Turning Café into K-afé – An Exploration on Fan Identity, Interactions and Placemaking in Thai K-Pop Fan Cafés
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Abstract
Recent sociolinguistic research increasingly engages with K-Pop’s semiotic complexity, yet the intersection of fan identity and public space remains underexplored. This study examines how fans, as active participants in the K-Pop “fanscape” (Kim, 2017), construct both personal and place identities through geosemiotic elements (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) in fan-organized cafés in Bangkok. Drawing on ethnographic data, the results show that fans use linguistic elements both to mediate identity and to organize interaction. The interactions work with spatial arrangements to construct a sense of collective identity. The interdiscursive blending of artistic and commercial signs which transforms the fanscape into a hybrid space of both consumption and production reinforces the identity construction. The study contributes to a broader understanding of how identity and place are co-constructed through semiotic practices in contemporary K-Pop fan culture.
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