Convergence, Ahead of Print.
The following roundtable is a recorded and edited discussion between four fan studies researchers that took place in March 2022. Having all worked with QAnon and the insurrection in the context of fan studies, our discussion took its departure from the US insurrection on January 6, 2021, as QAnon fans, Trump fans, and other right-wing groups stormed the US Capitol building while live-streaming their endeavor to social media. The discussion draws out some main perspectives that may guide our future thinking in the context of fandom, complicity, and politics and points toward new cultural and social territories for research into fandom and fan practices. Centrally, as fandom enters into the domain of politics and conspiracy theories, it seems increasingly unfruitful to distinguish between fan practices and participatory culture. Instead, participatory culture’s primary mode seems to be deeply driven by fan practices, that is, textual poaching and enunciative and textual productivity (Jenkins, 2013; Fiske, 1992). Instead, understanding this amalgamation of fan practices into other social domains can help us make sense of current phenomena in the seeming growth of conspiracy theory communities and right-wing movements alike. Participatory culture is a source of great creativity, playfulness, and mobilization of social and political movements, but, as Jenkins pointed out as early as 2006 “has benefited third parties, revolutionaries, reactionaries, and racists alike” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 221). In some instances, it seems that these online communities are driven by fan practices, in other instances fan communities are weaponized in order to serve a political agenda. While research into fandom and politics (see Hinck, 2019; Jenkins et al., 2020, Sandvoss, 2012, etc.) and toxic cultures (Proctor et. al., 2018) is certainly not new, it seems that the current transmedial landscapes drive participation and complicity in very specific ways that fan studies would do well to focus on in the coming years.

Convergence, Ahead of Print.
An area of immersive storytelling in rapid evolution is that of extended reality. This emergent mode of experience employs spatial mapping, and both plane and object detection to superimpose computer-generated images in the volumetric context of a physical space via a head-mounted display. This in turn produces a unique set of challenges and opportunities for associated audio implementation and aesthetics. Creative development of this audio is often a function of evolving toolsets, and the associated workflow is far from standardized. This paper forms a context for such audio workflow, one that draws from precursor technologies such as audio for games and virtual reality and develops this into an outline taxonomy that is both representative of the state of the art, and forward facing towards evolution of the technology stack. The context is framed through a series of case studies. Between 2019 and 2021, BBC and Oculus TV commissioned Alchemy Immersive and Atlantic Productions to produce virtual reality and mixed reality experiences of several classic documentary series by Sir David Attenborough: Museum Alive, Micro Monsters, First Life VR, Museum Alive AR and Kingdom of Plants. This portfolio received numerous award nominations and prizes, including from the Raindance Festival and a double Emmy. The sound design, audio postproduction and spatial audio for these experiences were implemented by the company 1.618 Digital, and drawing from first-hand-creator involvement, the workflows are deconstructed and explored with reference to tools, technologies, techniques and perception. Such an exposition forms the basis for an analysis of both this and broader creative practice in the field of audio for extended reality, and this is subsequently used to present a speculative vision of audio in the future of immersive storytelling.

Convergence, Volume 29, Issue 5, Page 1308-1329, October 2023.
Research on games from a queer perspective presents a multidisciplinary field open to discussion with various dimensions. According to some studies, although virtual worlds are designed as heteronormative, they are inherently queer. This multi-method research evaluates the player experience of 15 LGBTIQ + players from Turkey within World of Warcraft (WoW). This study mainly explores participants’ behaviors, attitudes, and engagement in-game grounded on an analysis framework that consists of eight constructs in three consequent stages. Further, while investigating how game mechanics and narrative affect their player experience, we also question whether there is a possibility for a queer-play. Findings indicated that WoW is considered limiting regarding game mechanics with a gender binary restriction. Nevertheless, participants reported that there are always queergaming possibilities with the possible queer connections in-game.

Convergence, Ahead of Print.
Instagram has become a place of work for many content creators, including influencers; however, the inherent power imbalance between creator and platform dictating influencers’ success, requires creators to negotiate user expectations and the platform environment for their potential (commercial) success. Therefore, this article proposes approaching the influencer industry from the framework of platform imaginaries by developing a mixed qualitative method approach to visualize the precarity of Instagram influencers through their Instagram imaginaries with a cross-national comparison of US, German, and Japanese influencers. The results reflect a constant renegotiation of their own positions in relation to platform features and algorithms, follower interaction, as well as commercial partners, within three main imaginaries around Instagram’s use, namely, Instagram as a social space, Instagram as a workplace, and Instagram as a marketplace. The analysis highlights the interdependencies with and situatedness within Instagram’s platform environment, which need to be considered to understand the precarious working conditions of influencers.

Convergence, Ahead of Print.
Based on the notion of critical technical practice and its resonances with recent debates in digital film and media scholarship, in this article I outline a type of computational practice that aims to couple the relational-analytic powers of machine learning with the explanatory-creative powers of visual narrative. I provisionally call this approach creanalytics. To enact this coupling, I designed a system to annotate and classify a large corpus of film clips, automatically extract fragments from this corpus, and edit them into new compositions, rendered into a computational supercut, which I go on to argue can be understood as the minimal expression of a broader emergent form of media: the computational video essay. Below I describe the most salient technical aspects of this system, analyse the principles of its design, and discuss the methodological and conceptual possibilities of its use as a format that mediates between critics and their networked environments, and between individual media artefacts, their parts, and the larger collections to which they belong.

Convergence, Ahead of Print.
The popularization and normalization of conspiracy theories over the last decade are accompanied by concerns over conspiracy theories as irrational beliefs, on the one hand; and their advocates as radical and extremist believers on the other hand. Building on studies emphasizing that such accounts are one-sided at best, and pars pro toto stigmatizations at worst; we propose to study what we call “participatory conspiracy culture”—the everyday, mundane online debates about conspiracy theories. Based on a 6-month ethnography on Reddit’s r/conspiracy subreddit, an analysis of 242 selected discussions, and supported by digital methods tool 4CAT, this article addresses the question of how people participate in online conspiracy culture. It shows that among the plethora of conspiracy theories discussed online, discussions are heterogeneous, and their participants relate to each other primarily through conflict. Three epistemological positions occur: belief (particularly leading to constant discreditation of others’ beliefs), doubt (particularly as opposed to belief), and play (particularly with the fun of entertaining conspiracy theories without taking them too seriously). We conclude that the participatory conspiracy culture of r/conspiracy is not a homogenous echo chamber of radical belief, but a heterogeneous participatory culture in which belief is fundamentally contested, rather than embraced.

Convergence, Ahead of Print.
In the 2020 US presidential election, Misha Collins, star of the show Supernatural, endorsed Joe Biden for president and worked to support Biden’s campaign through interviews with campaign surrogates on Instagram Live and by phone banking on Zoom. In this study, we examine how fans made sense of Misha’s political action. While the political science and advertising literature on celebrity endorsements evaluates endorsements by the number of votes earned, we found that fans’ experience of Misha’s political advocacy was far more complicated than that. Our interviews with fans suggest that fans were ambivalent about Misha’s endorsements but enthusiastic about how Misha went about doing politics. Fans described a civic culture they co-constituted with Misha, defined by accepting and caring for other people, being authentic and genuine, and respecting disagreements. Fans described how these values were enacted both inside the fandom (in discussions of LGBTQ representation) and outside the fandom (in the 2020 US presidential election). Ultimately, fandom should be read as an important site of civic culture building—with implications for how fan cultures influence contemporary notions of citizenship, civic values, and political outcomes.

Convergence, Ahead of Print.
Contemporary corporate discourse asserts that viewers have a high degree of control over what they watch on video-on-demand (VOD) platforms, echoing early academic assumptions about online users’ autonomy. Such beliefs are now being interrogated, an endeavour this study continues by analysing data on the consumption and characteristics of television programmes viewed on a channel’s VOD service and – for comparison – via its linear broadcast. Crucially, our analysis incorporates characteristics – like programmes’ prominence on the channel’s VOD interface – that represent how platforms seek to steer users’ attention. Our analysis also incorporates other programme characteristics, like genre – which serves as a proxy for the deliberate viewing choices users make. Our results lend empirical weight to ideas about the limits of online users’ agency. This study is also of relevance to television scholars and executives who are interested in the specific predictors of television programmes’ success, both on VOD platforms and on linear television.

Convergence, Ahead of Print.
This article presents a reflection on four virtual reality (VR) research projects to foreground questions about how physical and sensory interactions are incorporated into VR narratives. The four projects explore a range of experiences, from interactions with digitally mediated and found objects, to sensory interactions and outdoor play. Bringing these projects together here offers an opportunity to contribute insight into conceptualizations of diegetic design and the ‘design space’ of VR, providing questions and considerations towards designing sensory experiences for narratives in VR.

Convergence, Ahead of Print.
This article presents an exploratory analysis of feminist practices on Portuguese Instagram, questioning how online feminisms are represented on Instagram, in light of its conventions, aesthetics, and popularity logics. Starting from a theme-oriented dataset – collected using the hashtags #feminismoportugal (feminism Portugal), #igualdadedegénero (gender equality), #naopartilhes (don’t share it), and #portugalmaisigual (a more equal Portugal) – this research analyses 294 posts, created by 101 users. Combining a qualitative close reading with the use of digital tools for visual analysis, this article explores how these Instagram feminist practices look like, what dynamics they encompass, and how they relate to the aesthetics and popularity logics of Instagram. Within this plural hashtag landscape, the aesthetics of online feminism goes beyond the dominant cultural imaginaries that link Instagram to photographic content, with long written text emerging as a key site for sharing feminist knowledge – both in captions and in graphic compositions. These graphic compositions have become part of the popular cultural imaginary of a feminist ‘genre’ on Instagram, combining Instagrammable aesthetics with educational content for accessible informal learning. Yet, feminist practices on Instagram are also subjected to the dominant social media logic of popularity, leading to a strategic mobilisation of attention to seek visibility and engagement, albeit to limited success.