Online Fandom

The always-stimulating Futures of Entertainment conference returns after a year’s hiatus. This year it will be held on November 11-12 at MIT’s Gehry-designed Stata Center and will, as always, feature an extraordinary mix of academics and industry professionals on the cutting edge of transformations in entertainment.... read more »

We know that audiences are engaged in all kinds of practices online that change the ways they relate to one another and to the things they’re into. But how does all that affect the people they’re talking about – and sometimes talking to?

In a keynote talk at Transforming Audiences 3 in London last week, I address that question, drawing on the interviews I’ve been doing with musicians.

As always, the talk is cc licensed for noncommercial use with attribution, so read it, and if you dig it, share it:... read more »

Here is a ten minute talk I recorded for New Music Strategies’ AmpNMS ‘online music knowledge event’ about Making Friends With Fans:

Making Friends with Fans from Nancy Baym on Vimeo.

…... read more »

Last weekend I gave a talk at the International Communication Association about the increasingly interpersonal nature of the relationships between musicians and friends. In it, I draw on the interviews I’ve done with musicians to identify some of the positive new rewards they get when they can interact directly with their fans, cover many of the tricky interpersonal issues they face in trying to negotiate how much those relationships can be like friendship, and briefly summarize the main strategies they use to manage boundaries in ways with which they are comfortable.... read more »