Felicity Davies

This project’s focus lies with the Korean pop music scene, a burgeoning industry in recent years that has found itself a large and committed fanbase in the UK. Using both virtual and non-virtual ethnographic methods, it specifically explores the complex relationship between audience and industry in this setting and sheds light on the value and meaning UK fans draw out of their engagement with Kpop. In doing so, notions of power and ownership within this particular pop culture scene are addressed and its rapid and expansive growth, reasoned.    The project has approached this subject by engaging with K-pop’s UK audience through interviews and participant observation, involving both online activity and in-person events across London. Methodologically, focus has been placed not only on what fans like about this music scene, but also on what they dislike and how indeed they respond and act in the face of finding something disagreeable within their fandom space. Moreover, attention is also paid to the so-called ‘haters’, those within the audience who specifically do not like Korean Pop music, asking of that too why it may be the case. This approach offers a more dedicated investigation into the wide range of perspectives media audiences can hold, highlighting in particular the importance of dislike when asking why a text matters.    Thus far, the project’s findings suggest that the UK’s audience largely takes on a queer reading of K-pop, with reasons for liking and disliking the scene often being framed around this perceived queerness. A tension has also been readily observed between fandom and industry, both appearing wary and guarded, at times conceiving the other as being detrimental or damaging towards artists’ success. This on-going struggle between fandom and industry leaves both grappling for ways to more resolutely enforce control over the other.      

Anthropology of Media, Popular Culture, Korean Popular Music, Hallyu, Fandom, Audiences, Dislike, Digital Ethnography, Moral Economy.

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