
Nerdfighters / both)

● What is important to you in your life?
312
● What kind of activities are you involved in? (clubs, after-school centers, online
communities, sports, fan groups)
● What media do you generally use (for news? for fun? to connect with other
people? to get information? How and where do you do this?)
● Where and how do you connect with people who share your interests?
● Do you take part in organizing, volunteering, collaboration, leadership related to
interest?

Mapping Exercise: This exercise explores the role of [name of group] in the
respondent’s life.

● You have told me a little about yourself. To start us off, I would like to do
something a little different and (hopefully) fun. I am going to ask you to draw a
diagram (map or chart or drawing) of your life activities and the things that matter
to you in your life for me. What would be in your life, Where would you be in
relation to these activities? What media do you generally use?

So where does [name of group] fit into this picture? (ask the respondent to locate [name
of group] on the map)

Story of own involvement (Here we discuss the story of how the respondent got
involved with [name of group])

● How did you come to be involved with [name of group]? (Through friends,
events)?
● Why did you choose to be involved?
● Have you been involved with similar groups before? (interest-based / voluntary /
activist / faith)

(Probe reasons for joining the group - friends, fun, the issues it dealt with etc. Elicit a
narrative of how they got started and where they are going with the interest.)

● How did you get started? And then what happened?
● What do you like about [name of group]?

(Probe for who supported interest along the way: family, friends, colleagues, and
educators. Probe if interest was discouraged/stigmatized by family or peers...)

● How long have you been involved? Did you think in the beginning you would be
involved for such a long/short time? What happened/changed?
● How has your role changed over time? Are there different things you have done?
● How much time do you typically devote to [name of group]?

Describe your activities with [name of group].
313

● What do you do?
● How do you do it?
● Where would you normally be doing it? What media technologies do you use?
● Would you be working with people in the same room or are they somewhere
else? How do you communicate?
● Who decides what and how much you do on any given day?

Think of a project or cause you were recently involved with in [name of group]. This
could be an event you attended, a cause you contributed your time to, an issue you
chatted about with others.

● How were you involved in this project? What did you do around it? Where was
this mostly done?
● How much time did you invest in this? How were others involved in this project?
● How do you use the internet as part of your activities with the group?
For what purposes?
Which tools do you use? Facebook, twitter, blog, tumblr etc.
● When do you meet people face-to-face?
Is that important? Why?

Story of the Organization: In this section, we explore how the respondents perceive
the organization.

Let's talk a little about [name of group] itself.

● Speaking from your experience, what does the group do?
● Where did it come from?
● Does it have a main objective? What is the goal?
● How does it work?
● How is it organized? Are there particular positions?
● Are there rules? How did you learn these?
● How is information shared?
● How does the group communicate?
● What media, platforms, or applications are central to the group’s operations? (get
a list and probe for importance)
● How do activities get planned? Discussed?

For Nerdfighters:
I have heard Nerdfighters using different vocabulary. Can you explain to me, for you:
- What does it mean to be a ‘Nerdfighter’?
- What does it mean to “decrease world suck”? (if doesn’t come up: What is
“world suck”?)

314
For HPA:
- Getting at the role of the Harry Potter narrative / the link to the fan community
- What is the demographics of the group?

Membership

Now we are going to talk a little about the members of the group.

● How does one join?
● How do you define if you are part of the group? What does it mean?
● What does it mean to be a member of [name of group] Do you think membership
means different things to different people in the group?
● How would you describe a “typical member”? Is there such a thing?
● Are the people you meet through [name of organization] different from people
you meet other situations (school, neighborhood etc.)?

Your Learning

Can you think back and remember a time when you didn't know how to do something
(complete a task or an activity needed of you) as a member of [name of group]? Was
there something that was difficult for you? Did you figure it out? How?

● Do you have someone who has functioned, formally or informally, as your mentor
in the organization? How do you communicate with this person?
● How would you compare the ways you learned skills through the organization
with the ways you learn in school? In a work setting?
● Could you see yourself re-applying what you have learned to other situations
(which ones, when and where)? Could you have picked these skills up in other
places (organizations, people)? If so, which ones?

Organization Worldview: For all of our case studies, we will include specific questions
and probes that will allow us to inquire more deeply about: the racial, ethnic, gender and
class based worldviews encouraged (and possibly challenged) by the organization,
demographics and diversity of the organization (as perceived by individual members)
and the ways in which these connect (or perhaps differ from) the self defined
racial/ethnic identities of the respondents. The worldview probes will also allow us to
explore the ideals perceived by the respondents.

● Many groups act and set goals based on certain ideals. How would you describe
the ideals of [name of group]? What is important?
● What world does [name of group] perceive? What change is needed? What is
important? What injustice exists?
● What would an ideal world look like (locally, online, internationally)? Who would
be included? What would they do?
● What is [name of group] role in this world?
315

Personal Change/Perceptions of Public Awareness/Action: In this section, we drill
down further to inquire about the respondent’s personal worldview. We will ask how this
personal worldview coincides with/differs from the one advocate by the case study
organization. In particular, we will probe the ways in which the respondent's world view
grows out of their own background and experience (this should allow us to explore more
personal views on and experiences with race, ethnicity and diversity). We will then ask
how involvement in the group affects the way respondents see themselves in their
neighborhood, within their various communities, beyond the united states etc.

● What would your ideal world look like? Locally? Online? Or internationally?
● What action is needed to get us there?
● What is your role in this world?
● How does [name of group] fit into this world?
● Do you know other groups that do something similar to [name of group]? How
are they different/similar? (probe for modes of operating/goals/sense of
group/content worlds)
● Have you ever volunteered or gotten involved in a particular social issue or cause
with one of these other groups? (ask respondent to give examples)

● (If involved in other groups) How was this different/similar to [name of group]?
(probe specific details related to participatory cultures)

Final Probes
We now have some final questions that we would like to ask you.

● When you hear the word “citizen” what qualities and behaviors come to mind?
What does a citizen do?
How, if at all, is a citizen different from a neighbor, a community member,
resident, person born in a given country, etc.?
What kinds of personal qualities does a citizen have?
What do you consider yourself a citizen of?

● What does being an activist mean to you?
Do you consider yourself an activist? If YES, in what ways? If NO, how would
you describe yourself with regards to your activities and involvements?

● What do you define as civic engagement?
● What does political mean to you?
What do you do offline/online that you would consider to be political?
Is your work with [name of group] political? (Is the group political?)

316
● (Ask this question if race has not yet come up in the interview. If race has come
up, return to how it was mentioned and probe as described below). We are
interested in the role (if any) race may play in people’s thinking about their
communities and what they get involved in. We’ve talked about different aspects
of your involvement with [name of group]. In your experience with this group, has
race come up at all?

● If race come up, can you describe when and how? Is it a factor in the kinds of
issues the group focuses on? Is it a factor in the dynamics within the
group/organization?
● Is race important to you personally? (Probe for importance of race in subject’s
identity, sense of solidarity with others, and salience of issues of racism and
discrimination to subject)

Return to mapping exercise

We have spent the last [insert time], talking about you and your involvement with [name
of group].
Let’s look back at the diagram you drew for me.
What would happen is [name of group] suddenly disappeared from this map/diagram?

Imagine a version of yourself that had not become involved with [name of group].
● Who is this person? How would you describe them? What does this person
do/spend their time? What do they like? What kinds of friends do they have?
What skills do they have?
(if you interview a person who has left the organization, you can add a second person as
the person when they were involved with [name of group])

● What do you think you want to do next?
● Will stay in involved in [name of group]?
● Do you think your role in the organization will change moving forward? How?
● How do you think you may or may not apply what you have learned with [name of
group]?
● Looking back, what have you learned through your participation in [name of
group]? Are there any specific (individual or social) skills that you picked up?
How did you pick these skills up (observation, training, informal mentoring, on the
job)?
● Could you see yourself learning these skills elsewhere?
● What is next for you?

Concluding the Interview
Thank you very much for participating in this interview. Is there anything else you would
like to add? Any questions you have about any part of this project? Thank you again for
your time.
317
APPENDIX D: SUMMARY OF PARTICIPANTS – ROUND 2 INTERVIEWS
Table 6. Summary of participants in Round 2 Interviews

Interview # Pseudonym Group Gender Age
1 Satya HPA (Nerdfighters) F 17
2 Enid HPA (Nerdfighters) F 24
3 Sheila Nerdfighters/HPA F 15
4 Theo Nerdfighters (HPA) M 15
5 Inez Nerdfighters F 16
6 Vera Nerdfighters F 16
7 Kevin HPA (Nerdfighters) M 27
8 Lane HPA Other 22
9 Joanna Nerdfighters F 25
10 Adrian Nerdfighters M 17
11 Madison Imagine Better/Hunger Games F 29
12 Ruth Nerdfighters (HPA) F 17
13 Julie HPA, Nerdfighters F 17
14 Jacob Nerdfighters, HPA M 19
15 Mona Nerdfighters F 17
16 Calvin HPA M 25
17 Erin HPA Other 20
18 Lucy Nerdfighters, HPA F 20
19 Jenna Hunger Games F 32
318
20 Astera Nerdfighters, HPA F 17
21 Kim HPA F 23
22 Maura HPA F 21
23 Meghan Nerdfighters F 23
24 Arielle Nerdfighters, HPA F 23
25 Tara HPA F 27
26 Jacobo HPA M 16
27 Alan HPA, Nerdfighters M 20
28 Jo Nerdfighters (HPA) F 20
29 Heather HPA, Imagine Better F 26
30 Bethany HPA, Imagine Better F 20

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Youth engagement in public life is generally acknowledged to be vital both for the development of young people themselves, and for sustaining democracy and enhancing political equality. Expectations about what “good citizenship” should look like are often anchored in conceptions of the informed citizen or dutiful citizen. Evaluated through the expectations set by such models, some are worried about a “crisis” of democratic engagement of young people. A different perspective on the state of youth engagement comes from those suggesting that what we may be seeing is not a decline in youth civic engagement, but rather a change in its nature. According to this argument, young people today are attracted towards a different model of citizenship, one that values self‐expression, creativity, and connection to existing cultural interests and social connections. ❧ In this dissertation, I suggest considering a range of arguments about changing forms of citizenship as an emerging paradigm of alternative citizenship models, reflecting not only new modes and practices of participation, but also different perceptions of what it means to be a good citizen. Conceptualizing alternative citizenship as an emerging paradigm helps us not only to notice common threads, but also to identify gaps and weaknesses in the paradigm as a whole, including a paucity of empirical examination of manifestations of alternative citizenship and a lack of focused attention on the role played by the changing media environment. ❧ This dissertation seeks to address these gaps through an in‐depth empirical examination, conducted over the course of four years, of three case studies representing alternative citizenship enacted within a group context. I focus on groups directed at young people, which bridge cultural participation in popular culture fan communities with civic and political goals. These groups—the Nerdfighters, the Harry Potter Alliance and Imagine Better—share a key characteristic: they encourage young people’s participation and achieve civic and political goals, yet they do so through a language, style, and form that is deeply rooted in members’ cultural practices—a style that may seem whimsical or even bizarre to the outside viewer. These groups’ success at encouraging young people’s engagement with participatory politics by building on their rooting within participatory culture helps us get at the underlying mechanisms and processes that need to be in place in order to achieve such a connection. Through empirical investigation of these case studies, the aim of this project is to improve on alternative citizenship models, in order to allow for a more robust understanding of the changing nature of young people’s participation today.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Kligler-Vilenchik, Neta (author)

Core Title Alternative citizenship models: from online participatory cultures to participatory politics

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 06/30/2015

Defense Date 05/05/2015

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag civic engagement,new media,OAI-PMH Harvest,online communities,politics,popular culture,youth

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Jenkins, Henry (committee chair), Lichterman, Paul (committee member), Thorson, Kjerstin (committee member)

Creator Email kliglerv@usc.edu,netakligler@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-584367

Unique identifier UC11301251

Identifier etd-KliglerVil-3528.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-584367 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-KliglerVil-3528.pdf

Dmrecord 584367

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Kligler-Vilenchik, Neta

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA