Colleen E.Y. Barker

"Fiske: Theoretical Bridge Between Cultural Studies and Sociology"

John Fiske is integral to understanding how ordinary people and media converge in order to create what constitutes popular culture.    In the age of the Internet, this convergence is happening at speeds that are incomprehensibly fast creating the effect of not  knowing if culture finds meaning created by the people or if media creates meaning for people. 

The convergence of fans online over the images they consume and the meanings they create in reference to those images, readily opens itself up investigation by cultural studies.  Yet Sociology, the study of people interacting with one another and within social institutions, overlooks cultural studies exploration of this topic.   Cultural Studies references sociological theory but Sociology neglects reciprocity. 

I propose that Sociology can use Fiske's work in order to understand the postmodern interaction that occurs online between people, specifically through the study of the interaction of fans within fanfiction websites dedicated to the Twilight saga by Stephenie Meyer.  Through my investigation, I want to examine how networks of fans participate in the reinvention of culture informing Sociological scholars that people on the ground level are not just receptacles of media but actively participate in its creation and recreation.

I suggest that Sociology  look at the interaction of fandom and mass media through the Internet.   I posit that John Fiske's theoretical framework be the vehicle that guides sociological studies of this phenomena.  I will also reference  Jean Baudrillard's theories on simulacra and simulation, Roland Barthes' ideas on readerly and writerly text, and Henry Jerkins' convergence culture to create a theoretical map answering Erving Goffman's dilemma of havoc: the moment where   meaning becomes so fragmented that a complete upheaval of sociability occurs.  I am proposing that Fiske's cultural theories paired with the aforementioned theories, allot the self more control of meaning where Goffman leaves meaning of the self as fragmented and beyond repair when havoc occurs.  Havoc can be related to Fiske's notion of the breakdown but Fiske allows for breakdowns to be reconstructed through the micro interactions of the self with culture.  Sociology needs to look beyond its own master theorists in order to find and make meaning of the self in a postmodern world where meaning occurs expeditiously through encounters in mediated technologies like the Internet.