Proposal

Project Proposal: The social and professional success of members of the Doctor Who fandom

Step 1:

With my research project, I hope to answer the question: What are the effects on the offline social and professional success of members of the Doctor Who fandom? Some sub-questions may include: Does this online community often lead to offline relationships? If it does not, do strictly online relationships offer similar social and professional benefits as offline? How does the bond of having a common and intense interest in Doctor Who affect these relationships?

As a quasi-member of this fandom, I have a vested interest in this topic. In addition, though the research on online communities is extensive, there is relatively little about science fiction fandoms in particular and especially about the long-term effects of being a member of these communities.

Step 2:

With technology becoming ever more present in our lives, how this technology is affecting the way we interact with one another is a hugely important topic of study. The research in online communities in general is fairly vast, but there are still gaps in this research. These gaps call for case studies pertaining to the role of online communities in people’s lives (Preece). My research project will provide a case study of the Doctor Who fandom. Fandom, which often plays an important role in members’ lives and may even be some members’ main social outlet, is a great way to not only explore how fandom affects people’s lives, but also gain insight into the larger picture of sociability within and resulting from online communities. The current research pertaining specifically to science fiction fandoms provides a good basis for my project. This research has determined that a psychological sense of community exists within science fictions fandoms and that this sense of community is strengthened by a common interest (Obst). Research has also found that, within the Doctor Who fandom, there is a sense of openness and acceptance which may provide a more supportive community than members might find offline. Members are also encouraged to create and to share their creations, which may help shape skills that can be applied in academic or professional settings (Johnson). The research, however, does not go in depth on how the sense of community, social

interactions, or strengthening of creative skills affects members in their lives outside of fandom. This is where my research project will provide some insight.

Step 3:

Due to the nature of my research question, the majority of the research will need to be conducted online. Since my aim is to determine the long-term social and professional benefits of being a member of the Doctor Who fandom, my target participants will be those who have been involved in fandom for a while and who are just recently entering the professional environment. As such I will be focusing on members of the Doctor Who fandom between the ages of 20 and 30. I will employ three methods of data collection: online observation, survey, and interview. The first method I will employ is online observation, by which I mean observing the posts on some of the sites typically used for the fandom: Tumblr, LiveJournal, and the forums on two Doctor Who fansites. Secondly, I will create a questionnaire, which will include both quantitative questions (such as age, profession, length of fandom membership, and average time spent participating in fandom activities) as well as more open-ended, qualitative questions (such as how he/she participates (e.g. creatively, administratively, etc.), what skills he/she has gained, whether he/she has ever met anyone from fandom in an offline capacity). This questionnaire will ideally take participants 10 - 20 minutes to complete and I will distribute it through the same sites used for my observation. As a third method, I will also aim to interview between 3 and 5 fandom members, most likely through online means (either text or video). These interviews will ask similar questions as the survey, but will hopefully get more in depth and spontaneous answers to those questions.

Step 4:

As detailed in step 3, I will be using three forms of data collection: survey, interview, and online observations. Through the survey, I hope to gain a general sense of how people’s experiences within the Doctor Who fandom might answer my research question. This method will also provide some demographics to ground and organize the qualitative research, for example by allowing me to separate the answers to the qualitative questions based on age, profession, gender, and amount of time spent participating in fandom. The interviews will then step in to provide a few more in depth accounts of members’ experience in the Doctor Who fandom. Since these will be far more fluid than a questionnaire, I will be able to press respondents for further explanation or clarification. From this, I will have some examples of members’ personal understanding of how

fandom has affected their lives. Though both survey and interview will provide very useful data, they are both from fans’ own perspectives and are therefore necessarily biased to some degree. From online observations, I hope to explore the interaction and participation within fandom in a less biased manner, allowing me to both confirm the data from my other methods as well as to see where it may be skewed.

Step 5:

With my research project I hope to explore the effects of being involved in the Doctor Who fandom on one’s offline social and professional success. This questions fills gaps in the current research by connecting some of the research done within fandoms and online communities with members’ experiences offline. My plan is to choose a sample from members of the Doctor Who fandom who have recently entered the professional atmosphere, namely those between 20 and 30 years old, and to gather data through a questionnaire, interviews, and online observations. These research methods will provide insight into members’ experiences within fandom and their resulting experiences in their offline social and professional lives and will thus provide empirical evidence which will work towards an answer to my research question.

References

Preece, J., & Maloney-Krichmar, D. (2003). Online Communities. In J. Jacko and A. Sears, A. (Eds.) Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction (596-620). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. Publishers

Obst, P., Zinkiewicz, L., Smith, S. G. (2001). Sense of community in science fiction

fandom, Part 1: Understanding sense of community in an international community of interest. Journal of Community Psychology, 30, 87-103.

Johnson, L. (2012). Fan Self-Identity in the Docor Who Universe. Communication

Honors Theses. Paper 7. Trinity University, San Antonio, TX.