ABSTRACT
The chapter provides a broad analysis of fans, fandoms, and fannish practices as they manifest in the digital realm. More specifically, it explores how fans exhibit many of the characteristics of the trickster and how digital fandom has both empowered and constrained fans’ trickster activities. The chapter begins with an overview of fans, fandom, and fannish practices and explains how perspectives on these concepts have changed over successive “waves” of fan research. It then explores how these concepts have further evolved with the advent of digital technology. Following this, the chapter highlights some of the major practices of digital fandom and reveals how these practices provide fertile ground for fans’ trickster activities. It then describes how these hypermediated fans embody the major characteristics of the trickster within these various digital practices. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how fans’ tricksterish proclivities are often inhibited by the very forces that underlie digital fandom.
