Negotiating Fan Identities in K-Pop Music Culture

Abstract

In this paper I bring together interaction, media, deviance, self, and identity to make sense of how young Singaporeans consume Korean popular (hereafter, K-pop) music and culture. My overarching goal is to highlight that being a music fan is not a straightforward or even easy experience. Rather, the self as music fan is continually developing within a complex variety of social processes, from the circulation of global, mass media representations to inter-and intra-personal interactions. I present data collected from a study on K-pop music consumption in Singapore, a small island-nation in Southeast Asia with an insatiable thirst for foreign culture. The data show how a group of Singaporean K-pop fans were regularly bombarded with largely negative messages about what it means to be K-pop music fans, and how these meanings affected their own negotiations as fans. K-pop fandom provided a sense of shared identity and status within popular youth culture, yet their experiences were often soured by negative media portrayals of deviant fans, whose behaviors risked stigmatizing the K-pop social identity. This paper thus deals with some of the problems for self that being a music fans entails.

Full text

NEGOTIATING FAN IDENTITIES IN
K-POP MUSIC CULTURE
J. Patrick Williams
ABSTRACT
In this paper I bring together interaction, media, deviance, self, and iden-
tity to make sense of how young Singaporeans consume Korean popular
(hereafter, K-pop) music and culture. My overarching goal is to high-
light that being a music fan is not a straightforward or even easy experi-
ence. Rather, the self as music fan is continually developing within a
complex variety of social processes, from the circulation of global, mass
media representations to inter- and intra-personal interactions. I will pre-
sent data collected from a study on K-pop music consumption in
Singapore, a small island-nation in Southeast Asia with an insatiable
thirst for foreign culture. The data show how a group of Singaporean
K-pop fans were regularly bombarded with largely negative messages
about what it means to be K-pop music fans, and how these meanings
affected their own negotiations as fans. K-pop fandom provided a sense
of shared identity and status within popular youth culture, yet their
experiences were often soured by negative media portrayals of deviant
fans, whose behaviors risked stigmatizing the K-pop social identity. This
Symbolic Interactionist Takes on Music
Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 47, 8196
Copyright r2016 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-239620160000047015
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paper thus deals with some of the problems for self that being a music
fans entails.
Keywords: K-pop; subculture; authenticity; identity; symbolic
interaction
MUSIC FANDOM AND DEVIANT IDENTITY
Social interaction is consequential in the development of the self (Mead,
1934). The self is aware, knowing, feeling, and active (Weigert & Gecas,
2003), yet only partially known at any moment via identification, which
establishes “what and where the [self] is in social terms” (Stone, 1962,
p. 93). The situated objectification of self into typologies has been described
in detail in the literatures on social control and occupations (see, e.g.,
Holstein, 1992; Loseke, 1989) and involves “a reductionist characterization
that subsumes diverse …experiences into a narrow interpretation of those
experiences. Often these typologies are built into institutional rhetoric, hav-
ing ‘political consequences’ insofar as they express the intersection of power
and knowledge” (Fox, 1999, p. 435). This casting of the self into objectified
social types occurs not only with situated identities, but with social and
personal identities as well.
Of particular interest to me in this project is the mass-mediated construc-
tion of social identities and how such mass-mediated identities have affected
K-pop music fans’ personal identities. Since the 1970s, identities have been
increasingly conceived of as existing in relatively decontextualized terms,
cut away from the specificities of situations within which they have histori-
cally been defined (Altheide, 2000; Cerulo,1997). As with other agents of
social control, the mass media, especially news media, have developed the
ability to quickly articulate and disseminate information about problematic
social identities, which often have tenuous ties at best to the lived reality of
those being typified. These identities are often tied to young people and/or
their behaviors. The process itself is nothing new, having been studied dec-
ades ago as a key dimension of moral panics about youth cultures (Cohen,
2002; Williams, 2011a). In the 21st century, news and social media seem to
produce a steady stream of new, or at least newly articulated, social identi-
ties that problematize youths’ cultures and practices.
Mass-mediated social identities are powerful components in the making
of fan identities and news media continue to have a dominating effect
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on popular understandings of music and fandom, with dramatized narra-
tives of individual pathology or collective deviance predominating (e.g.,
Jenson, 1992; Rosenbaum & Prinsky, 1991; Wallace & Alt, 2001). In the
Singaporean context, the news media regularly construct citizens’ actions
into various functional or deviant typologies (Williams & Suhaimi, 2014).
How these mass-mediated identities became meaningful in everyday life,
however, should not be assumed. Fans, like any other member of society,
do not merely react to stimuli in the environment. Rather, they handle
the meanings of typified identities interpretively (Mead, 1934). Fans
recognize complex identity hierarchies within music cultures and work
partially with, and partially against, typologies used by outsiders (see also
Widdicombe, 1998).
In this study I deal specifically with K-pop music fan identities.
Samantha, an undergraduate Chinese-Singaporean student who self-
identified as a K-pop music fan and invested significantly in her fandom,
was the impetus and driving force behind the study. Having spent more
than a year in Korea between 2011 and 2013, ostensibly to study and intern
but admittedly to feed her passion for K-pop music and culture, Samantha
encountered several situations while in Korea that caused her to question
her and others’ fan identities. Specifically, she came up against the mass-
mediated sasaeng identity. Rooted in journalistic accounts, sasaeng were
said to be typically girls aged between 13 and 22 years old who were
reported to engage in many problematic behaviors vis-a
`-vis K-pop artists,
including: installing closed-circuit television cameras near artists’ homes;
attaching tracking devices to artists’ cars, using GPS to track their move-
ments; stalking them around town in taxis; and engaging private investiga-
tors to seek out highly personal information. So-called sasaeng fans have
broken laws by breaking into the homes of artists to steal their personal
belongings, trafficking and abusing their personal information, engaging in
high-speed chases and causing accidents while stalking, harassing artists’
families and associates, and assaulting both artists and other fans. Given
the almost wholly negative orientation of such stories, the sasaeng fan
quickly became a mass-mediated folk devil across Asia.
RESEARCH SITE AND METHODS
The sasaeng identity caused trouble for Samantha while in Korea, as she
began to (re)interpret some of her own fan behaviors as potentially
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problematic. While not having broken any laws, she felt that some of her
attitudes and behaviors were uncomfortably close to that of the sasaeng
and as a result she felt some degree of concern. Back in Singapore,
Samantha decided to collect data on other “hardcore” Singaporean K-pop
fans to (in)validate her own fan self-conceptions (Ho, 2013; Williams &
Ho, in press). Working together, we decided on a two-pronged approach to
data collection and analysis: qualitative media collection and analysis
(Altheide & Schneider, 2012) and field research, including participant
observation and in-depth interviewing. Having recognized the cultural
significance of the term sasaeng, we began our study by searching for its
presence in mass media sources in Asia. We identified approximately
30 mass media news and documentary sources that discussed extreme
K-pop fandom in sasaeng terms. The news articles were published between
late 2010 and early 2013, while the documentary excerpts were broadcast in
2012. In addition, we analyzed online comments posted in response to these
information sources utilizing an ethnographic content analytic approach
(Altheide & Schneider, 2012). Our analysis identified patterned portrayals
of the sasaeng phenomenon within the news media.
Additionally, Samantha accompanied a group of youths as they
“stalked” a K-pop band and covertly recorded field notes of her experiences
along with details of the young people’s interactions. We handled these data
ethically in order to protect the identities of those involved along with the
authenticity of the fan context (see Spicker, 2011). Separately, she used stan-
dard social media channels such as Facebook to recruit Singaporean K-pop
fans for interviews. Asking friends to share information about the project
on their Facebook timelines, Samantha identified and eventually narrowed
down a sample of 10 respondents based on their intentions, motivations
and the level of devotion displayed in their experiences searching for
and meeting the K-pop idols in Korea. She conducted semi-structured inter-
views between January and February 2013, nine of which were done face-
to-face while one was done online. The interviews lasted between 90 and
135 minutes. Previous readings of literature on deviance, subcultures, and
fan identities (e.g. Jenkins, 1992; Williams, 2011b) informed the analysis.
THE MEDIATED CONSTRUCTION OF THE SASAENG
In his study of folk devils, Cohen (2002) demonstrated how collective
acts that were labeled as problematic in the mass media could become
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society-level moral panics, especially when the news media selectively repre-
sented events and individuals in stereotypical ways and then provided privi-
leged means for morally right-thinking people to weigh in on matters. Such
folk devils were prescient of a global discourse of fear that has emerged in
recent decades with various consequences for individuals and groups
(Altheide, 2002). Mass media sources were rife with portrayals of extreme
K-pop fan behavior and were key in framing information about K-pop
fans that is subsequently disseminated at the speed of broadband. The
inclusion of opinions from “average” fans, complaints from industry repre-
sentatives, and commentary from university professors, lawyers, doctors,
and culture critics in journalistic accounts further legitimized criticisms
about extreme K-pop fandom.
The source of the sasaeng phenomenon was allegedly rooted in embo-
died, pathological form via hypothesized desires for bodily connection to
and recognition by K-pop idols. This was represented in mainstream news
as well as in fan-based documentaries; the latter adding with more
frequency and depth the voice of sasaeng fans themselves. In one documen-
tary, for example, an interviewed fan explained her “obsession” with the
private lives of her favorite idols:
I feel like I get to know more about and get closer to the idol I love. If I go to a concert,
there are thousands of people attending, so the idol would not know who I am. But if
I become sasaeng, they will recognize me. If I keep telling them, “I am so-and-so. I saw
you at that place before. I am so-and-so,” they will start to take note of me and ask
“Did you come again today?” To sasaeng fans, being recognized by idols is a good
thing. [Park, Park, & Yang, 2012, 3m40s]
While significant and meaningful to the fan herself, “in the popular ima-
gination, fans who pursue direct contact with media stars are seen as sus-
pect, possibly unbalanced, and threatening in a variety of ways” (Ferris &
Harris, 2011, p. 13). As the media-constructed story goes, fandom may
begin normally, but can develop malignantly to the point where fans
become sasaeng who devote their time to stalking their idols, abandoning
their own personal and social lives in the process. News stories reported
instances of skipping school, spending nights sleeping in 24-hour internet
cafes or in front of the idols’ houses or agencies, occasionally dropping out
of school or becoming homeless due to the daily practices of idolatry; even
resorting to prostitution to cover stalking-related costs such as taxi fees.
Such examples were embedded within larger discourses of fear and
stigma. Goffman (1963) argued that members of groups whose interests or
behaviors are defined as culturally or situationally problematic are given
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stigmatized “virtual social identities,” which are rooted in assumptions and
stereotypes. Looking through a sample of mass-media reports on K-pop fan-
dom available on www.allkpop.com, we found that the virtual social identity
of sasaeng fans was assigned a host of undesirable attributes, including:
abnormal, aggressive, bizarre, brutal, crazed, criminal, dangerous, distorted, evil, exces-
sive, extreme, frightening, gang-like, horrifying, ignorant, illegitimate, irresponsible,
obsessive, overboard, pathetic, scary, shocking, vicious, violent
Some of these terms suggest psychological problems (crazed, abnormal);
some suggest dangerous, even criminal elements (aggressive, brutal, crim-
inal, dangerous); while others provide vaguer, yet extreme, formulations
(excessive, extreme, overboard). Together, they show an overwhelmingly
negative portrayal of the sasaeng fan identity that distinguishes certain
K-pop fans from “normal” society. These findings fit with other studies on
the mediated construction of “deviant” cultural identities and show that
similar processes persist in Asia as well as North America (e.g., Coyle,
2010; Eyres & Altheide, 1999).
Extreme formulations of sasaeng fan identity were not only communi-
cated in journalistic accounts, but were regularly recycled by readers who
interacted with news texts via social media tools. Looking at 168 comments
made by readers of three news stories published on Yahoo! Singapore
Entertainment during this study, there emerged a rather clear consensus
based on disapproval of sasaeng fans’ behaviors. Negative expressions of
hatred and disgust, as well as moral judgments of sasaeng fans’ reported
actions, included words similar to those found in mass-mediated news.
childish, crazy, disturbing, dumb, godawful, goddamn stupid, idiotic, insane, lunatic, men-
tally deranged, obsessively mad, perverted, problem, psychotic, retarded, sick, too much
Note the similarity in the use of terms, particularly referencing mental
and psychological characteristics as underlying reasons for deviant beha-
vior. When dealing with deviant youth subcultures, the semiotics of such
negativity was at once supported by the political economy of news making
and supported the social cognition of those who interact with the news
(Williams, 2011a). Social cognition served a notably instrumental function
by facilitating the process of stereotyping, whereby the characteristics or
actions of an individual member of a social category were taken as repre-
sentative of everyone within that category.
Interactional analysis showed how social media users negotiated the
meanings of the sasaeng fan identity in one of two ways. Some commenters
used mass-mediated information to build up the image that the “K-pop
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fan” was, at large, a problematic identity with comments such as “there’re
a lot of crazy stupid K-pop fans around,” and “all this K-pop is a diver-
gence and detrimental to one’s sanity.” Other commenters wrote about
K-pop fandom positively, but were clear to establish semantic boundaries
between themselves and the behaviors in which sasaeng fans engaged. Some
commenters, for example, claimed to be fans, yet qualified the extent of
their fandom by writing things such as,
“I respect the idol’s privacy.”
“I will never go to that extreme.”
“I’m not that crazy to stalk them.”
“The most I would do is to buy their concert tickets.”
“I will never do anything so sick like that.”
It is not uncommon for participants in youth cultures to actively work at
controlling the identities of others (Milner, 2006, chap. 5). In online discus-
sions, Williams (2006) found that straightedge music fans members were
vociferous in maintaining a strict boundary between those who participated
in the culture the “right” way versus the “wrong” way. Similarly, some K-pop
fans used the comments section of news reports to disassociate themselves
with sasaeng fans by declaring that the latter were actually not fans and
explaining how true fans like themselves behave: “if you’re a true fan, spend
the money buying the albums and concerts to support them, not stalking.”
Such interactions worked toward naturalizing certain ways of being a
fan, which further entrenched everyday assumptions about K-pop fandom
every time they were invoked within media texts. Through interactions with
and through mass and social media, “normal” K-pop fans actively con-
structed a codified sasaeng fan identity that became a monolithic Other,
reduced either to a voyeuristic spectacle or to an object of fear. As mass-
mediated spectators, K-pop fans and non-fans alike built up an image of
revulsion and appall despite a seeming lack of first-person experience with
self-identifying sasaeng fans. Mass and social media quickly diffused the
sasaeng fan identity.
IDENTIFYING AS A SINGAPOREAN K-POP FAN
But what about the everyday experiences of Singaporean K-pop fans?
Foremost, we found that the most common ways of consuming K-pop
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culture without leaving the country were through mass and social media.
Concerts and other local events were the only viable chance most fans had
to connect with K-pop idols, but such connections were typically fleeting
and/or indirect. The Singaporean K-pop fans we interviewed collectively
expressed the importance of social media for receiving and sharing content
about K-pop. Examples included publishing their own websites or blogs,
participating in social networking sites dedicated in part or in whole to
K-pop, posting messages on K-pop forums, and uploading multimedia
content such as photos and videos. The Internet bridged the geographical
gap that fans felt would otherwise severely constrain their ability to main-
tain an interactive relation with K-pop culture; it also intensified the plea-
sures of active engagement with other fans, as well as helped develop a
sense of commonality among disparate fans. Singaporean fans we inter-
viewed updated themselves on news and gossip by religiously visiting enter-
tainment news websites such as www.allkpop.com and by watching and
sharing information about new music video releases, song or dance covers,
and clips of Korean television programs on YouTube.
Due in part to their geographical displacement from the origin of
K-pop, Singaporean K-pop fans experienced K-pop differently than
Korean fans. Many found mediated fandom to be insufficient to sustain
their desire to participate more intimately in K-pop culture, not least
because they recognized that Korean fans were physically, intellectually,
and emotionally closer to their Korean idols. There seemed to be two con-
sequential sets of behaviors related to Singaporeans’ different experiences.
First, because opportunities to connect were less frequent, some young
Singaporean fans were willing to make their own opportunities when possi-
ble, which increased the likelihood that they might be labeled as sasaeng
fans. Second, Singaporean fans who came up against the sasaeng fan iden-
tity found it necessary to evaluate and negotiate their personal identities
and practices vis-a
`-vis the mediated social identity of the extreme K-pop
fan. We saw evidence of these consequences in both the participant-
observational and interview data.
Samantha had the opportunity to join a group of 11 Singaporean fans
(10 females, 1 male), aged 1518, as they “stalked” Big Bang, a K-pop
boy band that was in Singapore during their Big Bang Alive Galaxy Tour
2012. While attending local K-pop events might be considered a very
practical measure of K-pop fandom to the average Singaporean K-pop
fan, the young people we interviewed sought ways of distinguishing them-
selves from the average fan, who they saw as being relatively uncritical
in their fandom. One preferred method of expressing relatively stronger
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commitment to K-pop was through hiring what they called “stalking
vans” high-capacity passenger vans operated by full-time drivers and
following K-pop idols as they moved around the city before and after a
performance or event.
Several days before the performance, Samantha found out about the
group through a retweet by SG K-Wave, a Singapore-based K-pop
community website providing news and information about events in
Singapore. After establishing contact, Samantha was added to a mobile
chat group, where members chatted and gossiped with each other and
made arrangements for meeting up and paying for the van. The group
disclosed their stalking plans through various social media as they
searched for other fans to share the $450 SGD charge for hiring the van
and received strong criticisms from fellow fans. A few excerpts from
Samantha’s Twitter log show a now-familiar process of articulating the
sasaeng fan identity:
WTH! People r gonna stalk BIGBANG when they r here? Sasaeng fans. Hope it’s not
like what suju fans did last time. Embarrassing!
1
Stalk Big Bang vans??? I don’t think I’m that crazy!
Alr got ppl plan to stalk Big Bang alr, Lol wtf.. And gathering in a group summore.
Wtf is wrong with u all ah. Lol. Privacy for them please.
“Interesting in stalking Big Bang?” DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. STOP UR
PLANS, I’M TELLING YOU. IF U DO THAT, YOU’RE A SASAENG FAN.
Members of the stalking group were aware of these messages and
accounted for their actions by highlighting other fans’ jealousy as well as
defending the standards of their discretion, as excerpts from their private
group chat on Whatsapp demonstrate:
Let them tweet la xD.
2
Aiya they jealous only
:O we won’t be retarded or what lah. Tsk.
Ya lor jealous people lmao
They talk cock la these ppl not like we gonna whack BB wat siao la
Ya la this is not called sasaeng pls
Sasaeng is like stalk until go hotel room leh
What is perhaps most interesting in this conversation is how the partici-
pants collectively positioned themselves as simultaneously better than those
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who were afraid to stalk, while being careful to distance themselves from
the more problematic behaviors of extreme fans. Later in their chat, one
person claimed that they were not sasaeng fans as “sasaeng [fans are] more
scary” and that they would “only follow [Big Bang].” Such posts suggested
a clear recognition of the mass-mediated sasaeng fan identity and high-
lighted how members of the stalking group worked to distance themselves
from it.
The fans were prepared to stalk from the moment Big Bang arrived in
Singapore and therefore met at the airport before their expected AU:1afternoon
arrival.
3
Most of the afternoon was spent waiting for and then photograph-
ing members of Big Bang as they passed through the arrivals lounge and
climbed into three black Mercedes, which whisked them to their hotel. The
sasaeng van followed, often pulling alongside the Mercedes so the fans
could display homemade “fanboards” in the windows, and the group sub-
sequently joined a small crowd of fans that had already formed outside the
hotel entrance (the hotel staff had set up barricades to prevent fans from
entering the lobby). To escape the heat, the group spent some time in the
van cooling off and gossiping. Samantha took the opportunity to question
group members about other fans that were present at the hotel. What she
found was that group members consciously divided the Singaporean K-pop
fan community into fans that were too extreme, too casual, or just right.
Whereas they had earlier worked to distance themselves from sasaeng fans
who they saw as too star struck, deviant, or unstable, in the van they deni-
grated fans that, in their eyes, had not developed sufficiently strong loyalty
to specific K-pop idols/groups.
Fan: “they go for every band event, waste money. Give us money lah, we [need to] pay
for our van …
Samantha: Do they also have a van?
Fan: No lah, they just come to the hotel. Stupid shit right?
Because the Singaporean K-pop fans we studied happily engaged in
behaviors like van stalking, which were discursively connected to the
sasaeng identity, they positioned themselves in such a way that they could
avoid claims of being passive-consumer fans on the one hand, but not to be
deviant or extreme on the other. Casual fans tried too hard to be “all
rounded” or “well-versed” by following K-pop indiscriminately. These indi-
viduals expressed the importance of being more “passionate” than casual
fans, while not being extreme enough to warrant the sasaeng fan label.
Stalking idols in a van and waving fanboards at event locations represented
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passion, while keeping a respectful distance and not breaking laws were
signs of their normality relative to sasaeng.
The interview data showed similar patterns of negotiating the K-pop fan
identity. When asked, all interviewees denied being sasaeng fans and pro-
fessed themselves to be relatively normal fans, but drew on information
that demonstrated clear understandings of what would be considered pro-
blematic fan behavior. One fan, for example, admitted that her trips to
Korea could be seen as “crazy” by some people, but that she had never
engaged in any behaviors that were not otherwise beyond scrutiny.
The craziest thing I’ve ever done would probably be just flying over to Korea to watch
the concert. I don’t think there is anything else I would do that is crazier than that.
[Brenda, interview]
Implicit in her talk was a belief that her actions were normal. Thanks to
her personal savings from her previous jobs, she could afford the trip and
she saw her actions as being within the bounds of typical consumer/fan
behavior. Other interviewees sought to prove their normality by offering
additional information that highlighted not only the boundary between
normal fans and sasaeng fans, but on which side of the boundary they
stood.
No. I don’t know how to install a CCTV. [laughs] [Nicole, interview]
In a study of young men with stigmatized identities, Hochstetler, Copes,
and Williams (2010) found that their interviewees regularly attempted to
establish rhetorical distance between their own sense of authenticity and
the stigma that resulted from their criminal activities. The individuals inter-
viewed, although they had been convicted of violent crimes, routinely dis-
missed the idea that they were authentically violent people, insisting instead
that their own behaviors were either acceptable given the circumstances or
excusable in comparison to others’ more violent actions. Similar strategies
have been found in other studies where actors attempt to avoid being
attributed to an identity type (see, e.g., Widdicombe, 1998; Williams, 2013).
Our respondents likewise described their fan behaviors to be less intense
than the actions of sasaeng fans and refuted suggestions that their beha-
viors were even comparable.
Stalking is the intrusion of privacy, but our kind of stalking is just waiting for and fol-
lowing the K-pop idols from schedule to schedule, venues to venues; not to the level of
stalking such as finding out their phone numbers, call records and bank transactions.
There are different levels of stalking ours is just the amateur level. [Jean, interview]
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While acknowledging that stalking was often associated with the intru-
sion of privacy, Singapore fans denied the significance of “their kind of
stalking” in comparison. Interviewees talked about searching out their idols
in public spaces (e.g., waiting for chance encounters, gathering at locations
for expected appearances, following them on the roads), but emphasized
that they did nothing illegal, nor did they intrude on what they saw as per-
sonal space or private lives.
Singaporean fans compared their behaviors to those of Korean sasaeng
fans as a way of justifying the relative normality of their own choices and
practices. They also expressed what they saw as a different mentality from
that of sasaeng fans by assuming a more understanding standpoint toward
K-pop idols. A recurring theme across interviews was the boundary
between idols and fans when they meet in person, in which all respondents
claimed to maintain a respectful distance:
I don’t like being close to the idols. I make sure I try to stay far away. I want to give
them space. If I were them, I would feel very pressured if there was a fan staring at [me]
all the time. As a fan, I don’t want to pressure them. [Shirley, interview]
For fans, celebrity status was attractive, but there were socially con-
structed limits to that attraction. Whereas the celebrity auras that K-pop
idols possessed seemed to function as candles to which Korean sasaeng
fans were drawn like moths (at least according to mass media reportage),
those auras functioned more as wards for our sample of Singaporean fans,
much like for fans in other Southeast Asian countries AU:2(Siriyuvasak &
Hyunjoon, 2007).
I wouldn’t chase them to that extent. To me, they are idols and that’s why they are
untouchable. There is no need to be so close to them, they’re not my friends. If you get
too close to them in real life, you will start to see all their flaws, like a lot of them actu-
ally have their own dirty private lives, and other things that I’d rather not know about.
I don’t want to know. [Mindy, interview]
Sasaeng fans were characterized as those who breach the limits of the
idol-fan boundary to get as close to idols as possible, while the
Singaporean K-pop fans we interviewed claimed a collective disinclination
toward getting too close, be it physically or personally. A majority of inter-
viewees expressed the desire to maintain an ideal image of idols in their
minds and feared that getting too close might spoil that. However, these
fans were quick to describe how they had ventured further than the “aver-
age fan” to meet idols when they felt such talk would not stigmatize them.
In sum, Singaporean K-pop fans engaged regularly in face work to estab-
lish a unique position with consumer-fan culture.
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CONCLUSION
While the political-economy of K-pop has received significant attention in
the last decade, particularly among Asian scholars (Chua, 2004; Shim,
2006), there has been virtually no research published that focuses on K-pop
fan experiences within the context of mass-mediated images of deviance
and identity. This study not only contributes to the micro-sociological lit-
erature on K-pop fandom in Southeast Asia, but also deals specifically with
the processes through which deviant music-based identities are constructed,
diffused, and negotiated. Music fan identities are rooted in the cultural pol-
itics of knowledge production. In line with mass-media studies of fear and
moral panic (Altheide, 2002; Eyres & Altheide, 1999), we found that the
sasaeng fan identity as a typology was constructed largely through mass-
mediated discourses of social control. Yet fans did not accept the sasaeng
identity uncritically. Singaporean fans were not necessarily either passive or
resistant, rather they participated in a complex set of processes within
which they enjoyed and resisted aspects of public discourse surrounding the
object of their fandom.
In the media-saturated realm of Korean popular music, the sasaeng fan
has emerged as a seemingly self-contained identity that garners nearly as
much attention as the K-pop artists themselves. This suggests that mass
and social media are increasingly becoming sites for the construction of
music fan types. Just as many journalists constantly search for dirt on
celebrities in order to feed audiences that are allegedly ravenous for such
information, interactions among mass and social media users enable the
propagation of deviant fan identities that become objectified as consumer
commodities. The sasaeng fan identity is one such example, which now
functions both as a moniker for excessiveness that captures media consu-
mers’ attention, and as a stigma that must negotiated by fans in every-
day life.
The relationships among mass and social media and fans are growing
increasingly complex and are therefore worthy of additional scrutiny. This
project explored the processes by which fans negotiated the shifting mean-
ings of K-pop fandom in their everyday interactions with mass- and social-
media sources, as well as with other fans. For Singaporean fans of K-pop,
social media sources were very important, as they provided participatory
pathways within fan culture. News and video sites, peer-to-peer networks,
and communications apps were all used daily by fans as ways of staying in
touch with idols and with each other. Social media networks facilitated the
diffusion of meanings within K-pop culture, both among fans who felt
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stigmatized by mainstream-media representations and among fans who
engaged in stigmatizing practices. Fans used social media alongside a vari-
ety of other fan practices, including concert attendance, music shopping,
and “stalking” and further enriched those experiences. This supports other
research on the strength of both online and offline sources for spreading
subcultural knowledge, even among individuals who are not invested in the
subculture or fan group (Blevins & Holt, 2009; Holt & Copes, 2010). The
study thus further substantiates research on the role of social-media in the
everyday life of K-pop fans outside Korea, as well as of members of stig-
matized subcultures more generally.
NOTES
1. On January 28, 2011, Singapore’s The New Paper reported that Leeteuk and
Heechul, two members of Korean boy band Super Junior, were involved in a traffic
accident the previous evening during rush hour. Eight fan vehicles were trying to
get close to the van with the band members, resulting in a six vehicle pile-up, includ-
ing the idols’ van.
2. In everyday speech most young Singaporeans use Singlish, an English-based
creole consisting of words from several other languages including Malay, Hokkien,
Teochew, Cantonese, and Tamil. Our social media data included many Singlish
expressions and the following are visible: “ah,” “aiya,” “la,” “lah,” “leh,” “lor,”
“siao la [siao liao],” and “talk cock.”
3. The Charles gang refers to a separate group of fans who were also awaiting
Big Bang at the airport and outside the hotel entrance. While they were stalking the
idols at the public spaces similar to our study subjects, they did not hire a stalking
van. The Charles gang was apparently known for being fans of many other K-pop
artists and attended virtually every local K-pop event, thus “proving” their uncriti-
cal, mainstream fan status.
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