Fan fiction and transmedia literacy practices on Wattpad: exploring the narrative and aesthetic skills of teenagers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2022.mar.12Keywords:
Fan fiction, Reading, Creative writing, Collaborative writing, Teenagers, Adolescents, Transmedia skills, Narrative, Aesthetics, Media literacy, Informal learning, Genres, Hybridization, Self-publishing, Platforms, WattpadAbstract
In recent years, Wattpad has become the leading collaborative reading and writing platform allowing young writers to publish their works, some of which belong to the tradition of fan fiction, including stories derived from a source text from popular culture. The main objective of this article is to explore how teenagers reading and writing fan fiction on Wattpad apply transmedia skills related to production and narrative and esthetic reflection. Using a theoretical framework that integrates transmedia literacy, fan fiction communities as affinity spaces, and Wattpad as a tool to promote transmedia reading, we carry out a qualitative study using data collected from workshops, media newspapers, and interviews with adolescents in five different Spanish regions. The results highlight identity-play in the production of the stories, in which fanfics about real-life celebrities from the teenagers´ media universes coexist with original stories inspired by the authors´ personal lives and interests. Likewise, there is a trend toward the hybridization of fan fiction with languages and formats more typical of social media platforms, such as Instagram, with a superficial application of narrative and esthetic transmedia skills related to fan fiction practices.
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