New Publication: “From Comic-Con to Amazon”

I have a new article, co-authored with Melanie Kohnen and Felan Parker, available online and open-access from New Media & Society. It’s the first major output from our collaborative project on the San Diego Comic-Con.

Although our plans to conduct fieldwork at SDCC 2021 were interrupted by the pandemic, we did collect some observations about the show’s pivot online as “Comic-Con@Home.” We were particularly interested in the role that digital platforms like YouTube and Tumblr and digital platform companies like Amazon were playing in delivering the familiar Comic-Con experience, “just online.”

However, that led to a broader attempt to think through the relationship between fan events and platforms. Ultimately, we conclude that not only was Comic-Con already in some ways platformized prior to COVID, but we can actually conceptualize conventions themselves as an IRL analogue to platforms.