Redefining The Border:Conflicts Among Fans Of Different Generations In The New Media Era

Nowadays,fan culture has become a remarkable media spectacle,and fierce battle among fans can be seen under various ranking list.In general,the battle for ranking and traffic is just within the fan community.But the battle between Jay Chou’s fans and Cai Xukun’s fans over the ranking of weibo supertopic(hereinafter referred to as J-K Battle),has breaks the boundaries of age and circle.This paper takes the event of J-K battle as a typical case.By observing the profile of the participants and interviewing 7 fans on both sides,this paper analyzes the differences in chase-star mode on both sides,and explore the root cause of this event by using is Bourdieu’s field theory,thus figuring out the structural contradictions behind this battle.It is found that Jay Chou’s fans are mainly the 85’s and the 90’s,and the gender composition is relatively more balanced.Most of Cai Xukun’s fans is born around 2000,and the majority of them are female.Therefore,this battle reflects the collision of star chasing mode due to the difference of age and gender.In terms of group form,Jay Chou’s fans are mostly spontaneous and unorganized,while Cai Xukun’s fans are highly organized,unified and mobilized.From the perspective of individual star chasing habitus,Jay chou’s fans often take music works as the center of their text consumption and look up to their idols in a personal way.While Cai Xukun’s fans construct their idols by consuming fragmented texts,and they cultivate their idol with group members by all kinds of data practice.This paper holds that the J-K Battle is essentially a struggle for symbolic power between the two kinds of fans.For Cai Xukun’s fans,the Internet economy field and entertainment industry have empowered them,so the invasion of Jay Chou’s fans is to destroy the legitimacy of their dominant position in the social media fandom field.Therefore,they need to beat back and maintain the boundary of this field,thus legitimizing the symbolic capital acquiring from the struggle in pursuit of desirable resources.From the perspective of Jay Chou’s fans,their action are a collective confirmation of the identity of the generation,and they legitimize their taste of idol into orthodox taste.In addition,Jay Chou fans believe that the internet fans community has been given too much power to intervene in the cultural field,so they joined this battle to restate their leading voice in the entertainment market,and to maintain the autonomy of culture field.J-K Battle seems to be an accidental event,but behind the contingency lies inevitability.The symbolic economy of post-modern society quantifies people’s enthusiasm and taste,but it also leaves space for people to seize the symbolic power.As long as power flows among media field,cultural field and economic field,the struggle will always continue.