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Communication scholar Brenda Dervin created sense-making methodology (SMM), an approach for conducting interviews that draws on metatheoretical concepts such as hermeneutics, phenomenology, and the humanistic approach to psychology. Since its formulation, SMM has been utilized across different disciplines through the development of interview protocols for both one-on-one interviews and focus groups. Among these studies are those that focus on people's engagement with media products or with each other in relation to media products. These SMM audience and reception studies demonstrate that the methodology can be useful for studying fans by bringing a more systematic, and thus quantifiable, approach to a phenomenological, interpretive study of fan behavior, be it mental, emotional, physical, or social. SMM would allow for studies that analyze how fans make sense of a situation involving their fandom and fan identity. After explaining what SMM is and how it has been used to study fans, a case study demonstrates how SMM may suggest a way to define being a fan and applying the concept of fandom beyond the traditional domains of sports, media, and popular culture.

Films depicting demoniacally possessed women who can only be saved by male religious figures through exorcism rituals have been produced and released around the world. This book considers the history of exorcism cinema and how such films reinforce or challenge the traditional exorcism narrative.

An academic dialogue between PhD candidate joan miller (University of Southern California) and associate professor CarrieLynn D. Reinhard (Dominican University), conducted via Twitter direct messaging over several weeks, illustrates that academic dialogues do not have to occur in person at universities or conferences. Social media provides a forum for scholars around the world and in different disciplines to consider a topic from a new perspective. Such dialogues provide a fertile ground to develop new insights, theories, and even research projects that can further our understanding of the topic and perhaps push the entire field into new areas. The conversation here explores the topic of how fandom and politics intersect to consider the issues involved in such intersections. The conversation—a journey two people take to come to understand each other—considers what fandom is, what the intersections of fandom and politics are, and whether we should be applying fan studies concepts, theories, and methods to understand politics.

An academic dialogue between PhD candidate joan miller (University of Southern California) and associate professor CarrieLynn D. Reinhard (Dominican University), conducted via Twitter direct messaging over several weeks, illustrates that academic dialogues do not have to occur in person at universities or conferences. Social media provides a forum for scholars around the world and in different disciplines to consider a topic from a new perspective. Such dialogues provide a fertile ground to develop new insights, theories, and even research projects that can further our understanding of the topic and perhaps push the entire field into new areas. The conversation here explores the topic of how fandom and politics intersect to consider the issues involved in such intersections. The conversation—a journey two people take to come to understand each other—considers what fandom is, what the intersections of fandom and politics are, and whether we should be applying fan studies concepts, theories, and methods to understand politics.

Current characters in children's entertainment media illustrate a growing trend of representations that challenge or subvert traditional notions of gender and sexuality. From films to picture books to animated television series, children's entertainment media around the world has consistently depicted stereotypically traditional gender roles and heterosexual relationships as the normal way that people act and engage with one another. Heroes, Heroines, and Everything in Between: Challenging Gender and Sexuality Stereotypes in Children's Entertainment Media examines how this media ecology now includes a presence for nonheteronormative genders and sexualities. It considers representations of such identities in various media products (e.g., comic books, television shows, animated films, films, children's literature) meant for children (e.g., toddlers to teenagers). The contributors seek to identify and understand characterizations that go beyond these traditional understandings of gender and sexuality. By doing so, they explore these nontraditional representations and consider what they say about the current state of children's entertainment media, popular culture, and global acceptance of these gender identities and sexualities.

Affective activation, and the community engagement it fosters, is the driving mechanism of all fandoms, irrespective of the specific "objects of affection" around which they coalesce. These centralized objects of affection may hail from popular culture, such as in the form of sports teams, television shows, cartoon characters, or musicians. As fan scholars have increasingly recognized, fandoms can also emerge around profit-driven brands, specific politicians, and social movements. Much has been said regarding the dangers of the online conspiracy theory QAnon. However, these warnings have tended to overemphasize the rapidly evolving, amorphous beliefs of its adherents, rather than recognize the affective activation propelling the movement. Through its analysis of affect-driven communities, the field of fan studies can be productively applied to investigate the online discursive activities of QAnon community members. Framing QAnon as a fandom elucidates the functions through which the conspiracy theory radicalizes "normies" by exploiting the types of fan activities already well-established in mainstream fan communities. Underscoring the transferability of fan studies concepts to political movements and communities, this exploration outlines the societal stakes of QAnon's manipulation and normalization of the toxic emotions cohering its adherents into a fanatic community.