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Categories:Research Roundup
by Rachel Berryman |
on May 29, 2024

This month, we’re excited to present a unique edition of our Research Roundup, showcasing two recent articles on Discord published in Transformative Works and Cultures: “Imagine a place:” Power and intimacy in fandoms on Discord (Kocik et al., 2024) and Discord as a fandom platform: Locating a new playground (Wagenaar, 2024). The articles formed part of a TWC special issue on Fandoms and Platforms by guest editors Maria K. Alberto, Effie Sapuridis, and Lesley Willard.

The publication of these two Discord-related articles are particularly momentous for the D/ARC. For starters, all six of the authors of these papers are D/ARC members. 😜 But more importantly, our Mod team collaborated with the editors of this special issue to promote the CFP in the D/ARC prior to its wider circulation, and even hosted an in-server meet-and-greet with the editors, where D/ARC members were invited to pitch and workshop paper ideas. (It was this very meet-and-greet event that led to the multi-author collaboration for one of the papers! đŸ”„)

We asked editors Maria K. Alberto (University of Utah) and Effie Sapuridis (Western University) why they felt Discord was a particularly important platform to feature in the special issue:

When we first put together this Call for Papers on “Platforms and Fandom”, Discord was one of the elephants in the Zoom. We were really hoping we’d receive submissions that engaged deeply with this particular platform because we’ve both seen how much fandom has flocked there – and that fandoms are using Discord in new and unanticipated ways. There was an urgency for research and critical reflection on Discord that wasn’t as pressing with platforms like Tumblr, Twitter or AO3, which fandom has been using for much longer.

One of the ways that Discord, as a platform, offers new opportunities was exemplified through our work with D/ARC! We loved having the opportunity to chat with everyone early on about our goals for this special issue, and the possibilities for Discord-focused research in an interdisciplinary journal like TWC. We also loved that D/ARC could easily circulate our Call for Papers and facilitate informal but extremely productive conversations with interested authors. Discord is an oft-ignored platform when it comes to fandom usage (among other things!), and we were hoping that this special issue could begin correcting this oversight.

We couldn’t be more delighted with the Discord-focused submissions we received! The article “Imagine a Place” by David Kocik, PS Berge, Camille Butera, Celeste Oon, and Michael Senters felt like such a natural starting point for the whole issue: we were delighted by its thoughtful primer on Discord, its affordances, and its uses. From there, Welmoed Wagenaar’s article on how Discord is used by fans seeking play with their fan-objects is a delight all around: her careful ethnography of these closed spaces shows how Discord is being used as so much more than a gaming platform. 

It’s been a pleasure working with D/ARC and being able to publish these amazing articles in a special issue of Transformative Works and Cultures!

To celebrate the work of our community, in addition to our usual short summaries about the contributions of these papers, we’ve included brief reflections from the authors about the inspiration for their articles, and what they feel researching Discord has to offer fan studies more broadly. We hope that these reflections offer insight and inspiration for fellow Discord scholars, and as Maria and Effie pointed out, illustrate the significant opportunity for further critical work on Discord’s communities, cultures, and affordances. 

As a reminder, you can access the D/ARC’s full Zotero library of Discord-related research at darcmode.org/zotero, and make additional suggestions for the library in the server!

Discord as a fandom platform: Locating a new playground (Wagenaar, 2024)

🔓 Open Access: https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2473

Wagenaar’s ethnographic study of Discord as a fandom platform draws insights from participant observation in two servers dedicated to transformative fandoms of fictional texts: one, a NSFW server focused on Chinese danmei novels (a popular genre of same-sex romance fiction); and the other, the works of J. R. R. Tolkein. Wagenaar approaches these two fan servers through a lens of “polymedia” (Madianou & Miller, 2013), discussing online fandom as an inherently networked activity. By recognising these servers as part of a wider constellation of fan platforms (e.g. Tumblr, Twitter, AO3), Wagennar draws attention to the unique affordances of Discord, and how fan servers are constructed and used to fulfill fannish desires or demands unmet by other platforms. Throughout the article, Wagenaar returns to Line Petersen’s (2022) concept of “fan play” to consider how fans use Discord as a space for playful practices, establishing “play rules” specific to their servers to sustain a “play mood” befitting their preferred fan activities. Her discussion focuses on three prominent facets of “transformative fandom — boundaries and privacy, warnings and consent, and events and feels — and show[s] how Discord has been adopted and adapted in relation to these features” (n.p.). The detailed portrait of Discord practices presented in this paper—as well as the author’s handling of participant trust, consent, and privacy—offer a strong blueprint for future ethnographic studies of Discord-based communities.

Here’s what the author, Welmoed Fenna Wagenaar (University of Groningen), had to say:

I didn’t initially set out to research Discord. As part of an ethnographic research project on the everyday life of media fans, I was observing the fan activities of a group of individuals, and they led me to the platform: Discord kept popping up as one of the platforms central to their daily fan experience. My research participants were also the ones who introduced me to the private servers I ended up studying for this article, for which I am incredibly grateful.

The experience of these fans turned out to be indicative of the article’s eventual focus: the ways in which people socially and culturally navigate Discord’s infrastructure and affordances within a broader network of platforms. My aim was to create a detailed account of how specific communities creatively shape Discord to be a space that enables play moods and fulfills particular needs and niches, at the same time as they work within Discord’s platform affordances and constraints. I believe the article to be especially useful for Discord scholars interested in play(ful) practices, privacy strategies, and community moderation.

Citation: Wagenaar, Welmoed Fenna. (2024). “Discord as a Fandom Platform: Locating a New Playground.” Transformative Works and Cultures, 42. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2473.

“Imagine a place”: Power and intimacy in fandoms on Discord (Kocik et al., 2024)

🔓 Open Access: https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2497

Back in 2021, Discord launched a short promotional video entitled Discord: The Movie, which walks viewers through a theatrical interpretation of the platform’s varied uses. Lead actors Awkwafina and Danny DeVito call viewers to “imagine a place” as they dramatize their tour of Discord’s otherwise quaint, Matryoshka-esque chat rooms. The advert’s framing of Discord’s private spaces and interest in social capital is brought to the fore by authors Kocik, Butera, Berge, Oon, and Senter in this study of the construction of power and intimacy between and across fandoms on Discord. Grounded in a robust review of the cultural and capital economies of fandom, the authors utilize Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (Brock, 2018) to excavate server-specific norms and affordances in the r/Zelda Discord server. Characterizing Discord as a “metaplatform for fandom” (n.p.), the authors identify the social and technical frameworks that organize networks of users and content in tiered layers, and highlight how fan intimacies within and across servers are shaped by the platform’s socially-inflected monetization strategies. The paper compellingly demonstrates how Discord’s unique infrastructural coupling of social capital and affordances make power and intimacy part and parcel of the fandom experience. Kocik and colleagues’ paper is a welcome investigation of community formation and commodification, firmly situated in fan-studies, but with definite value to any scholar interested in the formation and commodification of platform spaces.

Here’s what some of the authors had to say. 

David Kocik (University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee):

I’ve been a fan of The Legend of Zelda since I was four years old, watching my sister travel through graveyards, into gigantic volcanoes, and inside the belly of a fish. When we started writing an article about structures of fandom spaces on Discord, I knew I had to bring in Zelda, someway, somehow! The section of the article I most enjoyed contributing to was the analysis of power structures in the r/Zelda Discord server. I found it fascinating how the admins used Zelda lore and aesthetics to hierarchize the fandom. To highlight prominent server contributors, they utilized affordances like roles, colors, tags, permissions, and donations, with many of them named after characters or locations from the franchise. Even simple cosmetic roles like “Bokoblin” or “Subrosian” let players show their affinity for specific games and objects, and develop fan sub-communities.
 
Although other fan platforms allow hierarchies, Discord provides fandoms with a more explicit and convenient means of organizing fans. The r/Zelda Discord server ranks member contributions using the Mee6 bot, a feature that is easily integrated into Discord to incentivize engagement. By examining Discord’s server architecture, scholars can explore how platform affordances influence and shape fan communities, as well as how fan communities utilize Discord to build their own communities.

Celeste Oon (University of Southern California):

I’ve always been interested in how power and intimacy move through online fandom spaces, and Discord is especially interesting in this regard. When I began using the platform years ago, I was struck by how structured servers were: from roles that mapped out user identities, to channels that determined topics of conversation. I had never seen such organized digital fandom spaces, simultaneously encouraging active engagement yet restricting the ways users could engage. While fandoms are no strangers to prevailing norms and behavior policing, I’ve always felt that Discord has allowed fans to codify rules to a greater extent than most other platforms. This makes hierarchy and stratification on Discord more overt, as fandom’s traditional emphasis on participatory culture typically overshadows these notions elsewhere.

These threads flow throughout our paper as we dissect how Discord’s affordances shape fan interaction. What I think is great is that our analysis stretches from the micro (intra-server) to the macro (platform-wide), so it provides an overview of platform dynamics on multiple levels, all in one location. Discord as a platform remains heavily understudied within fan studies, so I hope our paper can function as a basic resource for scholars looking to learn more about fan communities across platforms.

Camille Butera (Independent Scholar):

What I find most useful and exciting about our piece is that it considers the ways that social features of fandom shape the design and infrastructure of Discord, and situates this analysis within broader conversations about how fandom exists online in the present moment. Fandom is a particularly useful lens for analysing Discord because fannish practices dominate the platform, and understanding both the imagined users and actual audience practices of Discord allows us to navigate the interrelations and tensions between user and design. I believe our paper can further conversations regarding the impact of economic capital and commercialization on fandom dynamics by drawing attention to the ways that Discord encourages fans to buy into its infrastructure and features.

Citation: Kocik, David, PS Berge, Camille Butera, Celeste Oon, & Michael Senters. (2024). “‘Imagine a Place’: Power and Intimacy in Fandoms on Discord.” Transformative Works and Cultures, 42. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2497.

If you’re keen to include academic contributions about Discord in one of your upcoming research projects, our Mod team may be able to help! Get in touch to discuss how we can support your project by emailing mods.darc[at]gmail.com
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