Sarah Olutola, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Monsta X fans have been derided as boy-band dupes, but their protests against the treatment of superstar Wonho shows them rejecting the capitalist system that's quick to cut people loose.
Fans take photos of adult film actress Ange Venus at the Adult Video News Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas.
Reuters/Steve Marcus
There's a strand of radical feminist thought that claims porn causes misogyny. So four researchers decided to test this idea – and descended on a porn expo to study the beliefs of the male attendees.
BTS at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards. Fans of the band recently mounted a vigorous social media campaign after a controversial Channel Nine segment on BTS aired.
WENN/AAP
K-pop fans are a global network of varied ages and nationalities, who have an active, creative and symbiotic relationship with their idols.
Reaction videos are just one of many ways that Game of Thrones fans have explored their love for the show online.
Leon Andrew Razon/Screenshot from Youtube
Eric Forcier, Swinburne University of Technology and Lisa M. Given, Swinburne University of Technology
Fan culture is thriving in Westeros. Although HBO's Game of Thrones has ended, fans will ensure that the show lives on (and changes) across multimedia platforms, long into the future.
Lleyton Hewitt in 2004. No one who has ever watched Lleyton play one of his epic matches comes out a hater.
DEAN LEWINS/AAP
While often lumped with other European populist parties, Beppe Grillo's M5S is a movement of activist fans mobilized by the messages of his "celebrity brand".
My Little Pony fan, Michael Anderson, a Brony, at the Dragon Con science fiction and fantasy convention in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, in 2014.
EPA/ERIK S. LESSER
Many decry 'superteams' like the NBA's Golden State Warriors as bad for the sport. But psychology research shows that they also make us more likely to watch – and bask in the joy of seeing them fail.
Fanfiction: all it takes is to imagine a story beyond the canonical work.
Kristina Alexanderson/flickr
Being a footy fan is not mainly about the glory of a premiership – it is much more about enjoying the gravel-shovelling entailed in each and every season your club goes without success.
Men might believe that women don't have what it takes to be serious sports fans but new research into female AFL fans proves them wrong. Some women are footy converts, some have it in the blood – and some were born to it.
Star Trek fans were especially drawn to Leonard Nimoy’s Mr. Spock – who showed many that it “was okay to be a nerd, that even in the future not everyone fit in, or needed to.”
Sam Howzit/Flickr
Lynn Zubernis, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Star Trek fans were especially drawn to Leonard Nimoy's Mr. Spock – who showed many that it "was okay to be a nerd, that even in the future not everyone fit in, or needed to."