Keyword – fan culture

Orsolya, Nagy:

Blurry Lines

The boundaries between the producer and the consumer have been increasingly blurred for decades; the emergence of the prosumer is not a novelty in the world of media studies. However, while there is relatively great academic interest in the receiver or fan who becomes an author, there is less discussion of the integration of fan content creation strategies in authorial communication and the relationship between authorial and audience interpretations and canons. This paper analyses the contents responsible for the promotion of the concept album EPIC: The Musical written and published by Jorge Miguel Rivera-Herrans and shows how the (self-)analytical contents made public by the author and the classic fan interpretation practices relate to each other. Furthermore, it examines how the contents that influence interpretation interact with fan content creation and how the latter contributes to the creation of popularising or ex- planatory authorial content. A key aspect of the research is the influential role of the author as a celebri- ty upon audiences’ interpretive work.

Keywords: authorship, fan culture, hybridisation, media convergence, popular culture