Glee

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study
Today, writing, far removed from the restrictions of the traditional pen and paper past, can be published at the click of a button, with active asynchronous and synchronous means of review and response from a world-wide audience. The authors, readers, and reviewers of online writing form virtual writing communities where, much of the time, they encourage, inspire, and offer constructive critique of each other’s writing.
One outcome of sharing and responding to writing is that, through the process, participants also explore other ways of thinking (Graves, 2004). Virtual writing websites have “vastly simplified the process of finding and joining” a writing community (Driscoll & Gregg, 2011, p. 570). The

Then, I will address the research area and the significance of this research in relation to knowledge and understanding of the literacy processes of adolescent readers and writers. After the statement of the problem, I will describe the television program Glee, which, over its six-year run, has achieved immense popularity, in part because of its cutting edge LGBT plotlines, its premise regarding challenging the social structure of the typical public high school, and the treatment of students among and between the social strata of a public high school. The goal of this chapter is to introduce the topic of my proposed research, which questions how the interactions among adolescent participants on the Glee pages of FanFiction.net may contribute to refinements in empathy, behavior, and understanding of difference and diversity; particularly as it relates to LGBT teen and

As a genre of writing, fan fiction is “writing, whether official or unofficial, paid or unpaid, which makes use of an accepted canon of characters, settings, and plots generated by another writer or writers “(Pugh, 2005, p. 25). There are entire websites where participants can publish their writing connected with pop culture literature such as the young adult literature series The Hunger Games and The Host. The Internet has made it possible for frequent, instantaneous, and ongoing interaction among participants that share these interests (Banet-Weiser, et al, 2014). Fan fiction writing allows adolescent writers to utilize their favorite stories, plots and characters as the basis for creative writing and as a means to explore characters, issues, and themes that are of interest or concern to them. Tosenberger (2014), divides the genre into two categories which she calls affirmative and transformational fandom. Affirmative fan fiction writing is closely connected to the original material, and is heavily contextual, searching for answers and authors’ or producers’ true purposes in creating the source work. Transformational fan fiction writing takes the source materials and manipulates, corrects, or changes it according to the fan’s purposes, for creativity and fun or to reflect areas that the fan may feel