A Review of the Evolution and Shifts in Research on Chinese Online Fan Fiction Culture

With the development of online media, fan fiction has gradually evolved from a niche creation by fans into a network cultural practice with a stable community base, and related research has continued to expand. This paper focuses on the period from 2000 to 2026, using a combination of platforms such as CNKI, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. It also employs a snowballing tracing method to select representative results and divides the research into stages based on changes in research subjects, problem awareness, and media environment. A review reveals that related research has generally gone through three stages: research on concepts and online communities, research on media and cultural practices, and research on creators and platform governance. The research objects have gradually expanded from texts and groups to the relationship between creators, communities, and platforms. However, existing research still has shortcomings in terms of research types, cross-platform comparisons, and the boundaries of related concepts.