Keeping Up with K-pop: Translingual Participation of Anglophone Fans across Digital Boundaries

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 11:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Identities Intersecting and Crossing Boundaries in Digital Spaces

Abstract

This study examines how fans of Korean music use social media to navigate digital boundaries. Five anglophone K-pop fans participated in semi-structured interviews. A thematic analysis revealed how their English-centered repertoires were interlaced with Korean and multimodal resources on social media platforms. These repertoires not only situated them within successful meaning-making contexts, but also reflected an ongoing negotiation with their linguistic and cultural surroundings, both online and offline. Although their participation might appear passive or observational, their practices illuminated an active form of translingual engagement that moved across semiotic modes, languages, and fan cultures. This study contributes to understanding how digital literacies operate within transnational fan communities by illuminating literacy practices of fans navigating hybrid cultural terrains.

Author

• Suok Kwon, Stetson University