Binge Mode: Managing Fandom Communities - Short Paper #4 (COM 624)
With the rise of social media, came the rise of content creation and a desire to connect with audiences in a new and fresh way. The desire to build consistent relationships with audiences gave way to hashtags, blogs, and the focus of this paper, podcasts. According to HowStuffWorks.com, podcasting began its rise in 2004 after Adam Curry and Dave Winer developed software to “download Internet radio broadcasts to his iPod (Watson, 2005).” Over the past 15 years, podcasting has quickly become one of the largest content hubs via the internet, with companies, organizations, or average-joes starting their own content streams online. These podcasts are just one of many ways companies, organizations, and audiences connect through content, bringing convergence culture into the new media age.
Binge Mode is one such podcast. Binge Mode is a podcast produced through The Ringer podcast network, focusing on deep dives into all things pop-culture, most recently focusing on the pop-culture phenomenon of “Game of Thrones” and “Harry Potter.” However, hosts Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion have created a way to authentically connect to their audiences offline and keep them engaged, even when episodes are still to come. The Binge Mode Facebook group is a way for listeners to connect, discuss, and collaborate, with their commonality being a podcast we all know and love. As of April 2019, there are currently 20,695 members of the group with thousands engaging and commenting while the podcast gears up for the final season of “Game of Thrones” premiering on April 14, 2019. Throughout this paper, we will explore the podcast’s roots in convergence culture and its ability to connect thousands from across the world through the Facebook group’s communication, culture, and community.
Miller (2011) explains a basic understanding of convergence culture, explaining that “a fundamental characteristic of convergence culture is the move towards cultural objects and information being increasingly consumed or experienced across several forms of media, and on a variety of devices (p. 82).” Binge Modes’ initial episodes started from a desire to connect with a larger audience who all were fans of the same content: “Game of Thrones (GOT).” Their first season of Binge Mode: GOT introduced their audience to a new way to enjoy the television show they already know and love. With a growing podcast, came new catchphrases, inside jokes, and ways of enjoying pop-culture, all of which translated into the Facebook group where their audience now lives. I was first introduced to Binge Mode similarly to this through a friend on my Harry Potter trivia team in the summer of 2018 via social media and their Youtube videos, that, I would later find out, often accompanied the podcast release. The Ringer, being a multi-platform company focused on participatory media, often cross promoted their content on platforms to expand their audience reach so it was never difficult to stay connected to their content. After listening to the podcast for over eight months, I finally decided to join the Facebook group that was mentioned at the end of each show by the hosts. This is an example of what Miller (2011) refers to in discussing “grass-roots convergence” explaining that “consumers are increasingly involved in seeking out information from a variety of sources, interacting with others who share interests, and even helping to produce their own experience of the product in isolation or in groups (p. 84).”
In my observations on the group’s communication style, that familiar and friendly tone seemed to permeate through the group from the moderators down. Humor was always a common tone and was encouraged in the comments with banter that matched the podcast’s witty tone. Outside of discussion post, a major part of the group’s culture on pop-culture references, like memes or compilations of the source material. I began engaging as the promotions of the new season were premiering so it was common to login to new posts of the newest trailers or theories always with a “no spoilers allowed” caption. Though the hosts of the show and administrators rarely jumped into discussions, it was a common understanding that all members of the group were to be treated with respect and that certain things were to be left out of the group (i.e. spoilers, politics, or cyberbullying). However, not long after joining the group and beginning my observations, the New Zealand mosque attacks occurred in March of 2019. This was an example of community that really resonated with me because it really made me understand why I loved engaging with this group. Immediately after the news broke, thousands of comments and well-wishes were posted in the group, showing support to the affected New Zealand community, some of which were members of the group. This community was focused on not just the common fandoms we were a part of, but the well-beings of those in our group.
The community, culture, and communication of the Binge Mode podcast and Facebook group speak to convergence culture’s beneficial relationship with participatory media when it’s done right. As Miller (2011) explains, our culture has grown to give the power to audiences, creating new ways for content to be enjoyed by contemporary audiences who “seek to engage with media increasingly on their own terms and… will seek out new information, alone or in collaborative groups, in order to enhance their enjoyment of the product (p. 85).” Though the podcast is a stand-alone piece of content, their message and source material speaks to a wider audience and their hosts provide a space for that diverse audience to grow and collaborate. As companies and organizations continue to build and share content, specifically relating to fandoms or pop-culture, it would be important to build a culture and community like Binge Mode, where the audience is just as important as the content itself.
References
Miller, V. (2011). Understanding digital culture. London: SAGE Publications.
The Ringer, (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.theringer.com/
Watson, S. (2005, March 26). How Podcasting Works. Retrieved from https://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/podcasting1.htm