“The sun is actually cold! It’s cold and empty, and all is lost. Greetings from Night Vale!” (Fink, 2015).

The history of fandom fascinates me, not only because I am interested in how my own experience as a fandom member interacts with that of the ‘whole’, but also because fandom is a merciless user and abuser of technology, always reaching for faster and more wide-reaching communication.  Fandoms are connected not by shared bonds of physical place, but by shared interest in a particular thing. For those looking for a brief, first person history of fandom since the 1960s, I suggest reading this post (warning for language). Unlike others, the Welcome to Night Vale fandom, due to its relative youth, has not experienced any major technology shifts, and it is indeed possible that its heavily dispersed state will insulate it from any widespread upheavals.  

WtNV experienced a viral surge in popularity on Tumblr
(nutty-acorn, 2013).

Diaspora is a pretty loaded term, and as such I hesitate to apply it to something as (relatively) trivial as the migration of fandoms through different forms of communication. There is, however, some disagreement among academics as to what a diaspora technically is, and in this disagreement I believe there is a place for this migration. If one were to take the three generic markers of a diaspora as stated in Kuttainen (2015), “Perseveration of shared identity, coherence separate from host state, significant contacts with country of origin”, and view them through a technology-orientated lens, then I believe that fandom migration would apply. Members of the WtNV fandom see themselves as being part of the fandom, and therefore have a shared identity; this identity is separate from the identity operated in by general users of the social media site that is the fandom’s “host state”; and a fandom, in order to effectively operate as a fandom, must keep in significant contact with its source material. Ma Mung (2005), however, argues that integral markers of a diaspora are “social identity of an ethnic nature and a discontinuous territory” (p.35). Ma Mung’s article was written before social media became not just a common, but an integral part of Western social networks, and I believe that social media has had a deep effect on the connections that people feel, and therefore their "ethic nature" is not necessarily as important as the "social identity"--and fandom has social identity in spades. 

REFERENCES 

Fink, J. (Producer). (2015, May 1). 67-[Best Of?] [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from commonplacebooks.com 

Kuttainen, V. (2012). BA1002: People networks [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from learnjcu.jcu.edu.au 

Ma Mung, E. (2005). Comparative European Research in Migration, Diversity and Identities. Bilbao, Spain: Publication of University of Deusto.  

IMAGE REFERENCE

nutty-acorn (artist). (2013). Have these been done yet or... [Image]. Retrieved from nutty-acorn.tumblr.com