The Perception of Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Female Characters Within its Fandom on Reddit : A Netnographic and Content Analysis Approach

Abstract: The aim of this thesis is to understand the way the fan community of Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) perceives Marvel’s female characters. This study was focused on Marvel’s fandom on Reddit, which is a social media platform hosting millions of users. The research was conducted by using two methods – netnography and content analysis. Netnography helped for tracing Marvel fans’ behavior and engagement with other fans in an online environment, which were caused by their shared interests on discussing Marvel movies and their characters. Their comments on two key movies – ‘Black Widow’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame’ were analyzed, because these productions host female characters with major roles. Fans’ discussions on six key female figures were considered and content analysis was used for analyzing the comments of the fans. In order to understand the results, two theories were applied – affective disposition theory and feminist media (film) theory. The first one explains the way fans can form affiliations towards the movie characters, therefore it was used to understand the way they perceive the characters. The second one explains the stereotyped image of the woman in media and the way the audience perceives it. The research paradigm of interpretivism was considered for the outcome of the research, which leads to generalizations of the results. The results of this study show that there is no universal perception of the female character in Marvel, but many controversies arise. In the end, this paper discusses the limitations of this research and describes the recommendations for further research.