Hercules and Xena |
Online Fandom Connects With The Media | Hercules and Xena essays |
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Hercules and Xena |
Online Fandom Connects With The Media | Hercules and Xena essays |
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Online Fandom Connects With The Media
Lucy Lawless has been featured in the latest issue of Rolling Stone Magazine in Australia (it's separate from the American publication). While this article is of interest to many fans, most won't be able to see it unless they special order copies for about $20.00 apiece. That's rather expensive, so most fans will go without although some Web sites, such as XenaMedia.Com and MaryD's Xena Information Page will make all or portions of the article available to fans. Personally, I'm hoping to get my own copy of the magazine, but then I have good reason to want one. You see, Dixie Harrison, Webmaster for Xena Online Resources has been profiled in a sidebar accompanying the article. I handed Dixie the reins for XOR earlier this year. I stay involved, giving advice and helping to find links wherever possible, but she has been operationally managing the index for about a year now. I think Dixie deserves some recognition for her hard work. As owner of Xenite.Org and Xena Online Resources I get some recognition myself. Earlier this year I was one of several online fans who served as readers for Nikki Stafford, author of Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor: Warrior Stars of Xena. This is the first book to take an in-depth look at the fans of Xena: Warrior Princess, and in particular Nikki placed a lot of emphasis on the online community. Unfortunately, she had to cut an extensive survey conducted via email with around 100 online fans. But Nikki selected Xena Online Resources as the number 1 Xena site because of its thoroughness and extensive content. Nikki included descriptions and the URLs for the most popular sites as well as those she considered to be of superior value and interest. Other fans have been featured in the news media as well. Tom Simpson, who has the best-known site Tom's Xena Page, has been profiled by People Online and with other fans he has been mentioned, interviewed, or featured in articles by online and offline media. Online fandom with its myriad of mailing lists, news groups, and discussion fora analyzes each and every article in excruciating detail. The reporter or columnist hasn't been born yet who has passed muster under the condescending eye of the online fans -- we notice every gaffe, every mis-spelling, every incorrect reference to episode titles and characters. And yet we are ever hungry, sniffing the wires for yet more stories and profiles. Somewhere the barrier between fandom and television show began to cave in. Although fandom has little if any influence in how Xena and Hercules are produced and marketed, rarely does the media speak of either without at least mentioning the apparently huge online community that has grown up around them. We have made ourselves known. And what's interesting is that online fandom is a relatively small audience. There are no official numbers, no scientifically valid surveys. The media shies away from quoting numbers of fans -- we are just out there, a force to be contended with if we are ignored. And yet so little research has been devoted to finding out who we are and what we see in the shows. Nikki Stafford's survey was left to collect dust on some shelf or hard-drive in her publisher's office. The world will never know what she learned about fandom. During an appearance at a recent convention, Steven Sears, Co-Executive Producer for Xena, mentioned that Universal had commissioned some surveys. One of the items he shared with us was the finding that on average, a "fan" watches only 6 episodes per season. You could have heard a pin drop in the room. Online fandom does not miss an episode. Even if one person or a few miss it, they'll catch up through spoilers or tapes that friends send them. And then there are screen captures, video captures, and sound bytes scattered across the Web. A recent survey estimated that 70,000,000 Americans had access to the Internet in July, 1998. Online fandom for Science Fiction and Fantasy probably constitutes less than 1,000,000 people. Perhaps no more than 500,000 people worldwide are active in online fandom communities. My best guess for the number of Hercules and Xena Web sites is that they exceed 2,000. We do not list all the Xena sites on Xena Online Resources. Not all meet our minimum standards for content, a few disagree with our sensibilities, and some are still waiting to be found. But if there are only, say, 2,500 Web sites, are there no more fans than that? To be sure -- I would say there are at least 25,000 and perhaps as many as 50,000 online fans for Xena and Hercules. Most never say anything -- they just lurk on the discussion lists and fora, or surf the Web. But I think that as the media continues to fall in love with Xena and Hercules the way we have, they'll continue to mention us. They'll even get a few details correct. In fact, they seem to know more about the fans than they do about the shows. Online fandom is newsworthy. We have coelesced into a movement reminiscent of the popular movements of past generations, even if we have no political statements to make and aren't trying to change the world. |
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