Behind the scenes of K-pop fandom: unveiling K-pop fandom collaboration network

Abstract

As K-pop industry has been expanded internationally, the strength of the K-pop fan community is under the spotlight. K-pop fans (or a fandom as a community) seek to support their band, and one of their strategies is ‘fandom collaboration’ where different fandoms for different bands mutually support to each other for the success of their bands. This paper investigates the current practice of fandom collaboration in K-pop. We first propose the notion of the ‘fandom collaboration network’ that represents the collaborations between K-pop fandoms. By collecting and analyzing a large-scale fandom activity data, we find that fandom collaboration tends to be reciprocal. We also identify a small number of fandoms who play significant roles in fandom collaboration in K-pop, and show that they are likely to (i) show active community engagement, (ii) be boy bands, (iii) be listed in the top music charts, and (iv) has been active for 3–5 years. Our analysis reveals that the prominent K-pop events such as new album releases, annual music awards, audition shows are associated with active fandom collaboration.