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Abstract
This study extends the work of Henry Jenkins’s "Convergence Culture" and Allegra Tepper’s "Lizzie in Real Life: Social and Narrative Immersion Through Transmedia in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries” by showing that comments left on the 1995 film and “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries” can be categorized and that YouTube as a space is providing a space for a fluidity of performative fan interaction. In order to connect Jenkins and Tepper’s theories, this study collected, categorized, and organized YouTube comments scraped from episode 5 of the 1995 film version of Pride and Prejudice and episodes 98, 100, and 61 of “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.” This study demonstrates the need to contextualize works such as Jenkins and Tepper within the public nature of sites like YouTube to account for important elements of fan interaction in understanding transmedia storytelling. Though proving Jenkins can be seen as proving that fans make money for the transmedia creator, that is not the main focus of my study. Instead, I am focusing on the idea that human or fan interaction can prove the many facets of fandom within the space.