Scientific Report: Fandom Biases Retrospective Judgments Not Perception
Abstract
Attitudes and motivations have been shown to affect the processing of visual input, indicating that observers may see a given situation each literally in a different way. Yet, in real-life, processing information in an unbiased manner is considered to be of high adaptive value. Attitudinal and motivational effects were found for attention, characterization, categorization, and memory. On the other hand, for dynamic real-life events, visual processing has been found to be highly synchronous among viewers. Thus, while in a seminal study fandom as a particularly strong case of attitudes did bias judgments of a sports event, it left the question open whether attitudes do bias prior processing stages. Here, we investigated influences of fandom during the live TV broadcasting of the 2013 UEFA-Champions-League Final regarding attention, event segmentation, immediate and delayed cued recall, as well as affect, memory confidence, and retrospective judgments. Even though we replicated biased retrospective judgments, we found that eye-movements, event segmentation, and cued recall were largely similar across both groups of fans. Our findings demonstrate that, while highly involving sports events are interpreted in a fan dependent way, at initial stages they are processed in an unbiased manner.
Nature.com / Markus Huff, Frank Papenmeier, Annika E. Maurer, Tino G. K. Meitz, Bärbel Garsoffky,. Stephan Schwan
Peacock Is the Streamer Best Positioned for Acquisition or Bundling, Fandom Data Says
In the age of streaming bundles, Peacock may be the most attractive asset according to new data from Fandom. The world’s largest fan platform leveraged its first-party data, called FanDNA, from its 350 million monthly visitors to take a deeper dive into the individual streaming services and TheWrap can exclusively reveal those findings first.
Fandom’s data, based on site visitation and how popular series overindex with fans across 300 subgenres, suggest Peacock’s diverse and distinct library of reality programming, medical and crime procedural dramas and combat sports makes it the best compliment to other existing streamers.
The Wrap / Adam Chitwood
Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
Most of us can say that we’re fans of something – music, sports, art, books. But what does it mean to be part of a fandom? You’ve probably seen devoted super fans participating in cos play at Comic-Con, painted in their team’s color at a football game or dressed up as their favorite characters at a midnight screening of a film series. But is there something deeper than just fun at play here? Something that aligns more with religion or even sacredness? That’s the argument of sociologist Michael Elliott, a professor at Towson University who has studied the culture of Comic-Con for 7 years. Elliott joins The Excerpt to share the results of his deep research into fandoms.
USA Today
