To whet your conference appetite...

A blog post from conference speaker and Academic Archers royalty, Claire Astbury, of her presentation, ‘Fans, Flouncers, Fundamentalists: Navigating the subcultures of online Archers fan spaces.’

When I want to comment on The Archers, although I am one of those lucky fans who do know fellow listeners in real life, I usually choose to say something online. I might tweet using the hashtag #TheArchers, I might leave a message for the Archers fan podcast DumTeeDum, or I might add to a message thread on one of the Archers Facebook groups I am a member of.

What drives people to set up, join, or leave a fan group? I surveyed over 1000 Archers fans who engage online and also asked questions of group moderators. Over half of the moderators who responded to my questionnaire had established an online group to meet a need they didn’t feel was met elsewhere in cyberspace, Perhaps that's why 30%  of those who engage online said they had left a group because of the atmosphere or tone.  The role of moderators in setting the rules and tone for their group was commented on by members and moderators alike.

Archers fans congregate online to talk about the programme but also to talk about completely different things; their pets, their knitting, their politics, their menopause. My survey identified over 70 separate Facebook groups, alongside Archers discussion threads on other message boards and dedicated websites.  One respondent commented: “There is a wide variety of options which means any fan should be able to find a group/groups they feel suits their needs” whilst others mentioned feeling part of a family, finding their tribe and the life changing impact of finding fellow listeners online.

When it comes to slang, euphemisms and favourite characters, there are many similarities across Archers fans regardless of what platform they use or group they belong to.  The most commonly recognised terms that I tested related to nicknames for key characters.   Some terms such as “Flouncing” emerged not from the programme, but in online fan spaces. “Flouncing” – leaving a group or announcing the intention to leave, often accompanied by a photo of an ostentatious flouncing frock, has now become a well-established custom across a range of platforms.  Other customs are specific to certain groups – the fundamentalist beliefs of the Archers Anarchists for example, who refuse to accept it is a scripted drama with actors. Borchester Asylum, a subgroup of Archers Anarchists, was mentioned by several people and is an example of one of the subgroups and subcultures which have emerged from longer-established fan forums.

When people find the group or groups that are right for them, they are loyal and enthusiastic about their online experience. 

I asked fans about the benefits of their engagement with online communities and several themes emerged. Firstly it's clear that talking about The Archers online enhances listeners experience of the programme and encourages people to listen at all, especially during difficult storylines.

For listeners outside of the UK, the ability to talk to someone about the programme online was significant.  Three quarters of non-British listeners outside of the UK did not know anyone else who listens, except for people online, a figure which was only true for one sixth of UK based British listeners.

The friendships and support of fellow online fans was commented on by many people and was especially valued by older respondents. Nearly half of the fans aged over 70 said they had made friends and had emotional or practical support from among an online fan community.

One in ten of the people responding to the survey had been involved in a pre-internet Archers fan group, mainly via post, but only about one in a hundred were still engaged in those off-line groups.

Overall the research I have done shows that Archers fans value meeting in an online space to meet each other, to talk about the program or indeed anything else. Online groups develop their own language, rituals and atmosphere although many of the nicknames and euphemisms used by fans are common across the fan space. This may be because, with such a wide variety of groups, individual Archers listeners can join multiple groups for different discussions. New groups spring up to meet changing needs and The Archers fan multiverse continues to develop.

Academic Archers Fifth Annual Conference 2020: Call for Papers

Dr Cara Courage and Dr Nicola Headlam invite the submission of abstracts to the fifth Academic Archers annual conference on the subject of BBC Radio 4’s The Archers.

Academic Archers are an established experimental academic community where a cornucopia of insights are explored by Research Fellows (qualifications: committed listener) and professional academics (qualifications: university affiliation or independent scholar, broadly defined or specialist practitioner, and committed listener.) The conference is expected to be held over a February 2020 weekend, at a university venue close to London.

Academic Archers are methodologically heterodox and welcome emerging ideas in experimental format, conventional and bids for keynote speakers and submissions are invited from any academic discipline.

For this, our fifth annual conference, we seek presentations - with the broadest possible interpretation - on the conference themes of:

1 – Family dynamics: the psychology and business of family relations

For example:

·         How family dramas, inheritance politics and reversals of fortune keep us all hooked.

·         Family and Kinship in Borsetshire.

·         How the case for family therapy/ grief counselling/couples counselling has become unanswerable.

·         Family (business) planning – how not to do it?

·         Macro and micro power; how national politics affect family politics

This conference strand will be curated into a 2021 edited collection for Emerald Academic Press.

2 - Fandom as a prism

For example:

·         Using The Archers in teaching and/or research.

·         The online tribes of the wider The Archers firmament.

·         Salience in listener lives: why listeners form intimate relationships with The Archers characters.

·         ‘I listen but I’m not a fan’ identity in The Archers fandom.

This conference strand will be curated into a 2020 edited collection for Emerald Academic Press.

The two strands and examples are of course not an exhaustive or exclusive listing and we seek papers on any and all aspects of life in Ambridge.

We welcome wildcards, flights of fancy and suggestions from leftfield. We have accepted papers as films, podcasts, posters, photo-essays, as well as the gamut of quantitative and qualitative approaches, archival and imaginative methods. These topic and format lists are meant to inspire you to think how your academic research, sector professional expertise or listener forensic knowledge of The Archers can illuminate and explain life of The Archers and Ambridge.

What you can expect as a presenter is the most committed and engaged audience of your life, listening avidly with curiosity, generosity and joyfulness and probing with the most penetrating of questions.

What we expect of presenters is to be an active member of the Academic Archers community of practice, contributing to media coverage, blogposts, podcasts and other promotional activity as appropriate.

If you are a fellow The Archers fan and/or academic please submit your abstract of 200 words with a short biography to cara@caracourage.net and headlams@gmail.com by 1st September 2019. Please indicate the type of presentation you are intending (Quick Pitch, 5 mins, plus Q+A; paper, 15 mins plus 5 mins Q+A; keynote, 45 mins to include Q+A.)

Programming will be determined by an Academic Archers peer review panel made up of our listener research fellows (who give the most detailed of feedback!!)

Decisions will be communicated to presenters by mid-October.