<i>Lord of the Rings</i>,<i>Star Wars</i>, and participatory fandom: mapping new congruencies between the internet and media entertainment culture

Abstract

The culture of media entertainment, as exemplified in the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars film franchises, is being infused with new modes of authorship, production, marketing, and consumption that are characterized by Internet fan clubs, online producer‐consumer affiliations, and real‐world legal controversies over the proprietary ownership of digital bits of information. To analyze these new interactive patterns being employed by two competing media franchises, Bourdieu's theory of cultural production is supplemented with Jenkins's study of participatory fandom. Then, the contested nature of computer‐mediated communication is explored using a model that brackets the opposing potentialities of Internet influence on offline society.