Discrimination and Group Formation by Papon Fans on Social Media: Do Fans Make Celebrities? JAYANTA VISHNU DAS F andom in Northeast India is an emerging area of study with the emergence of social media as a site for expressing fan behavior. Local rock bands, footballing stars, and individual sportspersons can claim to have a fan following in the true sense today. With media percolating to the inner most parts of the region most of these regional stars are widely recognized. One of the crucial sites of study of fan behavior is social media today. In this paper, I analyze fandom as a social media phenomenon, how fans turn into closed groups and form boundaries that separate them from ordinary followers. The pioneering works on fandom by John Fiske (1992), who argued that fandom, is a heightened form of popular culture in industrial societies and the fan is an excessive reader who differs from the ordinary one degree rather than kind. Although online relationships and conversations between celebrities and fans remain mediated, fans increasingly experience them as real and authentic, reinforcing their feelings of truly “knowing” celebrities. Celebrities’ reciprocity gives the illusion of two-way communication. (Melissa, Hyunji et al. 2013) Singer, composer and song writer Papon, popularly known as Papon is one of the few singers to have earned mass acceptance in Northeast as well as pan India. Emerging from the shadow of his parents, Khagen Mahanta and Archana Mahanta, Papon took the Northeast by storm with his Assamese dream debut album Jonaki Rati in 2006. Known for his fusion music, mixing folk sounds with contemporary rock genre he has been able to earn a huge fan following. The objective of the paper is: To analyze how a celebrity is created in the virtual space To study how fan culture is disseminated and portrayed in social networking sites. FAN DISCRIMINATION Fiske (1992) basically discusses three main characteristics of fandom. They are: Discrimination and Distinction, Productivity and Participation, and Capital Accumulation. On the basis of these three characteristics of fandom, the pages of Papon’s fan club have been analyzed. There are more than 30 fan communities and fan pages available on social networking site Facebook, but for analysis, only 2 communities and 2 pages have been purposively selected as they are more active than the others. Sometimes the fans create the hierarchy of the works of their star. As Fiske (1992) analyzes that the other mode of fan discrimination is the aesthetic Contemporary Discourse, 9, 1(2018): 1-5 I SSN 0976-3686