Work Text:
TOASTYSTATS: Sherlock fanworks on AO3, S1-S4
Date of post: February 18. 2017
Prompted in part by @recentlyfolded‘s excellent questions, I took a look at the number of AO3 fanworks produced in the Sherlock fandom over time. Edit: let me say up front, to hopefully prevent concerned fans, that the Sherlock fandom remains one of the most productive fandoms on AO3.
From the first graph, we can see that the Sherlock fandom has produced a heck of a lot of fanworks on AO3 since the show started -- an average of 288 fanworks per week (median: 297 per week). The largest week ever was 832 new fanworks -- the week following The Empty Hearse. (It doesn’t look quite that high on the graph because I smoothed these graphs.)
Each season led to a very big absolute increase in fanwork production. After S2, the rate of new fanworks just kept growing (unusual!). After S3′s spike, the rate of production rather quickly dropped back down to near post-S2 levels. TAB didn’t have that big an impact. Since S4, we’ve seen the largest absolute increase in number of fanworks per week yet, and don’t have much data beyond that.
However, these absolute numbers only tell part of the story. Another way of looking at the data (one of many) is to look at the amount of fandom mindshare that the Sherlock fandom is taking up (at least on AO3). In other words, we can look at what percent of new AO3 fanworks are in the Sherlock fandom. Viewed this way, the Sherlock fandom has taken up an average of 5% of AO3 over time. That’s pretty enormous -- out of the thousands millions of fanworks on AO3, 1 in 20 has been posted to the Sherlock fandom. The max was 13% -- right after S2 finished airing. (It again doesn’t look quite that high on the graph due to smoothing.) Viewed this way, we can see that post-S3, much of the overall fannish attention on AO3 has moved away from Sherlock and to other fandoms. So far, S4 doesn’t look like it will change this trend.
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Of course, this still doesn’t tell all the story. There are reasons (diagetic and otherwise) that the Sherlock fandom may have decreased in popularity whole other fandoms did not. But OTOH, maybe this is more common than we know. There have been so many new fandoms that have emerged -- maybe this is a relatively common trajectory, even among the other biggest fandoms of Tumblr. Further research is needed. :)
In graphs 3 and 4, I took the same data and averaged it for each season. (We’re still in the immediate excited aftermath of S4, so don’t take those numbers at all seriously.) From this, we can see more clearly that S3 had the highest average fic production in absolute numbers, but S2 had the highest mindshare.
METHODS AND DATA
To create the above graphs, I gathered the number of new fanworks posted to AO3 each week since Sherlock first aired -- both in the Sherlock fandom, and on AO3 overall. I then averaged these numbers across a 3 week window, to create a smoother graph and make it easier to see the bigger patterns.
Raw data is here.
EDITS AND CLARIFICATIONS
I’d stated there were thousands of works on AO3 -- true, but seriously underplaying the actual 2.8 million works! :D (I think I meant hundreds of thousands...?)