Outwit, Outplay, Out-Upvote: Exploring Television Community Dynamics Through the Online Survivor Fandom

Abstract

To be a fan is to love something beyond expectation; this thesis aims to explore what that love looks like. Taking the virtual fan community for the hit reality TV series Survivor as a paradigm, I attempt to move beyond our traditional conception of television fanhood as a pastime of individual, passive consumption in favor of a more complex understanding of fans’ microinteractions and motivations. My ethnographic work consists of a thorough content analysis of three different online fan forums created for Survivor, with special points of focus being defining the fan identity, the allure of the reality TV genre, unique fan rituals like gamification, and the implications of emotional ownership. By zooming in on the ways that Survivor fans perform their devotion to the show and to one another, I hope to illustrate two key ideas: (1) the evolution of TV fandom into a collective, active, and sometimes dangerous practice, and (2) the paradoxical relationship between fan and text that simultaneously empowers and limits the possibilities for fan engagement.