"#Bughead Is Endgame": Civic Meaning-Making in Riverdale Anti-Fandom and Shipping Practices on Tumblr. (September 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Burkhardt, Emily; Trott, Verity; Monaghan, Whitney
• Is Part Of: Television & new media. Volume 23:Number 6(2022)
• Page Start: 646
• Page End: 662
• Publication Date: 2022-09
• Subjects: fandom -- anti-fandom -- Tumblr -- shipping -- LGBTQIA -- sexualities -- digital culture; Télévision -- Aspect social -- Périodiques; Télévision -- Aspect économique -- Périodiques; Médias -- Publics -- Périodiques; Civilisation -- Histoire -- Périodiques; Television broadcasting -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Digital media -- Periodicals; 302.234505
• DOI: 10.1177/15274764211022804
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1527-4764

Abstract

In this paper, we seek to understand how shipping and anti-fan practices intersect to create meaningful audience engagement and civic discourse about contemporary social and political issues in the "politics of viewing" CW's adaptation of Riverdale . By examining tagged posts from January 3, 2017 to June 26, 2019, we elicit how fan-rhetoric operates in a digitally networked environment and interrogate the intra-fan rivalries between shippers, anti-shippers, and anti-fans that underpin the Riverdale fandom on Tumblr. In doing so, we begin to sketch out a taxonomy of shipping-specific anti-fan practices, extending Gray's work into different types and modes of anti-fandom to consider the role shipping plays within consumption practices, fandom stratification, and the production of civic discourse online.