Digital community, fan spaces and gendered emotions: An analysis on Korean pop music (K-POP) fandom in Turkey

This study aims to analyze the experiences of Korean Pop music (K-Pop) fans in Turkey. In recent years, K-Pop has been discussed together with gender norms in the context of Turkey, claiming that K-Pop is a danger for family structure and existing gender codes. This study intends to investigate both on this discourse, which can be named as anti K-Pop discourse; and on fan experience, which mainly exist on digital space, to be able to see how gender is understood. With this aim, I have used multiple data collection techniques such as; in-depth interviews and focus groups with fans, ethnography, digital ethnography, discourse analysis and participant observation. According to the data obtained, the concept of gender is highly related with space and emotions as well as popular culture representations. Analyses of the interviews revealed that especially the concept of masculinity can be understood more with its attachments to negative emotions and oppressing/threatening behaviors, while femininity has attachments like positive emotions and softer behaviors. This study shows that existing definitions on gender representations are too limiting and oppressive especially when expressing various emotions both for men and women. In this context, different gender representations shown by K-Pop idols, unlike the claims of anti K-Pop discourses, raised interest not because of their 'feminine' appearances but because of their softer behaviors and freedom in emotional expressions which are socially constructed as femininity. Together with this, the study shows that these 'more feminine' masculinity representations are perceived as more secure and reliable because of their distance from hegemonic masculinity representations. While pointing to the problems of existing definitions for gender norms, this study reveals the impact of emotional connection and digital space on understanding gender norms. Keywords: popular culture, culture industry, gender, digital space, emotions