Mohammad Saeed Zokaei; Matin Azizi Hamedani
Abstract
The rapid development of ICTs in the early 21st century has brought about dramatic changes in the youths’ personal and social identifications. Spending long hours in virtual spaces consuming popular culture news and products (in this case Korean pop music), while providing the youth with a huge ...
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The rapid development of ICTs in the early 21st century has brought about dramatic changes in the youths’ personal and social identifications. Spending long hours in virtual spaces consuming popular culture news and products (in this case Korean pop music), while providing the youth with a huge amount of information and entertainment, also provides them with unique experiences through which they can express themselves. Drawing on a cyber-ethnography of the fans of Korean popular culture in Iran, this paper aims to show the impacts this virtual fandom poses to young adolescents and to show how the cultural products consumed in this environment help create a global-local identity. The results suggest that this fandom culture has differentiating, complementary and compensatory functions and in a complex way helps strengthen cosmopolitan identities among the Iranian youths.
