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The hard and frustrating thing abt “FICTION AFFECTS REALITY” is that it’s easy to yell that as a catchphrase and way, way harder to communicate the nuance of media influence theories in a tweet. Of which there is a ton.
The truth is that we are JUST starting to understand the scope of ways that media does & doesn’t affect people! And the most consistent finding is that there’s HUGE variations within the population. You need massive sample sizes to get any statistical significance.
Generally speaking a lot of those who oppose “bad” fiction seem to subscribe to the Direct Effects Theory, where people passively accept messages, which.... is about 100 years out of date? The overwhelming majority of people don’t passively accept what they see in media.
Instead, HUGE numbers of variables seem to affect how media influences people. The biggest, most easily measured one is fiction vs non-fiction: for (hopefully) obvious reasons, people are more likely to be persuaded if they perceive something as nonfiction.
The most consistently observed effect of fiction is increasing empathy, and that’s still a weak correlation. It also doesn’t necessarily change political positions, at least not right away.
(See: representation can cause people to reconsider negative opinions they had of minorities, buuut effects on behavior are much slower coming, and long-term benefits are hard to observe. It’s more of a foot in the door than a game changer.)
There is MILD evidence for fiction as a source of misinformation, if people have no other credible sources. If people receive credible info, they’ll happily accept it over fiction. (See: the popularity of the show “mythbusters”)
The other fairly consistent effect of fiction is that it can connect with existing social narratives: basically, if your friends like or dislike something, you’ll tend to agree, and if your friends agree or disagree with something in the media you’ll follow that too.
There is almost no evidence for fiction as a cause of anti-social behavior. (Anti-social behavior being, basically, anything that the majority of your friends would get mad at you for. Violence - sexual or nonsexual - is a big one here).
This leads to the big weakness of media research: generally, people self-select the media they consume. So it’s easy to show correlation (violent people gravitate towards violent media) but hard to show causation (if you show someone violent media, they don’t become violent.)
And what does all of this mean for shipping and fandom?
I mean. I can’t really think of a broad, sweeping statement here. There are parts of fandom that have bad attitudes, and fiction can reinforce them, perpetuate myths, avoid challenging its audience.
I mean. I can’t really think of a broad, sweeping statement here. There are parts of fandom that have bad attitudes, and fiction can reinforce them, perpetuate myths, avoid challenging its audience.
But those are as much about the social group as the fiction. You can easily have 2 groups enjoying the same fiction but end up with very different outcomes depending on the social attitudes around.
(See - cough - the frequent stories I hear of anti discord servers passing around problematic fiction to all wank about how terrible it is, or how many kink authors get people “hate-reading” their whole archive.)
You can also see significant differences just by adding some paratext (tags) or generally myth busting + putting credible info out there.
I think one of the most interesting studies I saw is one where they measured how sexually violent media affected sexist attitudes in college-age men. It increased them - unless the researchers spent 5 minutes mythbusting after the porn. That reversed the effect completely.
Relatively few studies have this structure, but those that do show the same thing: credible education overrules attitudes picked up from fiction, and the effect is consistent across populations and endures for a long time. Again: people believe nonfiction over fiction.
My media studies degree is why I’m hesitant to say “all fiction is good all the time”, because fiction can be used to reinforce bad ideas in groups that already have bad ideas.
But it’s also why I advocate education over censorship, because it’s effective and ethical and overall leaves people better able to make decisions and think critically.
So I guess my snappy conclusion is “of course fiction affects reality, but education affects reality more.”
Sources/further reading: meta analysis of the mitigating effects of education/intervention (as of 1992): https://dacemirror.sci-hub.tw/journal-article/9939e883f43fc1bce228ef221423bab7/linz1992.pdf
More in the same vein, 10 studies which all show education/debriefing mitigating the effects of exposure to violent porn, with some even showing improvement as compared to controls: https://dacemirror.sci-hub.tw/journal-article/345da4e166c13a9e757fd29a9b5c8ce5/allen1996.pdf
Paratext and perception of fiction vs nonfiction (vs lies) effects how people absorb information: https://zero.sci-hub.tw/1825/355cb45dcc4f411c961a0ffc25ea8df0/appel2012.pdf
Further info re fiction reading and empathy https://twin.sci-hub.tw/6932/984ffa3f7d7aaf60faebee0abd978dee/bal2013.pdf
