This is an incomplete list, but here are a bunch of the new fandom surveys and data analyses that I’ve run across in the past ~two-three years. Most of them are cross-fandom. You can find more (including deeper dives into specific fans) in my #other people’s analysis tag. But also, if you know of other analyses that are missing here, please reblog and add them! :D

Fan surveys

@fansplaining​ podcasters/writers Elizabeth Minkel and Flourish Klink ran several interesting surveys of fans and did a bunch of quantitative analysis on the results:

a massive shipping survey (17K participants) to understand how fans conceptualize and participate in shipping.

(17K participants) to understand how fans conceptualize and participate in shipping. A survey about fanfic preferences , addressing favorite tropes, categories, fanfic platforms, and more (7500 participants)

, addressing favorite tropes, categories, fanfic platforms, and more (7500 participants) A survey about how fans define “fanfiction” (3500 participants)

(3500 participants) A number of smaller polls and surveys (see bottom of page)

@longlivefeedback​ did a survey about feedback rates on AO3 and FFN (hits/views vs. comments/reviews received by authors), received data about 522 cross-posted fanworks, and did a bunch of analyses of the results.

Fanwork analyses

@data-monkey​ has a whole series of detailed analyses of fanworks on AO3 (tagging behaviors & correlations, popularity metrics, length, crossovers, and more – check out all the links at the top of the post)

@olderthannetfic​ did several analyses, including:

@centrumlumina (who did the 2013 AO3 Census, the largest scale/most in-depth survey of fan demographics so far) also has done:

@fffinnagain has continued to do more research, including:

The main new stuff I have done:

Acafandom

Casey Fiesler & her lab have done some really cool work/written great articles:



@ludi-ling​ wrote a doctoral thesis on “SERIOUS LEISURE IN THE DIGITAL WORLD: EXPLORING THE INFORMATION BEHAVIOUR OF FAN COMMUNITIES.“ She analyzed data from Tumblr, Etsy, and AO3 (as well as doing some qualitative work, IIRC). I believe she was mostly focused on a particular X-Men fandom subcommunity as a case study, and exploring how tagging behaviors differ across different platforms.



@tracethisfeeling​ (AP Psychology high school student) ran a fandom survey of young, female fanfic writers and shared her resulting paper on “Exploring The Connection Between Parasocial Relationship Development Through Online Fanfiction And Fanfiction Writers’ Self-Discrepancies.”



Official industry data

Tumblr’s official @fandom blog regularly posts stats about popular tags on Tumblr, broken down by various categories.