This cutting-edge collection explores the histories, aesthetics, and cultural work of fan video across a wide variety of manifestations and genres. Editors Louisa Ellen Stein and Samantha Close have assembled an edited collection that showcases the aesthetic diversity and transcultural dynamics at play in fan video as a widespread form. The collection explores the relationships between fan video as a set of DIY subcultural authorship forms and the broader evolving popular cultures of digital media, looking at how fan video structures and aesthetics influence other popular and commercial forms of digital video. In order to do so, it examines a wide range of fan video genres and practices, including vidding, reaction videos, self-insert TikToks, ASMR videos, Let’s Play videos, streams, Bilibili videos, gif loops, fan films, crack videos, animatics, collection videos, deepfakes, fake trailers, and fan video essays, among others. It features chapters by a range of scholars working in the intersecting fields of digital media studies, fan studies, media studies, cultural studies, audience studies, video game studies, transcultural studies, and videographic studies. A field-defining collection, this Handbook will be of interest to students and scholars of digital media studies, fan studies, media studies, cultural studies, videographic studies, and beyond.
