Contents tourism and creative fandom: the formation process of creative fandom and its transnational expansion in a mixed-media age

Today, as information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become sophisticated and media have become diversified, phenomena such as interactions between electronic media space and real space are rapidly developing in a borderless manner. Characteristic phenomena in such a situation include cross-border consumption, dissolution, and restructuring of pop culture contents by ‘creative fandoms’ (fans who act creatively) such as mixed-media developments and fanfictions of the same contents. ‘Contents tourism’, the approach that does not focus on particular media but focuses on the contents themselves to grasp the tourism phenomenon, is increasingly important on that very point. In this paper, using this concept of creative fandom, first the Comiket and its voluntary culture will be explored, then, the Washimiya case will be re-examined from the point of view of creative fandom, and finally in section five, the case of Taiwan will be analysed in order to investigate the establishment of international creative fandom. In particular, two kinds of relationships, the ones between hosts and guests and the ones between creators and consumers, are focused on, and the facts are presented with the conclusion that creative fandoms cause the breakdown of the two borders to produce new styles of tourism and cross-cultural exchange.