1. Audience
Why do people watch Long
Form TV Dramas?
Decide which of the
statements could be said
about:
• Deutschland 83
• Stranger Things
• Both
2. Jenkins - Fandom
Fans act as ‘textual poachers’ – taking elements from
media texts to create their own culture.
The development of the ‘new’ media has accelerated
‘participatory culture’, in which audiences are active and
creative participants rather than passive consumers.
They create online communities, produce new creative
forms, collaborate to solve problems, and shape the flow
of media. This generates ‘collective intelligence’.
From this perspective, convergence is a cultural process
rather than a technological one. Jenkins prefers the term
‘spreadable media’ to terms such as ‘viral’, as the former
emphasises the active, participatory element of the
‘new’ media.
3. Shirky - ‘End of Audience’
In the ‘old’ media, centralised producers addressed atomised
consumers; in the ‘new’ media, every consumer is now a producer.
Traditional media producers would ‘filter then publish’; as many
‘new’ media producers are not employees, they ‘publish then filter’.
These amateur producers have different motivations to those of
professionals – they value autonomy, competence, membership
and generosity. User-generated content creates emotional
connection between people who care about something. This can
generate a cognitive surplus – for example, Wikipedia can aggregate
people’s free time and talent to produce value that no traditional
medium could match.
‘The Audience’ as a mass of people with predictable behaviour is
gone. Now, behaviour is variable across different sites, with some of
the audience creating content, some synthesising content and some
consuming content. The ‘old’ media created a mass audience. The
‘new’ media provide a platform for people to provide value for each
other.
4. Some examples of these theories
in practice
http://deutschland83.wikia.com/wiki/Deutschland_8
3_Wikia
https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Deutschland%208
3/works
5.
6.
7. Practice
Write a paragraph applying either Jenkins’ or Shirky’s
theory to Deutschland 83.
Remember to:
• Briefly explain the theory
• Give a clear example of how it can be applied
• Explain how this theory isn’t perfect for LFTVD (or
is limited )
