written by: Emilie Waggoner
“You don’t have to be an enthusiast to enjoy Hatsune Miku!”
“Bro, I found the sauce you were looking for.”
“Thanks for the rec, I’m gonna go binge read it now!”
Each day, I find myself watching students exchange positive comments, recommendations, and helpful resources with each other. They are constantly talking to each other in a flurry of excited comments and GIFs., sometimes as early as 5:00am when I’m just waking up to get ready to work, all the way until I mute my notifications on the chat at 11:00pm. Students share pictures of themselves in personalized cosplay outfits, their new music covers of anime songs, and they drop their opinions on the latest anime show episode.
I should have mentioned – all of this is happening online.
In this article, I examine this engagement via the specific case of the University of Colorado Denver’s anime club and how students developed an online community. From there, I delve into a conversation on how other universities are utilizing new methods of online, in-person, and hybrid spaces to create student engagement and foster student belonging within their campus community. I summarize steps other institutions can take to create similar spaces for their students and how this can build upon current or new efforts to create student engagement in new, exciting ways beyond in-person spaces.
The Anime Club Makes a Comeback
Back in the fall of 2022, I was approached by a peer mentor asking if we could bring back the University of Colorado Denver’s anime club. I was teaching a class on analyzing Japanese anime and researching ways college students made meaning from engaging with anime fandoms, both online, at conventions, and in their own spaces. I agreed, and with the help of a past anime club president, students started a small seven-person club.
As of February 2024, there are over 85 members in the CU Denver Anime Club official Discord. Discord is an online chat app that allows groups to build a landing chat page and add different chat rooms off the main chat space. In these rooms, people can tag each other, share music, artwork, and videos, poll each other, and collaborate on shared works. Our club has even set up online gaming nights within a page on the Discord chat.
While the club has meetings each week on Tuesdays, where students share anime recommendation, watch anime shows, and you can hear the loud sounds of students arguing about their latest anime “hot take”, the Discord group is the most active part of the club. Students have shared before that when they cannot make it to the club meetings due to class, work, or because they just do not feel up to engaging with other people in-person, the Discord has been a space for them to connect and feel like a part of the club.
Anime in America
As someone who teaches and researches anime, it is not surprising to me that this club has quickly gained popularity on campus. The average age of American anime fans is 24.9 years old (Reysen et al., 2021), anime in America has surpassed domestic box office sales in movie theaters (Hoffman, 2021), and online fandom spaces have been found to be active places where fans engage in critical conversations around race and representation with one another (Fennell et al., 2012). There is even recent scholarship looking at how messaging within anime around accomplishing goals and overcoming challenges has been shown to be motivational and resiliency-building in college student anime fans (Migliorino-Reyes, 2020). To say anime is “just a cartoon” does not honor the real economic, social, and personal impact it has on fans today.
In fact, anime fandom continues to grow in America. In 2023, Anime Expo in Los Angeles, California became the largest anime expo in the world, with over 392,000 visitors showing up to the expo over the course of four days and generating over $100 million for the local hotels and businesses (Anime Expo, 2023). I have been presenting at Anime Expo for over three years now, covering topics from Marx, Foucault and the popular 2006 anime series Ouran High School Host Club, fanfiction, and its ability to allow for safe exploration of gender and sexual orientation identity formation for college fans, and more. Each time, I ask the audience how many of them are either current college students or will be starting college in the fall, and every time more than half the room raises their hands. It also never ceases to amaze me how many people show up for academic panels on anime; over 150 attended my panel on Marx and Foucault and they were thoroughly ready to unpack capitalism references in a fan-favorite anime show. I even found a Tik Tok comment later that mentioned my panel, encouraging other commenters to go to more academic-focused panels at the expo that weekend.
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic that halted many students’ in-person social lives, living in online spaces in 2024 is something that seems to have continued from the days of Zoom hangouts and Netflix watch party spaces. However, universities and colleges still seem to be grappling with how to create the ideal hybrid environment for classes, student meetings, and campus engagement and belonging. While campuses offer webinars to students for various academic support and career readiness assistance, there is still untapped potential for how institutions engage their students in belonging on-campus, even when they are not necessarily on-campus to begin with.
Now, this is not to say institutions are not jumping on the popular culture train to engage more with their students in online and in-person spaces. E-Sports have been around for many years on multiple college campuses, and their popularity continues to grow. Just recently, the University of Colorado Boulder announced a new gaming space on campus, filled with Alienware computers, a broadcast studio, and a packed calendar of events for students, both serious gamers and those who just want to play a cozy game surrounded by new friends. In addition, the University of Colorado Boulder is creating events focused on serious discussions on race and representation in gaming, allowing for critical media literacy and forming conversations around equity in online spaces on campus. Spaces like this allow for the integration of the online fandom spaces and campus spaces, which creates belonging on a massive scale for universities and colleges. Again, this work is not new; scholars such as Johns Hopkins University School of Education video game researcher Javon Goard discussed representation in game development, and the International Journal of Computer Game Research continues to publish articles on representation through a variety of lenses.
Higher Education and Popular Culture: Creating Belonging
As we navigate the return to campus all these years later, it is still difficult to get students to engage in in-person programs. My institution has had success in some of our larger events, but in our smaller club meetings for workshop events, it is rare to get more than ten students into the space. I believe the pandemic shifted how students choose to interact in-person, and I also believe there is a lingering fear around interacting with strangers in new spaces. Our students spent many of their high school experience being told to isolate or socially distance themselves from others, so we cannot expect them to jump back into pre-COVID days of large crowds of strangers. Coupled with the rise of social media apps such as Tik Tok during COVID-19, students continue to operate in these online spaces with others, and building upon that connection can be a powerful tool for universities.
In addition, many institutions are facing budget crunches and do not have funding to create an entire video game lounge for their students. However, there are a few ways institutions can begin incorporating online student spaces into their on-campus spaces. One way is by simply creating Discord channels for groups that are naturally formed in online spaces to begin with. If someone is not familiar with creating these types of channels, or needs an overview of how to use Discord, there are a variety of YouTube walkthrough videos available. In addition, Discord provides a full guide on their support website for new users.
Across fandom history, anime and video game communities typically form in online spaces and historically practice much of their engagement on platforms such as Twitch and Discord. As mentioned, the University of Colorado Denver’s anime club features most of its interactions on Discord and it continues to be the easiest way to bring in new members into both the online community and the in-person club meetings. For example, meetings this spring have doubled compared to the fall meetings as the Discord channel continues to grow.
Another way would be exploring utilizing platforms such as Twitch, a popular livestreaming broadcast service that was created in 2011, to host video game meetups, fundraisers, or even small competitions for student groups. There are many gamers out there who host Twitch playthroughs, create fundraising campaigns through various speedruns of games (where the main player works to skillfully beat a game in a set amount of time, usually much faster than casual playthroughs), or even host other Twitch players to discuss other pop culture references, such as their favorite anime shows.
There are also companies that will bring out giant screens and multiple gaming stations for universities and colleges to host large in-person gaming meetups and movie marathons. This is very similar to fandom spaces at expos and conventions, where gaming lounges and anime movie lounges typically hold all-day or all-night drop-in opportunities for folks to watch their favorite shows or play games with new and old friends. These spaces also tend to be low stakes when it comes to student involvement, as students can self-select how involved they want to be with the other folks in those spaces. This type of event could be a great welcome week event for campuses with large residential student spaces, or they could be a great way to have students take a break from studying to connect with others during finals week.
Next Steps: Working with Students
Since the main audience for these activities is students, it is important to know what pop culture fan spaces are already popular with your student body. One way to do this is to look at events that have had a pop culture or popular media theme, such as video games, movie nights, or trivia events. For example, at the University of Colorado Denver, our largest event in the fall was a friendship bracelet-making event in the style of the Taylor Swift bracelets that were being made at concerts. Not only was it a relevant pop culture event that was taking place across the world, but it also emphasized connection and belonging. We partnered with our International Student Services Office and spent hours with new students making bracelets and sharing them. I even gave the students in my anime class extra credit if they went to the event and made me a bracelet, which I then proceeded to wear in each class afterward.
Getting Started
One way to get started is to ask yourself and others some questions. For example, consider the following:
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- What are pop culture topics or trends students at my institution are already talking about or engaging with?
- What courses, student clubs, organizations, or events does my institution host with a pop culture lens?
- In what ways can I incorporate online spaces into clubs, organizations, or events for my students?
- Are there other staff or faculty with interests in this area that I can partner with?
Another way to begin is to simply ask your student staff or student leaders what pop culture events they would be interested in hosting. The University of Colorado Boulder’s video game lounge was not built without student input, and your students are the best source of information when it comes to what is “in” within pop culture fandom spaces. The more buy-in you get from your students, the more willing they are to begin accessing their social networks to bring more students into those spaces and those events.
Simply put, think about what your institution already does and how it has attracted students, and build on the momentum of current pop culture trends to create new and interesting programs. Again, many of these pop culture spaces start online, so think through your own internet literacy and ways in which clubs, organizations, and events can integrate online spaces within in-person spaces at your campus.
Finally, embrace your excitement around pop culture. Anime continues to be my own favorite pop culture and fandom space, and I continue to take in feedback from my students to build up my class, engage new people in the anime club as its advisor, and explore new areas of research for my own personal and professional interests. Pop culture integration within institutional programs, spaces, and organizations can be a powerful way to continue providing access for your students, both in-person and online.
Hopefully, this gives you some ideas into how you can maximize pop culture and fandom to foster belonging for students at your institutions too. Till then, see you space cowboy!
References
Anime Expo. (2023, August 8). Anime expo 2023 celebrates 32nd anniversary with attendees from over 60 countries, over 400 exhibitors and 1,000 hours of programming. Anime Expo. https://www.anime-expo.org/2023/08/08/anime-expo-2023-celebrates-32nd-anniversary-with-attendees-from-over-60-countries-over-400-exhibitors-and-1000-hours-of-programming/#:~:text=Hosted%20by%20The%20Society%20for,Expo%202024%20will%20return%20to
Fennell, D., Liberato, A. S. Q., Hayden, B., & Fujino, Y. (2013). Consuming Anime. Television & New Media, 14(5), 440-456. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476412436986
Hoffman, J. (2021, May 2). Demon slayer: Mugen train makes box office history. Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/05/demon-slayer-mugen-train-makes-box-office-history
Migliorino-Reyes, J. (2020). The Value of Anime in Building Resilience in College Students During Transition (Doctoral dissertation, Capella University). https://www.proquest.com/docview/2466059700/abstract/CFC6AA0A7B41456CPQ/1
Reysen, S., Plante, C., Chadborn, D., Roberts, S. & Gerbasi, K. (2021). Transported to another world: The psychology of anime fans. International Anime Research Project: Commerce Texas.
About the Author
Emilie Waggoner (she/her) is the Director of Student Transitions at the University of Colorado Denver, which encompasses First-Year Experiences, the Peer Advocate Leader program, and the Lynx Summer Academy program. In addition, Emilie teaches a class analyzing Japanese anime, and serves as the advisor of the University of Colorado Denver Anime Club. She also presents at multiple state and international conventions on anime in academic research. She is pursuing her doctorate in education at the University of Colorado Denver, where she hopes to research popular media as an educational tool in first-year core classes.