Retroactive Nostalgia in the Nintendo Fandom: A qualitative interview study on the three motivations to develop nostalgia

The age of digital media has brought new possibilities for fandoms and online communities to flourish in unprecedented ways. While fandoms have become more accessible for newcomers, they also present ever-expanding learning environments based on the history of the communities, which in turn allow for new ways for fans to practice and develop their social identities within fandoms. This notion allows one to question the state of nostalgia within fandoms, and to debate whether nostalgia is a static notion or it is something that develops throughout a fan’s journey within a fandom. To explore potential explanations to this notion, this thesis takes the example of Nintendo and sets out the main research question: How does nostalgia manifest in the social identity of the members of the Nintendo fandom? Being an exploratory study, this research used qualitative interviews in order to gather the sufficient data for analysis. This research has welcomed a total of eleven participants, who were recruited from social mediums or from referrals by the participants themselves. Through analysing participants’ stories via narrative analysis, three motivations to develop nostalgia have been observed: nostalgic, historical, and personal. Each of these dimensions were also related to the individual fan’s journey. Furthermore, a seemingly directional relationship and hierarchy has also been established based on participants’ past experiences and reflections on the three motivations. Besides the presence of the three motivations to develop nostalgia, this study revealed the importance of childhood experiences to develop certain motivations later on, and the key differences between in-group and out-group members of the Nintendo fandom in terms of practicing their fan identities. This research offers a new look at nostalgia’s development through taking the perspective of the individual fan, and presents recommendations for future research that aim to contribute to the current state of academic understanding behind nostalgia, fandoms, and social identity.