A Tribe of Stardom and Fandom: Hallyu, BTS, and ARMY

Abstract

Together, stardom and fandom compose the core of the value chain in the production, distribution, and appreciation of cultural products. Indeed, many scholars have investigated this value chain as one of the keys to understanding the cultural content industry. Researchers have been especially interested in the ways stardom and fandom impact and shape interactions among stakeholders in the production and distribution of arts and cultural products to produce a complex cultural ecology. There is a relative paucity of ecologically oriented studies on the complexities of the interactions between stardom and fandom in the creative sector. Research on stardom has tended to focus on the culture industry’s revenue-motivated push to create stars, while fandom research has pursued the “culture and consumption” path, examining both consumer behaviors and the strategies employed by cultural product producers to manage consumer engagement. This paper seeks to address this lacuna in the literature by considering, from an ecological perspective, the interconnected and reiterative impacts of stardom and fandom in and on the creative sector, using the case study of BTS and its fandom, ARMY. Over the last twenty years, a wave of arts and culture has emerged from South Korea to become enormously popular throughout the region, particularly China, Japan, and other Southeast Asian countries. Recently, Europe and the Americas, as well as to the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa, have recently experienced this Korean Wave, or ‘hallyu.’ With the emergence of BTS, a seven-member South Korean boy band (they refer to themselves as artists or idols), and its uniquely engaged fandom, ARMY, hallyu has entered another stage. Exploring this phenomenon with digital and conventional ethnographic research, we employed a grounded theory approach to identify four key facets of this emerging fandom: digital intimacy; non-social sociality; transnational locality; organizing without an organization. Considered through the lens of Maffesoli’s concept of “tribe,” these four dimensions help us to understand how the relationship between BTS and ARMY transforms the private realm of fans’ tastes and desires into cultural, political, and economic expression in the public realm. Thus, this global neo-tribal fandom, potentiated by the Internet and the new forms of sociality created by social media, is effecting tectonic sociocultural change on a global scale.