Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Gatekeeping Remix: Fandom Spaces And Identity Politics, Brittany Larsen

Theses and Dissertations

As people today spend more time online than ever, the question of how identities are constructed in different online spaces has become a critical question. One means of identity building is through remix, specifically when marginalized groups in particular insert themselves into exclusive spaces by reinterpreting existing work. One online space that engages in this work frequently is fandom, where fans excluded from larger narratives use fanfiction and fanart to create a space for themselves. Fandom provides an opportunity to see how an existing online culture navigates questions of conflicting identities through remix.