Fandoms – Youtubers, case study: Julián Serrano

Abstract

This article focuses on the youtubers fandoms. The new fans have the unique characteristic that, even by the very nature of their idols, they express themselves in the field of the network through messages that are posted in their various platforms. At the same time, youtubers are in general males in their twenties who post their own audiovisual products in the framework of YouTube in an implicit or explicit dialogue with their followers. In order to delimit the object of study it was decided to focus attention on the followers of the Argentine youtuber Julián Serrano, who in July 2017 had 2,500,000 subscribers to his channel. The theoretical framework used is based on the research carried out in the 90s by Lewis and Jenkins, which modified the marginal place that was previously given to the fandoms in the audiences studies, placing them in a leading role and to a certain extent autonomous with respect to their own idols. The data obtained corroborated the assumptions of both authors valid also for Latin American scenario.

The used techniques were bibliographic and documentary review, text analysis and on-screen observation following ethnographic guidelines.