The study “Haters as Anti-Fans? Accruing Capital through Audiences Who Hate Journalists” by Jane Yeahin Pyo from University of Illinois interviewed 40 South Korean journalists who had experienced harassment and hateful expressions and how they capitalized on this hate.
Drawing from fan scholarship on anti-fans like Gray’s (2003) insight that haters, like fans, amass immense knowledge, react with strong emotions, and have a strong passion for their object of love or hate. In fan studies scholarship, it is then claimed that being hated becomes a status marker and further legitimizes the target.
Within existing journalism studies, the relationship is seen as antagonistic. Haters seek to delegitimize journalists by name-calling, such as in South Korea as giragei, meaning trash, or as “fake news”. Haters also harass journalists in various ways, even up to doxing.
In this study, the author seeks to broaden journalistic studies by applying the lens from fandom studies to journalism. The empirical part comes from in-depth, qualitative interviews of 40 South Korean journalists who had been targeted by anti-journalistic attacks. There are even two websites in South Korea that purvey anti-journalistic hate, Reportrash and Nolooknews.
The argument presented here is that journalists use hate they receive as an indicator of successful journalism. Symbolic capital was accrued from anti-journalistic hate, establishing the journalist as “hardworking and competent”. This, in turn, allowed the journalists to make better connections with their informants.
The author concludes then that anti-journalistic hate becomes capital: hate capital. In this way, the study offers contributions to the field of journalism studies by applying the lens of fandom studies to it and by analyzing how journalists utilize capital.
In this study, the insight from fandom studies, that love and hate are two sides of the same coin, to also prove the case that in the case of journalists, too, anti-fans and hate can be successfully utilized in the favour of journalists.
Three mechanisms were identified in how journalists leverage hate as symbolic capital. First, hate received was viewed as an indicator of journalistic success. Indeed, journalist even seek to work hard to maintain their position as “top trashy journalist of the week” in hate lists on the websites mentioned.
Second, hate was seen as an indicator that the journalistic work they had done was engaging the audience, and then became a way to build a reputation and elevate their position in the field. This was similar to mechanisms identified in fandom literature.
Third, anti-journalistic hate and the symbolic capital accrued there opened a path to other capital, such as social capital, when hated journalists formed better connections with their informants. Social capital leads to clear benefits, as Pierre Bourdieu (1993) has elucidated.
The article “Haters as Anti-Fans? Accruing Capital through Audiences Who Hate Journalists” by Jane Yeahin Pyo is in Digital Journalism. (free abstract).
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