Duel of Surveys: Comparing Tolkien Fanfiction and OTW Survey Data by Dawn Walls-Thumma

This is probably an intensely digital-quantitative-humanities perspective, but the only thing better than data is more data. When I saw the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) had released their Report on the OTW's 16th Anniversary Survey, my first thought was how it would compare to the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey (TFS). Do the two surveys show similar trends? Are there areas where they are intensely different?

Here, I have to urge caution. The purpose of the OTW survey was to "establish a baseline of fans' familiarity with the OTW and its projects," whereas the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey sought to "learn more about the practices of Tolkien fans who draw from his books or Peter Jackson’s movie to create fanworks such as fanfiction." The Tolkien Fanfiction Survey was IRB-approved; the OTW survey was not. The Tolkien Fanfiction Survey is longitudinal—or at least aspires to be—and ran in 2015 and 2020, involving 1,052 and 746 participants respectively, limited to only readers and writers of Tolkien-based fanfiction. The OTW survey was completed by a staggering 78,258 participants, limited to people who use OTW sites. So we have to look past a difference in purpose, audience, and number of participants.

Looking at the two surveys can yield some interesting comparisons, however, even if you have to wrap those conclusions in abundant caution tape. Tolkien fan communities and their cultures (including the SWG, where you're reading this!) pre-date the OTW and AO3, some of them by quite a bit. There is also my sense, present through my two decades in Tolkien fandom, that Tolkien fandom and capital-F-Fandom are different in important ways, in a large part because "Fandom" tends to be "media fandom," and for all the money thrown at Tolkien-based media productions, the Tolkien fanworks community remains almost entirely book-based.

So while comparing the two surveys isn't quite apples to oranges—it's more oranges to tangerines—I urge caution in leaning too heavily in the comparisons here. I've focused on three sets of data where some degree of comparison is possible: years in fandom, attendance at in-person events, and use of various platforms for fannish purposes.

Time in Fandom

Survey questions that lined up pretty well were "For how many years have you been writing Tolkien-based fanfiction?" (TFS) and "How long have you been active in online fandom spaces?" (OTW). The graph below shows the data for the two surveys. Taking in the data at arm's length, one notices that the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data is much more consistent across the demographic groups than the OTW survey, which spikes in the 6-to-10-year demographic.  In addition,, the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey represented many more new users—active for less than two years—than the OTW survey did.

Here, I'm curious where and how the OTW recruited for their survey. I know for the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey, many of our participants came from Tumblr, at least based on the attention announcements about the survey received there. Is it possible that veteran fans see the value in the OTW survey (or are more likely to encounter recruitment about it)? What I don't think is happening: that OTW users include a majority of veteran fans.

Another dataset that provides some insight is CentrumLumina's 2013 AO3 Census. Her Length of Use data also shows a majority (65%) of survey takers were active two years or less. Like the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey, the AO3 Census was heavily promoted on Tumblr and focuses on fanfiction rather than broader fannish activities.

Conventions

The OTW survey asked about fan conventions, which I found rather interesting ("Have you ever been to a fan convention [of any kind]?"). I can only assume they are interested in knowing if having a table at conventions will reach their target audience. The Tolkien Fanfiction Survey asked, "In what ways other than writing/reading fanfiction do you participate in Tolkien fandom?" with one choice, "Attend conferences, conventions, and other offline fan gatherings."

There are obvious discrepancies here! The Tolkien Fanfiction Survey—created as it was pre-pandemic—defined this activity as face-to-face where, three years and a changed world later, the OTW survey did not.

On the OTW survey, 41.4% of the participants answered "yes." On the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey, only 19.6% of participants did. This is quite a difference, and I'll admit that I was surprised by the number of OTW participants who answered in the affirmative. I can see a few things happening here. First and most obviously is the "of any kind" language in the OTW survey versus the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey's "offline fan gatherings." One of the reasons that online gatherings and conferences have persisted post-COVID is due to the recognition that an online format is far more inclusive, welcoming fans who don't live near the big cities where in-person gatherings take place, as well as those who cannot travel due to finances, health problems, family obligations, and so on. I also wonder, given that I've already established that the OTW survey tapped fans more veteran than is probably the norm, the extent to which those fans' longevity means that they've had the opportunity to attend a fan convention or find fandom important enough to do so.

Platform Use

Probably the most interesting comparison of data, for me, was between the platforms used by Tolkien fanfic writers and readers and those used by OTW users. I've long been fascinated by archives and other platforms used for fannish purposes and how they influence fan cultures and vice versa. Part of this is because I own an archive myself: the SWG has a distinct feel to it—its culture—compared to other fannish spaces, and this is shaped partly by its policies and the work of its moderators, but my experience has been that members¹ shape it more, by deciding on their priorities and where they give their time and attention. In short, platforms matter.

Furthermore, platforms are deeply entwined in fandom history. Online fandom naturally arose as the internet became available to more people. Throughout the history of online fandom, there were (and are) tensions between the internet as a commercial space and the internet as a fannish space, and these conflicts are often enacted on fandom platforms. LiveJournal offers a salient example. Originally a blogging platform for a group of friends, it grew in popularity as a rather offbeat site that offered basic community-building tools and, thus, attracted fans and fandom. When LiveJournal shifted from its grassroots origins to a for-profit model with its purchase by SixApart, who suddenly weighed the concerns of advertisers—and higher than the concerns of its membership base. This pattern was enacted again and again across for-profit sites as they realized that advertisers weren't keen on having their products advertised alongside "porn."

These conflicts produced ripple effects, generating new platforms or pushing fans to migrate to different sites. To continue the LiveJournal example, both the OTW and Dreamwidth were formed in direct response to LiveJournal's anti-fandom actions. When FanFiction.net pulled a similar stunt, small, single-fandom archives shifted to accommodate new members whose work had been purged. When platforms go offline—as Yahoo! Groups did—communities shift to new spaces or cease to exist. In other words, while fandom cultures evolve out of platforms and exert a "pull" influence, drawing in fans who find a site's culture a good fit for them, historical factors such as purges (LiveJournal and Fanfiction.net), closures (Yahoo! Groups), and policies (the Tumblr porn ban) also exert a "push" influence, driving migrations to new spaces.

The Tolkien Fanfiction Survey asks, "Which sites have you used or do you use to post Tolkien-based fanfiction?" Obviously, that includes just fanfiction authors from the overall pool of participants, a total of 451 people. The OTW survey is understandably much broader, asking, "What online spaces do you use for fandom activities at least once a year?" The OTW further divided this question into the categories of social media; video, audio, and chat; archives and galleries; blogging and gaming; and news, information, and forums. Both surveys offer quite an extensive menu of options, plus a space to write in sites that weren't included on the list. To narrow down the vast pool of data to a manageable and meaningful amount, I pulled ten sites that were included in both surveys. The graph below shows the data for the two surveys side by side with the platforms listed in chronological order, with the oldest sites to the right.

Stepping back to look at the overall impression of the data above, one easily observes that, for nearly all platforms, OTW survey respondents are more likely to use that platform than Tolkien Fanfiction Survey respondents. For some platforms, the difference is dramatic: Twitter/X and Discord are both used by half or more of OTW survey participants but less than 10% of Tolkien Fanfiction Survey participants. Returning to the phrasing of the survey items likely explains why: the OTW surveys asks about "fandom activities" while the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey is highly specific to "post[ing] Tolkien-based fanfiction." Twitter/X and Discord, among others included in the graph, are sites used by many to share news about and discuss fandom. They are not as conducive to posting fanfiction.

There are three sites, however, that buck the trend: single-fandom archives, LiveJournal, and Dreamwidth are more often used by Tolkien Fanfiction Survey participants. When I first saw the data in tabular form and without putting the platforms in chronological order, I thought this might be a matter of Tolkien fanfiction writers using older sites more often than newer sites. I was bothered by the fact that Tolkien Fanfiction Survey participants weren't necessarily more veteran than OTW survey participants—the opposite is true, in fact, according to the data shared above—but perhaps the longevity of the fandom itself and its reliance on these sites historically explained it.

But when I saw the data in a graph, it was clear that the age of the site wasn't the explanation. Older sites that welcome fanfiction (like DeviantArt) weren't being used more frequently by Tolkien fans, and Dreamwidth was the second newest site among the ten I selected to compare.

What the three sites do have in common, however, is that they use an older user interface. Both Blogger and Wordpress are newer than LiveJournal (1999 and 2003, respectively, versus 1998) but, more importantly, have evolved alongside the rest of the web to look and feel modern. LiveJournal … has not. And Dreamwidth, being a code fork of LiveJournal, is much the same.

The same is true of single-fandom archives. There was a heyday of single-fandom archives that ended in 2005, and most single-fandom archives were built using eFiction, which stopped being actively developed in 2015. Most of these sites feel like taking a time machine back to the early-mid-2000s and the explosion of fandom activity that was happening on platforms like Geocities and Yahoo! Groups that don't even exist anymore.

In contrast, a site like DeviantArt is relatively old (2000) but has been developed to keep up with what one expects from the modern web. Same with Wattpad (heavily used by OTW survey takers) compared to FanFiction.net (heavily used by Tolkien Fanfiction Survey participants).

This confirms a theory I've long held but struggled to quantify: Tolkien fanfiction writers are technologically conservative, i.e., they prefer to stay with platforms they know rather than migrate somewhere new. Tolkien fans showed little interest in migrating to Dreamwidth post-Strikethrough, for example. Around that time, I remember lamenting with a fellow tech-savvy Tolkien fan that our fandom was rarely interested in trying new platforms. On a purely anecdotal level, I had frequent conversations with fellow fans frustrated by any change to familiar platforms and, when updating the Silmarillion Writers' Guild (then an eFiction site), would bear in mind members who I knew were using browsers multiple years out-of-date.

Tolkien fans, in other words, are the Galadriels and Elronds of the fandom world. They find their place and make it beautiful, filled with their people, and they make it eternal even as the world around them carries on. This reflects in the sites they choose, which hearken back to an earlier age but (to hear many fans describe them) are comfortable places and where their friends are.

As I noted at the outset, it's important to take all of these comparisons with a huge grain of salt. These are two surveys that are different in every way. They overlap in a handful of questions, but the differences between them make a true comparison of data impossible. Nonetheless, considering what the data might show is fun and interesting, if nothing else. For me particularly, as a researcher of the Tolkien fanworks fandom—a fandom that has been understudied compared to fandoms with a similar size and longevity—seeing fandom-wide data begins to unlock my sense that Tolkien fandom is distinct in some ways from the wider fandom.

Works Cited

1. I prefer "members" so much more to "users," just as I will type out the "reading and viewing fanworks" to "consuming fanworks" every time. There is just a mindfulness and belongingness to "members" and "reading and viewing" that is missing from the mindless, faceless "users" who are "consuming" things made by other "users."