The term "fan" is used quite regularly in daily life, however, finding an absolute definition is difficult, as the term is widely debated.
Cornel Sandvoss says "I define fandom as the regular, emotionally involved consumption of a given popular narrative or text".
Matthew Hills elaborates and states emotional attachment is key where fandom is concerned; some have even compared it to a form of love.
Post-modernism talks of how the media is now being used as a means of creating an identity for yourself - people use music, film, books etc to define who they are. Jean Baudrillard observed that our society has become media saturated and audiences can no longer tell the difference between media representations and reality - people believe that how their artists are represented is how they really are. This is called "hyper-reality".
