Audienceship and community of practice: an exploratory study of Chinese fansubbing communities

At the heart of the recurrent discussion in the existing fansubbing scholarship is the subject of fansubbing as a self-mediated and technology-empowered practice that is changing the way in which the media product has been traditionally produced and distributed. To date, more research is needed to explore how fansubbing can be further understood as an audienceship constituting a community of practice. By examining the data collected from the archival research, that is, Chinese fansubbing practices in online virtual environments, including distinctive folders or layouts of forums, websites, postings and microbloggings, this paper analyses how Chinese fansubbing communities form an audienceship of mutual affinity by pooling collective intelligence and genre knowledge, and how networked technology including aggregation and curation further helps active media viewers form discursive engagement and meaning-making participation around fansubbed media materials, thereby extending the connectivity of fansubbing audienceship.