Originally posted on January 6, 2019 at https://fanfictiondatascience.tumblr.com/post/181788901675/hi-im-ruby-and-im-part-of-a-group-of.
Hi! I’m Ruby, and I’m part of a group of researchers studying fanfiction communities through the University of Washington’s Human Centered Data Science Lab.
In November of 2017, we sent out a survey to all of you to learn a bit more about what motivates folks to participate in fanfiction communities, what kinds of activities you all participate in, and where your communities are. It’s been a hot minute, but I finally have some results to share!
We were absolutely blown away by your enthusiasm filling out our survey. We got a total of 1,888 responses from all over the world, which was way more than we ever could have imagined. Thank you all so much!
In this blog post, I’ll give a quick overview of participant demographics and fan experience data. Then I’ll finish off with a preview of a few more blog posts to come!
Demographics
Survey participants’ demographic information matched well with previous fanfiction community censuses. (1, 2, 3, 4) If you’re familiar with fandom spaces, this section shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.
Gender
The following chart represents the gender distribution of our participants. These percentages are not cumulative! Participants could check as many identities as applied to them.
Gender identities that fall under the nonbinary and genderqueer umbrellas were aggregated for the purpose of this chart, but a comprehensive distribution will be shared in a more robust demographics post later on. Stay tuned!
Age
The age distribution of participant was pretty typical of fanfiction communities. This chart expresses the distribution as percentages. Children under 13 were excluded from filling out the survey.
Location
We collected some general location data and found that most of our participants were from the United States and Europe. That said, participants answered our survey from all over the globe. Here’s a map of where our participants were from.
This map was created by aggregating coordinate data into different “buckets” based off of how close those locations were to one another. Each of the colored circles on the map represents one of these “buckets”. Any coordinate within a certain distance from the epicenter of each circle is included in the total displayed at the center of that circle.
To put that in context, the red circle over Germany doesn’t mean that there are 349 participants from Germany—it means that there are 349 participants from various locations around Europe, with the center of that bucket being located in Germany.
Blue circles represent buckets of 10 or fewer participants, yellow circles represent buckets of 100 or fewer participants, and red circles represent buckets of more than 100 participants.
Fandoms
Participants represented a great spread of different fandoms. Keep in mind that these results are from November 2017 through January 2018, so the fandoms represented in this word cloud are the ones that were popular among participants a year ago.
This word cloud only includes fandoms that were listed by ten or more participants. Although we did combine synonyms of fandom names (e.g. BNHA, My Hero Academia, MHA, etc. are synonyms of Boku no Hero Academia) we did not do any “meta-categorizing” (e.g. making Boku no Hero Academia a synonym of “Anime”). Therefore, the only fandoms included here are ones that were listed explicitly.
Fan Experiences
The biggest part of our survey delved into the activities that people in fanfiction communities participate in. We’ll give some more in-depth analysis of this data later, but for now, here’s a taste.
Personal History
First off, let’s talk about experience in terms of time. The following chart shows how long participants have been involved with online fanfiction communities.
Please keep in mind that each of these brackets are different sizes. The first bracket, “1 – 2 years”, represents only a 2-year span, while the fourth spans 10 years.
Which Fanfiction Communities?
Fans who filled out our survey were mainly based on tumblr and AO3, and most had used FanFiction.Net in the past. This is good to keep in mind, because the results from fans who favor other communities—say, Wattpad—might look very different. There is no one monolithic “fanfiction community”.
Activities
A significant portion of our survey questions asked participants to indicate how often they do various fanfiction-related activities. Although the complete list of activities was a lot longer, for this first overview post we’re just going to focus on three: reading fanfiction, writing fanfiction, and commenting on fanfiction.
Unsurprisingly, reading fanfiction was the most popular activity among our participants. About two-thirds of participants read fanfiction every day. Only 5 participants (0.3%) indicated that they’d never read fanfiction.
As for writing fanfiction, the distribution is much more even across the five frequency options. About a third of participants write fic at least once or twice a week, while another third write fic more infrequently (a couple times a month or less). The final third had not written fic or were no longer writing fic at the time of the survey.
Leaving comments or reviews on fanfiction was a fairly ubiquitous activity. Nearly all participants (88.8%) reported that they do at least occasionally leave comments or reviews. Almost half of participants (46.7%) left comments at least once or twice a week.
What’s Next?
Now that I’ve shown you all a sample of the results from the survey, what else is there to see?
In the coming months, my research team and I will continue to post about additional findings from the survey results. Some of these posts may cover topics such as:
- Demographics and activity information by fandom
- Comparing age and different activities in fanfiction communities
- Expanded demographic information, especially for gender
In addition, we have a significant amount of data from long responses to our survey question, “What motivates you to participate in fanfiction communities?” Participant responses were incredibly rich and detailed, and there’s a lot of fantastic information to draw from them.
For now, that’s a wrap! Thanks for taking a look at our results. If you have any questions or want clarification on any of the data shared here, please don’t hesitate to reply to this post, reblog with a comment, or send an ask. I’ll be happy to clear up any confusion, if I can.
May the force be with you all,
Ruby Davis
Human-Centered Data Science Lab
University of Washington
