Linked-Potter: an example of ontology for the study of the evolution of literature and reading communities

The primary use of metadata is the retrieval of the correct kind of information searched by a user. In the case of self-archived fandom the burden of metadata generation is distributed among authors, who upload, label, and publish their work in archives such as the Archive of Our Own (AO3). AO3 implemented an excellent system of tags management with which authors can specify tags for characters, relationships, and additional freeform tags for any use they may think of. Moreover, specialized volunteers, called “wranglers,” aggregate synonym tags: e.g. “harrypotter” and “Harry Potter”. In order to benefit from AO3 tags aggregation, but also to improve it for research purposes, I used the software Protégé (Musen, 2015) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) to replicate AO3-generated ontology for the Harry Potter fandom, adding further subclasses and properties. In particular, freeform tags offer authors the possibility to make explicit in the metadata any relevant aspect of the story, like a psychological trait of a character (e.g. “Morally grey Harry Potter”), a narrative strategy (e.g. “point of view of Draco”), a setting (e.g. “Diagon Alley”), a timeframe (e.g. “post first war with Voldemort”), etc. A distant reading of fanfiction through the lens of tags has benefits that go beyond the understanding of a widespread – and growing – cultural phenomenon. Data driven insights from research on AO3 can be used to formulate better hypotheses regarding the evolution of other cultural systems – like literary classics or genre fiction – and to more strategically plan labour-intensive and time-consuming tasks like manual annotation of textual corpora.