Paper cuts by Miriam Klein Stahl.

Larry Fan Art by Rock it Rocket.

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The zines I have made are designed to be a reminder of how fan networking has changed, but more importantly how it has stayed the same. I have taken artwork, tweets and graphics from Tumblr and Twitter and thrown them all together in a quick zine for the project. In the eighties and nineties, my fandom and other creative urges were always expressed by creating zines, alone or with friends. I would screen-print, photocopy, even draw them individually, cutting with scissors to size, stapling, sewing, glueing them together. The various ways a piece of A4 paper could be folded or divided were explored endlessly, with fabrics, colour magazines, brown paper used for the covers. I would plan to sell them, but always end up giving them away, as the important thing was to share the contents. It was a way to make friends, to be heard and to feel part of something. I see all these motivations amongst fans online. The main difference is probably the power of their collective voice. It is unimaginable to think of the voice of, for example, the Barrie Manilow fandom, ever being noticed at all! There are many ways and mediums now by which we circulate meanings in everyday life, represent the world to each other, and represent ourselves to the world. Social networking is represented itself in the media as a lawless, amateur free-for-all, the home of an exuberantly creative and dangerous exotic youth, addicted to the new technology and possibly ruined by it. They are seen as savage and undisciplined, referred to as “digital natives”. Combining anxieties about youth morality and new media, they are frequently the subject of moral panic; a problem amplified in the public imagination. It should be noted that this panic mirrors all panics at new technologies, particularly those that put cultural production in the hands of the masses, or lower classes, like the introduction of the pauper press in the early nineteenth century. It is unclear who is supposed to see a public post on Tumblr. Certainly their parents are not supposed to. But this will be the last generation of Western teenagers with parents who are not digitally literate, who are on the other side of the“participation gap”. Perhaps they are the only generation ever who won’t expect adults to enter their space online.