Fandom Auctions

[ajnabieh]

My friend memories_child and I are starting a research project on fandom auctions, particularly fandom auctions to support disaster relief after specific natural disasters. The project is pretty cool, and hilarious for me since suddenly I’m doing all this freakin’ quant work (lololol I’m coding comment threads, what is my career), but I’m excited to both get the early quant data together, and to then be able to dig into the more interpretive side of the research.

At the moment, we’re limiting ourselves to 1) panfandom auctions 2) specifically focused on disaster relief for specific natural disasters, such as after the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 or the Japanese earthquake/tsunami in 2011, 3) which were held on LiveJournal or Dreamwidth. I’ve found as many as I can, through following signalboosts, links, my own memory, and Fanlore, but there might be some missing. And, so, I turn to you, friendly readers. Here’s my list; do you remember or did you participate in any fandom auctions other than these? Or can you think of major auctions that don't quite fit the criteria but that we might be interested in?

help_haiti
help_chile
helpbrazil2011
help_nz
fandom_flood_ap
help_japan
help_japan
help_pakistan
fandomaid
help_syria

In addition, have you ever participated in a fandom auction as a mod, a bidder, or a seller? We haven’t yet gotten to the interview phase of research yet, but if you’d be interested in talking to one of us, or if you just want to share your experiences, let me know! That would be awesome.

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

I have been a bidder & a seller in auctions of the kind you're talking about above; if you end up broadening things out, I also modded a smaller auction (to help a specific person). Happy to prattle about it if that would be useful!

Also, what a cool research project. :D

[ajnabieh]

Awesome! I was hoping you'd be interested, because there are Serious Theoretical Reasons for wanting to make sure that the interview part of the research includes fans of both Western and Asian media.

And I will totally be curious about the smaller auctions and how they compare to the bigger version. Not precisely what the quant part of the research is about, but totally worth thinking about.

[egret]

I would have sworn there were similar things done after Hurricane Katrina, but I can't specifically remember. A quick DW search didn't show anything. Was it just too long ago?

ETA: not seeing anything for Hurricane Sandy either!

Sorry for the comment of non-results. Good luck with your project which sounds great!

[ajnabieh]

There was one for Hurricane Sandy, which was done through fandomaid. I'm actually glad as a fan, and interested as a researcher, in the fact that there's now a community dedicated to periodically running these things beyond a one-time event.

I hadn't thought to look for Katrina--I've been dating these things since help_haiti, which was the first disaster-focused auction I experienced as a fan, and is also such a huge one compared to some of the others. Thanks for checking--I'll poke around further.

I'm excited by the project! My new department seems open to creative, non-traditional projects, so I'm taking some license to mix up my more traditional research with some fun acafandom. *g*