How a conflict changes the way how people on Fandoms

How a conflict changes the way how people behave on Fandoms

An investigation of Shipper’s Fight in Facebook groups

Cleyton Souza¹³, André Rolim¹4, Jonathas Magalhães¹³, Evandro Costa¹³, Joseana Fechine¹, and Nazareno Andrade²

LIA-UFCG¹, LSI-UFCG², TIPS-UFAL³, IFPB4

Brazil

Schedule

• Introduction

• Methodology

• Understanding Shippers Fight

• The Role of the Virtual Space in Shipper’s Conflict

• Conclusion and Future Work

Cleyton Souza - UFCG - Brazil 2

Introduction

• How a conflict changes the way how people behave on Fandoms

– Fandom = Kingdom of Fans

• How I Met Your Mother [Brazil]– It is a Facebook group with 15k members

– It reunites fans of the TV show How I Met Your Mother


Context (Spoiler Alert!)

• How I Met Your Mother

– It is an American sitcom

– It ended in 2014, with nine seasons

– Story: • Ted (a narrator from the

future - 2030) is telling hiskids how he met theirmother

• The story starts in 2005

• “The mother’’ only appearsin the last season (2014)


Introduction

• How a conflict changes the way how people behave on Fandoms

– Fandom = Kingdom of Fans

• How I Met Your Mother [Brazil]

• A investigation of Shipper’s Fight in Facebook groups

– What is a Shipper?

• Shipper ≈ Relationship– Fans of couples


Context

“Mosbatsky” prefer Robin&Ted “Swarkles” prefer Robin&Barney


Introduction

• Our analysis focuses on mainly understanding

– Why Do people feel motivate to discuss about fictional couples?

– How Do this discussions affect the members’ behavior?

– What is the role of the group architecture in these discussions?


Methodology

• This is a mixed research presenting a constructive point of view

• The research method is called privileged ethnographic or “aca-fen”

• We used three sources of data

– 25 Posts from the group

– Interviews with 10 members (5 ♀ 5 ♂)

– Google questionnaire answered by 403 members


People who answered our questionnaire (1)







Awareness of the Conflict × Time in the Group


Understanding Shippers Fight

• How I Met Your Mother [Brazil] has collectively decided rules.– There were request to make Shipper’s discussion

forbidden.

– 65% of respondents believe that Shipper’s discussion is a recurrent topic among the group activities.

– It is notable that the Fandom is split in three main subgroups: Shippers of Ted and Robin, Shippers of Barney and Robin and Those Who Are Indifferent.



Agreement Percentage about the Fandom Split(aggregate by favorite couple’s choice)



• Why do people feel motivate to debate about fictional couples?

– “–It’s something that happens in almost every show; Shippers struggling is common”

– “–They talk about that because have nothing better to do”


Culture

• “–some fans take the show to serious”

• “–There are people who raising the flag of a couple and want to defend it as if it were a football team”

• “–the show is a significant part of their lives”

• “–to everyone who keeping discussing about fictional couples: go get a football team to cheer; it is well better!”


Identity

• “–People identify with characters and start to wish their happiness; for this reason, it is common a feeling of transference, where they imagine themselves in the character place and create expectations about what is better to each one”

• “–These things of prefer one or other couple have no argument, we simply like and we identify with different things. It is like everything in life”

• “–they wish other people feel the same way”



• What are the consequences of this conflict?

– Swarkles are winning

• “–Mobastsky team lost a long time ago”

• “–It is like apartheid”

– Mosbatsky avoid post content about Ted & Robin

• “–It would be followed by a bunch of negative comments”

• “–I said that I root for Ted & Robin and they scold me; I even left the group, but decided come back”



How Swarkles are seen in the group How Mosbatsky are seen in the group

Mosbatsky accepted a subservient role assigned by Swarkles.



• Swarkles believe that, since Ted & Robin probably will not end up together, it is nonsense cheer for this couple.

• The most interest thing is that Mosbatskythemselves think that way.

• The role assigned to Mosbatsky changes their normative sense and makes most of them behave different from others members. – They assume that share Ted & Robin content is

prejudicial to the good living in the group (LS, TM).


Why are Swarkles winning?

• Mosbatsky are minority and see the Swarkles as a dominant group inside How I Met Your Mother [Brazil]

• MAJORITY

• CANON


The Role of the Virtual Space in Shipper’s Conflict

• “Shipping” discussion is not usual outside the group

– People tend to avoid conflict offline, where discussion and possible aggressive outcomes have high costs. Even more if the offline discussion happens with relatives or close friends.

– In the virtual space, however, as opinions are broadcasted in a common space, it becomes harder to avoid conflict.



• The architecture of Facebook groups favors these two kinds of Shippers “find” themselves– there is a public space where users can unsupervised post

content (video, photo or text);– all content published in that space is visible to everyone in

the group; – people can like and comment posts, according their

interests.

• Mosbatsky are exposed to Swarkles content and vice versa. – The discussions happen because “some members of the

group cannot ignore when they disagree”.



• We inquiry respondents if they believe that the way how Facebook groups works facilitate that Shippers of different couples find each other to discuss:– 92% agreed. However, when we asked if a changing in

that way would reduce or eliminate these discussions from the group, 58% disagree.

– This means that, they believe, even architecture having its effect, these discussions would come to light anyway, regardless the way how the group works.


When these discussions end

• According interviewees, a Shipper’s discussion only stops when – It becomes too much exhausting and people get tired of

defend their positions. • This begins when the discussion attracts too much attention and

the number of people involved rises. • Then, comments rate start to increase together with mean size of

comments. • Finally, people loose focus and change the topic to “zoeira”

• Respondent’s answers led to the same observations; “get tired of discuss” (28%) followed by “change the topic to zoeira” (24%) were the two main reasons to end a discussion.


Conclusion and Future Work

• This work presented a brief overview about phenomena that happens in a group called How I Met Your Mother [Brasil]

• We observed that people change their behavior due a conflict with others members

• We are studying how our observations related to others contexts and how they can be used to affect the living in the group


How a conflict changes the way how people behave on Fandoms

An investigation of Shipper’s Fight in Facebook groups

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

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How a conflict changes the way how people on Fandoms