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By Any Media Necessary: Mapping Youth and Participatory Politics

How To Change the World

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Harry Potter Alliance
About
The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) is a non-profit organization established in 2005, promoting literacy, equality and human rights by turning “fans into heroes.” The organization taps the infrastructures of the thriving Harry Potter fan community, including blogs, podcasts, conventions, fan fiction sites, and wizard rock (Harry Potter themed music) concerts, to mobilize the fan community towards civic engagement. The HPA leadership includes a handful of paid staff members and a network of volunteer staff, dispersed around the nation, conducting most of their communication online. The local, more face-to-face-oriented component of the HPA includes a network of over 250 chapters in high schools, colleges and communities nationwide and abroad. The mostly youth-led chapters engage in national campaigns but also promote local projects based on their members’ interests.
In its nine years of existence, the HPA has engaged in multiple campaigns, some independent, and some in conjunction with established non-profit organizations. Every year, the organization runs book drives for communities in need. Perhaps their most visible campaign has been Helping Haiti Heal in 2010, in which they raised $123,000 in two weeks from small donations to send 5 cargo planes full of supplies to Haiti—an achievement reached in part due to their collaboration with the Nerdfighters. HPA’s more recent campaigns include Equality FTW (for the win), raising $95,000 for action around immigration, education and LGBTQ equality. The HPA has also mobilized around marriage equality, with members phone-banking to persuade residents of Maine and Rhode Island to legalize same-sex marriage.
In 2011, HPA launched Imagine Better, a project that aims to bring the model behind the HPA—mobilizing fan communities to civic action—to other fan groups and content worlds. Imagine Better has launched campaigns around the Hunger Games movie series and around the Superman movie Man of Steel.
See Neta Kligler-Vilenchik's By Any Media Necessary Chapter, "Decreasing World Suck", to learn more about the HPA, Imagine Better, and other groups who employ fan activism.
See the Harry Potter Alliance’s “Make it IRL” workshop, devised by HPA spokesperson Lauren Bird, for a hands-on workshop designed to encourage participants to make connections between popular culture and real-world issues.
Contributed by Neta Kligler-Vilenchik on 9/29/14
Harry Potter Alliance Media
The Harry Potter Alliance, A History
Why I Can't go to LeakyCon
Accio Books: LeakyCon Edition
How to Change the World
Books on FIRE
Andrew Slack Tedx Talk
Confessional / direct address With the advent of personal webcams and the development of video sharing networks, the confessional/direct address style has greatly developed. In traditional filmmaking practices, directly addressing (or even looking into) the camera was highly discouraged, as it was thought to disrupts the audience's "suspension of disbelief" or immersion into the film's storyworld. Directly addressing the camera was sanctioned only for news programs in which the reporter looked into the camera to give a sense of proximity to the audience, as if they were talking directly to the television viewer at home.

This sense of intimacy and direct conversation continues to be the underlying effect, and often intent, of making direct address or confessional videos. The image of someone at their computer mirrors that of the audience member, creating an illusion of direct, simultaneous conversation. Though in reality they often act as video letters that are exchanged back and forth amongst groups and individuals.

The Harry Potter Alliance in particular often broadcast their group video chats around discussions or have individual channels set up to address the general public as well as respond to each others' previous posts. The "How to Change World" video for example shows one member Lauren responding to Julian's video post about the importance of voting. Her video develops his discussion by adding further logical arguments about the role of communication and community building as part of the voting process. Additionally, at the end of the video she elicits viewers to submit their own videos to add their voices to the conversation.

Similarly, Hank and John Green (the Vlog Brothers) respond to each other about important topics but often with a more educational twist, relating to science and history. John's "Revolution in Egypt: A 4-Minute Introduction" is in response to his brother Hank, but focuses on developing a factual backstory to a topical political situation more so than delivering a personal confession or opinion.
“Decreasing World Suck” The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), a non-profit organization established in 2005, encourages civic and political engagement amongst Harry Potter fans by using metaphors from J. K. Rowling’s best-selling fantasy series. When the HPA was established, Harry Potter fandom was at its peak: two of the books had not yet come out, the movie series was just gaining steam, and the fan community was thriving. Yet even a 7-book, 8-movie series that has become a world phenomenon ends at some point. In terms of release of original content, that end came in July 2011, with the release of the last movie in the Harry Potter series. At that time, many feared that the fandom was also dissolving . At Leakycon 2011, a grassroots fan convention, young fans were talking about “the end of an era”, linking the series’ conclusion to their own ending childhood. As one HPA member puts it, with some degree of overstatement, “so obviously Harry Potter is over, sadly” (Daniela, 23). What happens to a civic organization that grounds itself in the connection to a prominent content world, when that content world increasingly loses its traction? The HPA tried to pre-empt this question by launching the “Imagine Better” Project in July 2011. The idea: applying the approach that has proven successful for the HPA—connecting fans around story worlds they love to create real world change -- to collaborations with other fandoms. The HPA can be seen as a prime example of fan activism—harnessing fan enthusiasm toward real world change. Yet at the same time one may ask, to what extent is the example of the HPA a singular one? The Harry Potter phenomenon, after all, has been a remarkable success, with a generation of children “growing up with Harry”. This fan community was recognized as a particularly active and creative one -- among the first major fandoms to emerge alongside the internet and employed its increasing affordances. Moreover, many of the themes of the books seem particularly resonant with real-world issues, complemented by J.K. Rowling’s own history working for Amnesty International. Much like Invisible Children, the HPA uses media production and circulation to direct attention onto issues their members care about and in the process, to try to reshape the cultural and political agenda. Yet this model is not the only possible approach to fan activism. Consider the example of the Nerdfighters. Nerdfighters are an informal online community that took shape around the YouTube channel of the Vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green. The two brothers upload two videos a week, about “nothing in particular”, though always with their unique look and feel, including a fast pace of speech, multiple jump cuts, and elaborate use of inside jokes and jargon. Nerdfighters are not connected around a fictional content world, but rather around their affiliation with the Vlogbrothers and a broader “nerd” identity, yet the group has developed a shared social agenda, broadly characterized as “decreasing world suck”. Beyond the Vlogbrothers’ own videos discussing current affairs (e.g. “Revolution in Egypt: a 4 minute introduction”), the young participants also are creating and posting their own videos in support of diverse charities and non-profits. The Nerdfighters have shown a capacity to mobilize rapidly around short-term, high impact civic goals: for example, the Foundation to Decrease World Suck raised $483, 296 in two days in 2012. According to John Green, the group’s civic goals are: Very very much at the center of Nerdfighteria and I don’t think that there really is a community without that commitment to decreasing world suck or, as Hank likes to say, ‘increasing world awesome’. Building on these three case studies (the HPA, Imagine Better and the Nerdfighters), this chapter explores the intersection of fan communities, content worlds, and participatory politics. The HPA demonstrates how a civic organization can translate fan enthusiasms into civic and political action. The Imagine Better Project raises questions about whether such a model can be “generalized” towards other fan communities. The Nerdfighters, finally, show that civic goals can be achieved by an interest community without one shared content world. Through these case studies, this chapter will explore two theoretical concepts: fan activism and content worlds.

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