Distributed Mentoring in Online Fan Fiction Communities

Distributed Mentoring
Why does it matter?
Fan fiction is immensely popular, evident in the more than five million fan fiction stories
housed on FanFiction.net.
in online fan fiction communities
Julie Campbell , Katie Davis , Abigail Evans , Sarah Evans , David
Randall2, and Cecilia Aragon1
1
2
2
3
{juliemu, kdavis78, abievans, sarahe, dpr47, aragon}@uw.edu
Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering, Information School, College of
Education, University of Washington
1
2
Scientific
Collaboration &
Creativity Lab
3
The educational and emotional benefits that authors derive from distributed mentoring
are one key to understanding why so many young people participate actively in writing
fan fiction.
Distributed mentoring has the potential to be applied in formal educational contexts to
encourage peer-based learning.
What is it?
A new form of mentoring facilitated by networked publics that is inspired by Edwin Hutchins’
theory of distributed cognition. In distributed mentoring, individuals are mentored by the
community at large, and small pieces of advice from numerous sources combine to form a
complete mentoring experience that participants value.
Quotes from
reader reviews
Research questions
I'm sure it's obnoxious,
but I feel the need to point
out that Slytherin's seeker
in Harry's first year was
Terence Higgs, not Marcus
Flint. Flint was always a
chaser.
Why do young people participate in online fan fiction communities?
How and what do young people learn through involvement in fan fiction communities?
What role does mentoring play in participants' learning, and what does this mentoring
look like?
Great Story! :)
Update Soon!
:)
Five months of participant observations of fan fiction discussion forums and story reviews.
Thematic analysis of 4,500 reader reviews coded from 262 fan fiction stories.
I've received thousands
of positive reviews and some
truly wonderful letters and
messages from people who have
been genuinely touched by my
writing, and it's been a massive
confidence boost that helped me
get through university without
quitting and still helps me
today if I'm feeling
down.
I write fanfiction
because you can get
immediate feedback
from an active fandom.
I have to play my part
as well, and give back
to the community.
That chapter
ending was weird,
ambition, then ravenclaw?
While the hat did outline
the houses, that decision
really came out of
left field.
Key characteristics
In-depth interviews with 28 fan fiction authors.
Quotes from fan
fiction authors
Distributed
Mentoring
This was a
wonderful story,
great job!
Research sites
Research stages
This is great!
I look forward to
reading the
sequel.
Pretty good overall.
You have a remarkably
interesting plot taking pieces from
many different sources. I approve
of the fact that you ditched canon
dozens of chapters ago and don't
seem even remotely inclined to
return to it in the slightest. It's
always nice to see a writer
taking the path less
traveled.
Fanfiction was what got me into
writing in the first place. I’m planning
on majoring in creative writing and
more than anything else, fanfiction and
the fanfiction community has informed my
writing style and ability, and my reviewing/
editing abilities. Workshopping with a larger
community, which might be an alien
experience for many entering my
department, is almost a daily
routine for me by now.
Aggregation
Small amounts of advice, which would not be considered mentoring on
their own, form a complete mentoring experience.
Accretion
Respondents build upon previous responses to provide cumulatively
sophisticated feedback.
Acceleration
Active debate among respondents encourages branching into specialized
fields of knowledge.
Abundance
The low interaction cost required to post forum responses or story reviews
results in large amounts of feedback for authors.
Availability
Feedback is persistently visible to the larger community, allowing authors
and readers to learn from conversations long after the original exchange.
Asynchronicity Respondents can participate from any location, at any time.
Affect
Positive emotional and supportive aspects of feedback provide crucial
motivation for writers.