Do afeto ao currículo: o fan labor, a profissionalização amadora e a busca por legitimidade na comunicação digital dos fãs do grupo sul-coreano Blackpink no Brasil

Abstract

Recognized as a vector of soft power, K-pop repositions South Korea as a strategic hub of global cultural production. This qualitative and interpretative study employed netnography to examine interactions and content published on the X and Instagram platforms, in addition to conducting one interview with the administrator of Portal Blackpink, the largest fanpage dedicated to the group in Latin America. The results indicate that fan engagement is configured as fan labor, a form of voluntary work that mobilizes communicational, translational, and organizational skills. It was observed that Portal Blackpink operates with routines comparable to those of professional communication teams - including editorial planning, source verification, and cultural mediation - thus becoming a fundamental link between Korean content and the Brazilian audience.However, the absence of stable financial return, despite the high productive value of fan labor, revealed a mismatch between competence and monetization, encouraging the pursuit of academic education as a pathway to the legitimation and professionalization of these skills. It was concluded that the K-pop fandom in Brazil constitutes a transcultural fandom and a space of participatory culture, in which consumption is articulated as a practice of belonging, identity construction, and youth agency. The study is organized into an Introduction, which presents the research problem; a Methodology; a comprehensive theoretical framework on Hallyu and fan labor; the Analysis of Portal Blackpink; and the Final Considerations. [resumo fornecido pelo autor]