Anti/Fan Activism: Ideological Negotiations in Star Wars Fan Conflicts on Social Media from 2015 to 2024

Abstract

“Anti/Fan Activism” examines how political polarization manifests within movie and television fandoms, focusing on the Star Wars franchise as a key site of ideological negotiation. While previous scholarship has explored fan activism as a form of participatory politics and analyzed the dangers of toxic fan cultures such as #Gamergate, little attention has been paid to how political polarization unfolds within fan discourse itself. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, this thesis demonstrates how language, visuals, and platform affordances shape power relations, ideologies, and community boundaries in online fan spaces across YouTube, Twitter/X, and Tumblr.

Through three case studies, the thesis demonstrates how anti/fan activism, i.e. fan activism driven by negative affect towards a text, manifests differently depending on political alignment. Reactionary fans engage in bottom-up attempts to reshape the media industry through “anti-woke” campaigns and a fan-populist style that constructs an authentic (male) fandom in opposition to elite “corporate” producers. Progressive fans, by contrast, focus on lateral policing within fandoms, deploying social justice rhetoric to suppress content and fan behaviors they perceive as harmful.

Across the Star Wars sequels and related productions, fan conflicts such as discussions about “Mary Sues”, YouTube’s right-wing media analysis essays, and Tumblr’s anti-shipping movements reveal how broader socio-political anxieties about feminism, masculinity, and diversity are projected onto media texts. Ultimately, these fan conflicts illustrate how the logics of the visibility economy amplify polarized discourse and turn fandom into a stage where ideological struggle and affect-driven participation intersect.