Toxicity is often be the first thing one notices about fan communities; within the realm of political fandom, it can play a structural role. Understanding its mechanics is an important and essential step. In these environments, online harassment, such as public shaming and doxxing, is not simply an individual act of aggression but also functions as a tool of moral policing: to consolidate group identity and reinforce the ideological framework of the community. These practices shape how users participate and define belonging. Those who stray from these communities’ moral or political norms, whether by airing contrary opinions or questioning the in-group narrative, risk exclusion, ridicule, and even more aggressive forms of censure.
The plethora of studies that have explored political fandoms through the lens of toxic practices has underlined a startling truth: online communities have long ago ceased to be benign echo chambers. They are now defined as active sites where emotion, morality, and ideology converge and are utilized to produce both cohesion and conflict. On too many occasions, political fandom is dismissed as trivial or as just a space for memes and heated online debates about celebrities. While these elements are certainly important parts of it, fandom is not limited to harmless, satirical content. In fact, the last few years demonstrate that fan communities have become highly consequential, especially where and when belief systems intersect with politics.
In the field of fan studies, it is well-known that fans are not merely spectators, however this knowledge is too often not recognized in other fields of study. Fans are now getting to be moral arbiters, narrative co-creators, and increasingly, participants in what I call “charged participation.” This framework refers to the participation of those who engage with political issues and topics online. In these online political environments, engagement is driven by heightened affect; emotional investment and attachment are foundational for participation and fans forge connections that are grounded in shared moral and ideological beliefs around specific causes, narratives, and/or figures.
Fans are not merely spectators […]. [They] are now getting to be moral arbiters, narrative co-creators, and increasingly, participants in what I call “charged participation.”
This essay explores how online illiberal political fandoms have been able to co-opt discourse to enforce ideological conformity, circulate conspiratorial narratives, and participate in affectively charged, often toxic, political engagement.
Charged participation as moral governance
While earlier accounts of participatory culture highlight its creativity and community, “charged participation” attempts to explain why and how political fan communities often showcase strong cohesion through a shared moral purpose, while also having the capability for rapid conflict to erupt. Research has already shown that political fandom carries the characteristics of not simply liking or supporting a figure or movement, but for it to be as much about actively performing loyalty, virtues, and, most importantly, ideological alignment. These internal moral frameworks, dictating, for example, specific discourses and ideological views, are used to police and punish dissent. Furthermore, fan engagement has increasingly reflected broader illiberal cultural and political trends.
Fans are increasingly framing their engagement in moral terms. Here, one’s loyalty is no longer enough of a barometer—they must also be morally righteous.
At the core of many online political fan communities lies a notable phenomenon: the co-opting of morality as a means of justifying one’s allegiance. Regardless of whether users are defending a political figure or attacking the perceived ideological misbehavior of others, fans are increasingly framing their engagement in moral terms. Here, one’s loyalty is no longer enough of a barometer—they must also be morally righteous. Political support is becoming intertwined with notions of virtue, justice, and a professed duty. What this produces is a moral economy that not only anoints certain behavior and speech as acceptable, but also facilitates the shifting of moral boundaries within these communities.
For instance, the intersection of fan culture and politics during the 2016 U.S. general election campaign cycle epitomized how online discussions can infiltrate the mainstream. This political discourse featured all the conventional markers of online fandom: a high level of engagement, political activism, and the rapid diffusion of messages and hashtag campaigns. Most significant, however, was the normalizing of toxic behavior and discourses through the co-opting of moral language.
The patterns discussed here are drawn from my article The New Normal: Online political fandom and the co-opting of morals, which examined the circulation of toxic and morally charged fan practices during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Fans not only circulated messages attacking political candidates; they also enforced a set of ideological and moral norms within the community. An example of this is found in Donald Trump’s labelling of his political opponent, Hillary Clinton, as #CrookedHillary, framing alleged misconduct in stark moral terms. This use of the hashtag was not rhetorical. It was mobilized by fans on social media over 5.8 million times between July and November 2016.
The toxicity extended beyond Clinton herself, with some fans targeting her supporters and accusing them of being complicit in their candidate’s extreme wrongdoing. These types of messagedemonstrate how belonging in these communities became contingent upon aligning with the political and moral practices of the in-group. Online discourse analyzed in the article shows how supporters reshaped acceptable discourse and produced an environment where hostility and exclusion became a standard feature of participation. The constant connectivity and vast circulation of content illustrate how standards in fan communities can be reshaped into a new normal of hostility and exclusion.
While this case study focused on U.S. fandom, the dynamics observed are not contained to this singular national context; the concept of charged participation further provides a lens through which to understand related phenomena elsewhere. For instance, in South Africa, the Operation Dudula fandom exhibits similar patterns, where fans frame participation in moral and patriotic terms. With a sizeable following on social media platforms, including X, the self-proclaimed, self-named political movement Operation Dudula, which means “force out” in isiZulu, has built a visible online profile with 280,000 Facebook followers. The group claims to address, amongst other things, illegal immigration through various means, including virtual and physical harassment and intimidation of foreign nationals, organizing marches, and illegally checking people’s documents. This fandom is typified by the use of anti-migrant discourse, which uses online platforms, such as Facebook, to draw attention to predominantly toxic rhetoric which promotes elements of vigilantism.
The mobilization of political fandom through narrative and conspiracy
In 2025, feedback loops persist through narratives of exclusion and xenophobia and the mobilization of new users continues across online platforms. These practices are not only confined to digital interactions, but can prompt real-world actions, including vigilantism, thus demonstrating the tangible consequences of morally charged fan engagement. This was visible in the conspiracy-driven fan cultures related to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. In this setting, emotionally charged narratives were combined with conspiratorial “fanspiracies,” where QAnon communities treated political events like unfolding storylines. Fans participated in decoding so-called “clues” posted on public forums which they believed to be hidden, coded messages that would reveal a secret underworld run by liberal Washington elites. This extended to the sharing of supposed insider knowledge and reinforcing loyalty through the morally righteous narratives of betrayal and redemption. These practices showed how conspiracy fandom can mobilize affect and narrative in ways that blur the line between mere spectatorship and actual political action as well as highlighting the structural power of toxic, morally changed participation.
These practices are not only confined to digital interactions, but can prompt real-world actions, including vigilantism, thus demonstrating the tangible consequences of morally charged fan engagement.
However, conspiratorial fandoms do not live within a microcosm. They have since evolved and adapted: charged participation is now an ongoing feature and characteristic of the digital landscape. Trump supporters, for example, continue to frame the “stolen election” as an unfinished saga; they circulate memes, hashtags, and livestream commentary that function like episodic instalments in a long-running fan narrative. Several years later, there remains an active narrative economy. In 2025, this persists through several highly active online narratives. A new example is the “Trump 2028” storyline. It is fuelled by Trump himself, who displayed “Trump 2028” hats in the Oval Office during a meeting with House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, and also shared, via Truth Social, an AI-generated video of him throwing that hat at Jeffries. This narrative has been deliberately curated in other online spaces as well, gaining noteworthy traction on platforms such as Reddit, where several dozen threads debate its implications and legitimacy.
In Brazil, the storming of the government buildings in January 2023 was preceded by similar emotionally charged fandom practices. Bearing a striking resemblance to the January 2021 insurrection in the United States, supporters of Jair Bolsonaro stormed federal government buildings in Brazil following his 2023 election loss. This attack aimed to overthrow Luis Inácio Lula de Silva, the democratically elected President. In South Africa, the continuation of Operation Dudula into the mid-2020s also underlines how these practices can sustain themselves over long periods of time and how, within toxic echo chambers, taking action from the online sphere to the offline world is often decreed as an obligatory act. In this regard, fanspiracies and toxic fan practices provide a type of scaffolding through which mobilization can be sustained and transformed; what’s more, they show how political fandom is a global phenomenon that continues to evolve, expand and pervade all digital spaces.
In Brazil, the storming of the government buildings in January 2023 was preceded by similar emotionally charged fandom practices. Bearing a striking resemblance to the January 2021 insurrection in the United States, supporters of Jair Bolsonaro stormed federal government buildings in Brazil following his 2023 election loss. This attack aimed to overthrow Luis Inácio Lula de Silva, the democratically elected President. In South Africa, the continuation of Operation Dudula into the mid-2020s also underlines how these practices can sustain themselves over long periods of time and how, within toxic echo chambers, taking action from the online sphere to the offline world is often decreed as an obligatory act. In this regard, fanspiracies and toxic fan practices provide a type of scaffolding through which mobilization can be sustained and transformed; what’s more, they show how political fandom is a global phenomenon that continues to evolve, expand and pervade all digital spaces.
Fanspiracies and toxic fan practices provide a type of scaffolding through which mobilization can be sustained and transformed
Charged participation as illiberal culture
The case studies in this essay provide merely a glimpse into toxic fandom and fan practices. However, what is evident is that these dynamics are reflective of illiberal tendencies that can be observed in society at large, like political polarization and moral absolutism. In online fan communities, this can be referred to as charged participation and can be read as a cultural expression of illiberalism that privileges loyalty over pluralism, rewards ideological purity, and normalizes exclusion and othering. Toxic fan practices such as harassment, public shaming, and fanspiracies that turn politics into grandiose storylines of betrayal and redemption function not only as online curiosities but as affective catalysts that sustain illiberal logics. Therefore, what is at stake is not just a simplistic distinction classifying digital spaces as either “good” or “bad” but more about how these participatory practices are entrenching and defining political cultures of hostility and suspicion. It is these dynamics that have every likelihood of spilling over into offline mobilization and real-world consequences.
Thus, it underlines the urgency of critical scholarship, which must continue to theorize frameworks like charged participation to better understand and account for the interplay between morality, affect, and ideology within these digital cultures. Furthermore, educational responses must adapt to the evolving landscape of fanspiracies and toxic participation, especially as algorithmic amplification and AI-generated content are becoming increasingly adept at platforming what is believable and actionable. If this is left unaddressed, these dynamics carry the very real risk of deepening illiberal tendencies.
If we ignore the moral intensity, conspiratorial storytelling, and structural toxicity embedded in fan cultures, we would be leaving polarization, exclusion, and ideological coercion to define the norms of online life and, consequently, offline too. The question is no longer if we should intervene. It is now, if we are willing to resist allowing these types of digital narratives to rewrite our social realities.
If we ignore the moral intensity, conspiratorial storytelling, and structural toxicity embedded in fan cultures, we would be leaving polarization, exclusion, and ideological coercion to define the norms of online life and, consequently, offline too.
Real-world consequences of moralized fandom
This worrying trend requires some intervention. A potential first step for digital platforms, regulators, and communities is toacknowledge that participatory culture does reinforce harmful ideologies. There have been some attempts at this via the implementation of legislative measures. The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act and South Africa’s Hate Speech Act have attempted to address online harm by instituting a means of adjudicating hate speech and consequently hand down legal penalties and punishment. However, the complexity of regulating digital spaces, as well as the ambiguities involved in defining toxic behavior, make the enforcement of these laws challenging.
Equally important is education. Those who are teaching media, ethics, and digital culture must actively engage with participatory culture both in theory and practice. Incorporating fan studies frameworks into teaching and learning practices by including it as part of the curriculum, especially within the context of understanding how the media and its audience function, is a vital first step. By encouraging the students’ understanding of how online communities can create and sustain both creativity and harm. Through this approach, educators can equip students with the critical tools and frameworks that are essential for navigating these morally charged digital spaces responsibly, to question toxic online practices, and, ideally, to contribute toward shaping healthier and more productive online cultures.
Natalie Le Clue is a fan studies scholar whose research explores how digital communities and fan cultures shape media narratives, identity, and political engagement. Her work offers insights to how engagement in fan and online communities becomes a force for redefining norms, identities, and the stories that shape society.
