Thousands of Positive Reviews: Distributed Mentoring in Online Fan Communities

TL;DR

This paper presents the concept of distributed mentoring, a form of informal, networked learning observed in online fanfiction communities, highlighting its potential to enhance feedback and learning in educational settings.

Contribution

It introduces the theory of distributed mentoring based on ethnographic research, revealing how online communities facilitate sophisticated informal learning and feedback.

Findings

Distributed mentoring enables diverse and thoughtful feedback.

Online fan communities foster informal learning through networked interactions.

Potential applications in formal education environments.

Abstract

Young people worldwide are participating in ever-increasing numbers in online fan communities. Far from mere shallow repositories of pop culture, these sites are accumulating significant evidence that sophisticated informal learning is taking place online in novel and unexpected ways. In order to understand and analyze in more detail how learning might be occurring, we conducted an in-depth nine-month ethnographic investigation of online fanfiction communities, including participant observation and fanfiction author interviews. Our observations led to the development of a theory we term distributed mentoring, which we present in detail in this paper. Distributed mentoring exemplifies one instance of how networked technology affords new extensions of behaviors that were previously bounded by time and space. Distributed mentoring holds potential for application beyond the spontaneous mentoring observed in this investigation and may help students receive diverse, thoughtful feedback in formal learning environments as well.