Intersubjectivity in media consumption as a result of the relation between text and context: the case of Game of Thrones (original) (raw)
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PARTICIPATIONS: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 2016
In the current multi-modal environment rich in on-demand content, audiences operate as active users of media content by exercising control over their viewing schedules, and by integrating media texts into their lives according to new patterns of consumption. My analysis focuses on the relationship between Italian fans and the transmedia structure of the popular television series Game of Thrones. The show's imaginary universe has been conceived in a way that allows complex and diverse forms of audience engagement. Indeed, Game of Thrones' transmedia narratives constitute a 'world-building experience, unfolding content and generating the possibilities for the story to evolve with new and pertinent content' (Gambarato 2012, p.4). The complexity of the experience(s) is determined by the existence of sub-worlds within the Game of Thrones' universe: the literary one, the one recreated on screen and one that is built on the media extensions that enrich and deepen the storylines and the characters' profiles. This multi-level architecture offers audience members different venues of consumption as well as the possibility to appropriate original media content in order to produce and distribute new content as a result of individuals' free labor; this means that convergence (Jenkins, 2006) can become a 'field of struggle' between media conglomerates and empowered consumers. The investigation of Italian fans' immersion into Game of Thrones' transmedia framework, therefore, aims at identifying the concrete practices that fans engage in as determined by their exploitation of the universe of the text and their ability to re-work/re-use original material from that universe in alternative ways, outside of the established paths provided by traditional media producers in the first place.
Media Text and Audiences: Discursive Constructions of Fandom
This paper presents the research findings obtained from a research project investigating media audiences and their reception of a cult-television (Cult TV) text, namely Da Ali G Show. The audience research comprises 18 semi-structured interviews conducted in London (the United Kingdom) and in Zagreb (Croatia) aimed at establishing how fandom is discursively constructed. The analysis of the interpretive community in two distinct socio-cultural contexts showed that there were more similarities than differences overall. The practices engaged in by the interviewees mostly involved making a conscious effort to regularly watch the primary text as well as to show an interest in the future work of the author.
International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 2021
Parting from the awareness that not all consumers of US media are located within the geographical and linguistic context of the United States, this article contributes to media sociology with an approximation to the fandom of transnationally popular texts. Empirical findings presented here draw from a broader qualitative study on the reception of the series Game of Thrones (GoT) by 21 viewers from Argentina, Spain and Germany. Here I build on participants' responses to both the original novels by George R.R. Martin and the series adaptation by HBO as distinctive media texts to explore notions of authorship, adaptation and cultural legitimacy. Given the polysemic, intertextual quality of contemporary's memetic culture, I also discuss a case of digital re-appropriation of GoT's characters within sociopolitical discourses in Argentina.
Fan fiction has received minimal attention from psychological researchers. In order to begin to fill that gap, this study analyzed fan fiction about the television show Mad Men to investigate how fans use fan fiction to make meaning from the source text. A sample of fan fiction stories was coded for the presence of eudaimonic and hedonic story components, the emotions expressed in the stories, the perspectives adopted by the fan writers, and plots that function as wish fulfillment. Findings indicated that fan fiction writers’ motivations were more eudaimonic than hedonic, that the stories often contained mixed or negative emotional content, that the writers frequently took the perspective of a female character in their stories, and that in some cases the stories enabled characters to achieve positive resolutions denied them by the source text. Taken together, the results point to the many ways in which fans engage with and make sense of a popular television show. Future psychological research on fan fiction of additional popular culture texts would be valuable for understanding the ways fans grapple with various elements of those texts.
Comunicación y Sociedad, 2019
La competencia mediática involucra el dominio de conocimientos, habilidades y actitudes de los individuos en relación a los contenidos. Ferrés y Piscitelli (2015) proponen una metodología para evaluar el desarrollo del fenómeno en la cultura participativa. Este artículo tiene el objetivo de analizar las dimensiones de la competencia mediática que están en operación en los perfiles ficticios de personajes creados por los fans de Liberdade, Liberdade en la red social Twitter. / Media competence involves the mastery of knowledge, abilities and individual attitudes regarding content. Ferrés and Piscitelli (2015) propose a methodology for evaluating the development of this phenomenon in participatory culture. Using this theoretical framework, this paper attempts to reflect upon the dimensions of media competence operating in Twitter profiles of Lady Revolution (Liberdade, Liberdade) fans.
Postdigital Cultures of Downloading and Streaming in Australia: Fandom and a Game of Thrones
'Postdigital Cultures of Downloading and Streaming in Australia: Fandom and a Game of Thrones' in Celia Lam and Jacqui Raphael (eds) Aussie Fans: Uniquely Placed in Global Popular Culture, Iowa, Iowa University Press, pp 151-166., 2019
Across contemporary entertainment, fan ‘gossip’ is a constant feature and flows across a range of interfaces. Affording networked options is the use of high-speed broadband and internet-enabled screens for movies, news, documentaries, and television programs, amongst other services—for the convenience of the listener/viewer at a time chosen by them (on-demand). Live television events now see social media being reinvigorating, especially from audiences’ perspectives. In this chapter then, I will explore today’s mediascape with particular reference to the HBO series Game of Thrones. I will present data analysis via visualisations that represent the key spaces for discussion and commentary about such ‘television’ programs in the context of the increased ubiquity of distribution platforms in which most of our daily activities and routines are carried out with the help of various forms of communications technologies via cloud computing and social networking.
2016
This article looks at how TV audiences articulate their identity as fans, paying special attention to authorship and advertising roles in the age of convergence culture. It is divided into three main sections. The first part of the article draws on a panorama on fan studies. Then the second part focuses on the methodology. We sent a questionnaire out on social networks in order to collect data on the role of fans, gift economy and the links between fandoms and official productions. Finally, the results and conclusions are analyzed and drawn.
A Good-Enough Fan Within an Online Fan Community of Game of Thrones: An An E-Ethnographic Enquiry
This paper focuses on the emergence of normativity for fan-being representation within an online fan community of Game of Thrones, a fantasy television series based on the A Song of Ice and Fire books from George R.R. Martin. The main goal of this paper is to show how enoughness (Blommaert & Varis, 2011, 2012 and spreadabilty (Jenkins, Ford & Green, 2013) work together when dealing with fan activities and with how do fans perceive themselves and their fellows. Enoughness (Blommaert & Varis, 2011, 2012) is a notion that describes the features of a cultural object for it to be authentic, and the determination of the idea of good-enough collection of such features that are contained in that cultural object. Spreadability (Jenkins et al., 2013) describes the way (online) content circulates among websites, its users and fans. In so doing, this paper analyzes the normativity emerging from within the fan community of Game of Thrones on the social media platform Tumblr. The findings point toward how fans and their behavioral as well as semiotic experiences construct fan typologies that culminate in the super-fan.
Still 'Watching' TV? The Consumption of TV Fiction by Engaged Audiences
There is no denying that television, as a medium and an institution, has drastically changed in the age of digitization and convergence. For audiences, this has not only opened up multiple opportunities to watch television content at other times and on other devices, but also to interact with its cross-media extensions. However, while much has been written about the new opportunities for audience engagement, we do not know much about the actual adoption of new technologies nor the motivations underlying such uses. Therefore, this paper draws on empirical audience research to address the key question: how do viewers engage with contemporary TV fiction? Through empirical audience research, using various qualitative research methods, three different aspects of the reception of cross-media TV fiction will be discussed: (1) how do viewers watch the TV episodes of contemporary TV fiction?, (2) how do viewers engage with the cross-media extensions of TV fiction?, and (3) how do viewers experience the social dimensions of contemporary TV fic-tion? We focus on a particular group, that of 'engaged' viewers, who are actively involved by personalizing their viewing practices, by communicating about it, by consuming cross-media elements of TV fiction, or producing TV fiction-related content. Our findings suggest that even this group does not make full use of all the available technological opportunities to personalize TV viewing, and that the classical TV text, linear viewing, and the social aspect of viewing remain of key importance.