You Either Love It or You Hate It! The Emotional and Affective Factors of Commenting

  • Renee Barnes
Chapter
First Online:

Abstract

Fan studies can reveal a lot about how our online-commenting behaviour is guided by emotion and affect. Drawing on certain fundamental and interconnected areas of fandom—creative production; belonging and identity; play and pleasure; and emotion and affect—this chapter will chart some of the influences that drive us to make comments, and the investment that even “lurkers”, or those simply reading the comments, make in virtual communities. Certain stimuli, such as a news story or a comment by another user, can create “affect contagion”, where events gain momentum and comments can multiply in number and affective engagement.

Keywords

Fandom Fan studies Affect Commenting Participatory culture Affective investment Emotion Digital fandom Flow Anti-fan Non-fan 
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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  • Renee Barnes
    • 1
  1. 1.Faculty of Arts, Business and LawUniversity of the Sunshine CoastSippy DownsAustralia

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