Media Practices, Identity and Fandom
Media as Part of Daily Life
Media use is not something that happens in a separate compartment of life — it is woven into everyday routines. People check their phones before getting out of bed, listen to music while commuting, stream video during meals, and scroll social feeds late at night. These media practices are not random: they connect to who people are, who they want to be, and how they relate to others.
Media and Identity: Gauntlett’s Framework
David Gauntlett’s research — most fully developed in Media, Gender and Identity — argues that media use is a key resource through which people actively construct their identity. Rather than simply being told who they are by the media, audiences use media content to explore and develop a sense of self. Gauntlett distinguishes between the actual self and the desired self. Media products can serve both: a viewer might identify with characters who reflect their current identity, or they might be drawn to representations of the person they hope to become.
Gauntlett’s approach contrasts sharply with the passive-audience or hypodermic models. Where earlier effects researchers worried that audiences absorb media values without reflection, Gauntlett argued that the audience is always an active reader, picking and choosing what resonates. Identity construction is ongoing and selective, not a one-time injection.
David Gauntlett argues that audiences use media as a resource for identity construction, drawing on both their actual self (who they currently are) and their desired self (who they want to become). This makes media use an active, ongoing process of self-definition, not passive absorption.
Participatory Culture and Henry Jenkins
Henry Jenkins’ concept of participatory culture describes a media environment in which the boundary between producer and consumer has blurred. In Jenkins’ account, audiences — especially fans — are not content to passively consume media products. They discuss, critique, remix, reimagine and produce their own content in response. This was central to his 1992 book Textual Poachers, where he argued that fans actively “poach” texts, taking elements of existing media products and remaking them according to their own interests and desires.
Jenkins did not frame this as a modern digital phenomenon — fan creativity preceded the internet, through fanzines, fan letters and club meetings. But digital networks have dramatically accelerated the scale and visibility of participatory culture, making fan production (fan fiction, fan videos, commentary channels, cosplay documentation) accessible to millions.
Fandom describes both the state of being a devoted fan and the community that forms around shared devotion to a media product. Fan communities provide a sense of belonging, shared language and social identity. They mobilise around new releases, create rankings, theorise plot developments, and generate enormous amounts of secondary content. In the digital era, fan communities organise rapidly on social platforms, coordinating activities such as streaming events to boost chart positions or directing collective energy towards media organisations.
Contemporary “stan culture” — from the Eminem song “Stan” (2000), now used generically — refers to highly dedicated, sometimes intensely devoted fan behaviour. Stan culture shows both the creative and social power of participatory fandom and some of its less positive dynamics, including harassment of critics, extreme parasocial attachment, and fan communities turning on media creators when their decisions disappoint.
Henry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers (1992) argued that fans are active cultural participants who “poach” texts — taking existing media products and remaking or reimagining them according to their own interests. This is the foundation of participatory culture theory.
Parasocial Relationships and the Watercooler Effect
One of the most striking features of modern media use is the development of parasocial relationships. Audiences develop genuine feelings of familiarity, affection and even grief towards performers, influencers and fictional characters who will never know them. These relationships fulfil real social and psychological needs — particularly the integration and social interaction need identified in Blumler and Katz’s Uses and Gratifications theory.
Media use also generates the watercooler effect: a shared cultural text becomes a topic of conversation, connecting people who otherwise have little in common. A major sporting final, a dramatic episode of a serialised drama, or a divisive viral video all create shared cultural reference points that serve the social function of bringing people into connection with each other.
The Social and Cultural Significance of Media Practices
Media practices have significance beyond entertainment. The media contributes to shared cultural identity by providing common stories, shared news, and collective experiences. It fulfils individual needs for information, companionship and self-expression — particularly important for people who are isolated or who belong to communities not well represented in mainstream media. The ability to access online communities through social platforms and streaming has given niche audiences the opportunity to find each other and build shared culture around media products that mainstream broadcasters would never have commissioned.
Second-screen viewing typifies how media practices have changed in the digital era. Audiences no longer watch in silence: they are simultaneously tweeting reactions, looking up background information, reading other viewers’ responses, and participating in live comment threads. This transforms a traditionally passive act (watching television) into an active social practice. Media producers have responded by designing second-screen tie-ins, companion apps and live social activations around major broadcasts precisely because they know audiences are already doing this.