A new issue of Transformative Works and Cultures is up. I've only read/skimmed a few of the articles so far, but the one I was most drawn to is Suzanne Scott's "Repackaging fan culture: the regifting of ancillary content models." In her definition:
Sounds grim, right? And let's face it, some of these sites are pretty grim. Last spring, I stumbled across an "official fan site" for The Sarah Connor Chronicles, hosted on Fox Television's website but outsourced to some specialized "official fan site in a box" web company whose name I've forgotten. It was all very modular -- here's your episode recaps, here's your character guide, here's your discussion boards, here's your wiki, here's where you can post your fan fiction and fan videos. The whole thing looked pretty ugly, and felt like something of a fannish ghost town. There were people there, but it didn't seem particularly thriving or vibrant, as communities go.

( return of the cultural dupe )

But outside of these "ancillary content models" there are tons of fans who seek out some kind of interaction or engagement or common space with the corporate and creative powers that be -- through cons, and the blogs of showrunners and producers and writers, and Twitter, and other proliferating means. That's certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but it's not exactly false consciousness either, and it's common in types of fandom where there's less of a gulf and more of a continuum between "fan" and "pro/PTB" like comics and science fiction books.

So I'd rather complicate the "threat or menace?" approach to official fan sites and related corporate close encounters of the fannish kind, or at least restore an account of fans' myriad agency, pleasures, and investments in those spaces and interactions.