Global Fandom Jamboree Conversation: Katty Alhayek (Syria), Julie Escurignan (France) and Irma Hirsjärvi (Finland) (Part One)

Julie Escurignan

Syria, Finland and France: three countries, three languages and three perspectives on fandom. Our three statements provide different outputs on Fan Studies, but they also share some themes and one common object: Game of Thrones. We took different roads, but they all lead us to the study of the HBO TV series’ fandom. So, what do we share? Where do we diverge? What has this journey into GOT fandom brought us?

Katty’s sample of Game of Thrones fans is interestingly both similar and different from mine. The English, Spanish and French-speaking fans I reached were far from being all highly-educated, affluent and male. They were from middle to high socio-economic status, and blue collars were a minority, but they could not all be deemed affluent. What’s more, the fandom was not male-dominated everywhere. While the French-speaking sample was male-dominated (61%), the English and Spanish-speaking groups were female-dominated (respectively, 60% and 52,9%). Similarly, practice subgroups such as cosplayers were vastly female-dominated. Therefore, we are here met with a difference that would be interesting to investigate: can the socio-economic characteristics encountered by Katty be explained by the quality TV status of the show, by the people it reached within Arabic countries or by the taste of Arab fans? Is this observation the result of sampling luck, or the consequence of deeper cultural differences between fan groups? There probably is more research to be done here to explain this phenomenon. What is similar though is the reaction of Arab fans to the whiteness of the show with the one of other non-European fans. Katty Alhayek noticed “how Arab fans responded to the whiteness and Eurocentrism of GoT and their sense of racial difference by producing hybrid posts and memes that reflect their local contexts and lived experiences”. This is something that I also saw amongst, for instance, Indian fans of the series on social media. Indian fans created posts and memes showing how Game of Thrones would look like if it had been an Indian production, highlighting the cultural differences between the Indian and American creative industries. There is therefore again something to be investigated in the reaction of non-European, non-white, non-Western fans toward this show which blatantly lacked diversity despite taking place in a vast fictional world.

Like Katty, my eyes are now turned toward HBO’s new series House of the Dragon, and particularly toward fans’ reaction to the show. I have found Game of Thrones fandom quieter since the end of the series and am starting to look at how HBO is trying to revive it before the broadcasting of the prequel. HBO has been trying to hype the show to its audience through social media posts but its communication strategy is not linear and there has been no post on the “House of the Dragon” official Twitter account since October 2021. Fan communities are the ones doing the heavy lifting through backstage pictures and questions about the upcoming series, while HBO is showing (again) lacks in its communication and marketing strategies. While the opening of the Game of Thrones Studio Tour in Ireland took place in the Spring of 2022 and is thus keeping Game of Thrones in the conversation (especially toward the summer and fans’ vacation plans), there are reasons to wonder if House of the Dragon will find the audience Game of Thrones did, and especially if Game of Thrones fans will be back for another serving of the HBO-Martin’s universe.

Lastly, Irma provides a very interesting account of fandom in Finland and more particularly in her city of Jyväskylä. What stroked me most is the point she raises about fandom and the local/global nexus. Whether about Game of Thrones or her local fan community, she justly underlines how fandom has become both local and global. Fandom is still local insofar as local, “physical” communities are present but these communities are simultaneously international and even transnational, as fans are part of bigger fan groups online, especially through social media. Technology has made it easier for onsite communities to exchange with other local groups around the world “as if they were present”, but I believe that there is one essential condition to the creation of these local/global fan groups: language. What I have discovered with my research is that language, albeit not seen as a barrier by fans themselves, is de facto what links (or not) fans between them. French or Spanish (or Finnish)-speaking fans who do not master English would not be able to stay in touch with fan groups from other European and non-European countries. Similarly, I think questions of class, culture and economic means come into play: one must be in a place where it is possible, technologically, culturally, economically, to get and stay in touch with communities residing in other countries to take part in these practices. This is why Katty’s study of Syrian fans, who as populations living a war and being displaced had limited resources (technological and financial), is so interesting and important, but I will come back to it in the next conversation.

Katty Alhayek

I enjoyed learning from Julie Escurignan's and Irma Hirsjärvi's opening statements about the worlds of fandom in Finland and France. While my research on fandom is restricted to the online sphere, I am fascinated by Irma’s and Julie’s rich research and experiences with offline forms of fandom like Irma’s involvement with the FINFAR fan community and her research on feminist fandom and the need for utopian spaces.

Similar to Julie, I look at Game of Thrones fandom by language rather than the fans’ country of residence or actual nationality. Julie’s sample of fans is larger and more diverse than mine. It includes ethnography, visual and textual analysis, interviews with 103 fans and survey with1954 participants who speak English, Spanish or French. I only used textual analysis and interviews with fans who speak Arabic and are active on Facebook Arab fan pages. Because I lived in the United States for 10 years and was a loyal follower of Facebook English-speaking fan pages like Game Of Laughs, which has over 2,626,441 followers, I tried to do a comparative analysis between English and Arabic speaking Facebook fan pages. However, at the beginning I couldn’t recruit participants from the English pages easily, so I put that aspect of my research on hold. Nevertheless, I maintained my participation and online observation of English-speaking fan spaces like Game Of Laughs where fans, like their Arabic speaking counterparts, wait impatiently for the upcoming prequel, House of the Dragon (Figure 1).

Figure 1 English speaking fans on Facebook are excited about HBO announcement of the premier date of House of the Dragon on August 21, 2022 and organize a subsequent conversation on Discord a voice, video and text communication platform on March 30, 2022.

Additional similarity that English-speaking fans share with Arabic-speaking fans is their unhappiness with how Game of Thrones ended. This is evident in activities such as keeping the petition to remake Game of Thrones Season 8 alive three years after the show’s ending (figure 2).

Figure 2 A post from Game Of Laughs Facebook page on March 31, 2022 that includes a link to the petition to remake Game of Thrones Season 8.

This conversation on fandom, accessibility, and language, reminds me that earlier in my graduate studies, I collaborated with my colleague E J Nielsen on an exploratory study titled "All Men Must Die: Audience Receptions of Violence in Game of Thrones." In that study, E J and I used an online questionnaire to survey English-speaking fans’ perceptions of Game of Thrones. We received 214 responses showing that persons who have experienced violence (either firsthand or someone close to them) would be more likely to perceive Game of Thrones’ portrayal of violence as realistic. However, this quantitative exploratory study convinced me that qualitative methods are more appropriate to explore the complex lived experiences of fans and their real-world beliefs and practices. Still, I see possibilities to rethink my methodological approaches to examine larger sample of fans around the world. As House of the Dragon is scheduled to air in August 2022, I am excited at the prospect of collaboration in the future with Julie and Irma to combine our quantitative and qualitative methodological expertise by expanding our samples and working with global fans who speak English, Arabic, Finnish, Swedish, Spanish or French.