Nancy Baym, who studies "Online Freedom" at the University of Kansas, recently finished a study on Swedish Independent Music Fandom.

It's a brilliant topic and, for scholarly writing, quite interesting. Since most of us can only experience SIMF from afar, I'm glad she's put together this paper to give us the full scoop… and asking of the question “isn’t this just the MySpacification of Facebook?”

She's got all kinds of neat things to say in the paper (posted here) as well as on her blog.

Even her usage of the word "Abstract" gets my collegiate feathers all excited (I was a Fighting Blue Hen after all).

ABSTRACT:
Online groups are taking new forms as participants spread themselves amongst multiple Internet and offline platforms. The multinational online community of Swedish independent music fans exemplifies this trend. This participant–observation analysis of this fandom shows how sites are interlinked at multiple levels, and identifies several implications for theorists, researchers, developers, industry and independent professionals, and participants.

(Hat tip to smartie-pants Courtney Bfor finding this gem!)