Participatory Cultural Practice:Taking A Close Look At Fan Culture Within Sports Online Community

With the rapid growth of the internet,we have entered a brand new generation of internet era characterized by information,data and socialization.Within this new media popularized environment,media users not only gain access to participate,but also they have became active media producers,consumers,communicators and marketers instead of viewers only.All Football APP,as the representative of the online sport platforms,it aims to offer all kinds of features that a football fan would need,such as streaming live football games,browsing up to date football news and reading informative comments about football games.The most important feature of All Football APP is to provide an online interactive communicating platform for the sport community —CIRCLE.With All Football official capacity being the gatekeeper,active users of CIRCLE can join together to share common interests and values about football.In the contrast with traditional media based platforms,this new kind of media user-based app offers an opportunity for football content to be engaged in the production,consumption,social activities,cultural practices and dynamic link.This kind of active watching behaviour and fan coil phenomenon led by common interests is a typical example of participatory culture.From a user research perspective,this paper takes a deep look at All Football —CIRCLE phenomena by applying literature method,observation method and interview method.By using the actives of fans within CIRCLE as the breakthrough point,focusing on participatory culture theories of Jenkins within CIRCLE to explore the process of how cultural content can be produced by fan activities,and what the content production means to the fans.In this paper,the research status of fan culture is briefly summarized,then Jenkins' theory of participatory culture is evaluated and discussed in details,which lays a theoretical foundation for this paper.Followed by investigating the status of All Football — CIRCLE,and use the theory of participatory culture to discuss the communication characteristics and significance of CIRCLE.Finally,this paper discusses the problems and countermeasures of participatory fan culture by taking a close look at interviews of fans in CIRCLE.