With Virtual, With Embodied: Redefining Emerging Media in Transcultural Fandom Research

Understanding physical, embodied space as an emerging form of media and communication became our solution. Digital walls between global regions fall apart when we share space, and in the summer of 2024, several scholars based in the USA were able to be in space and community with scholars from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai University, and The University of Hong Kong; in the following years of research, scholars from around the world have joined us at USC and travelled globally for conferences, research, teaching, and tourism, further expanding our abilities to communicate with one another in a world of increasingly siloed regional platforms. Through this process, we learned not to move beyond the digital, but to situate it, extending connection through physical encounters and co-presence. This special issue argues for a combined approach to emerging media, underlining how the embodied, material, and spatial conditions of media communication work in tandem with the digital to redefine the roles of transcultural fandom and pop culture, shared both online and in person.