Resumen de Serialized Participatory Culture: The Digital Transformation of Youth Audiences
Carla Ganito, Catarina Duff Burnay, Cátia Ferreira
Digital technologies are transforming audiences and media practices and in a context of serialization this paper wants to make the case for television series as much of the attention from the industry and the academy is drawn by music and cinema neglecting the effects on television viewing. Lawrence Lessig has proposed "remix" as one of the main outcomes of social and cultural practices enabled by new technologies that allow for easy production and sharing. Henry Jenkins talks of a "convergence culture" and many other authors refer a participatory turn. But this surge of creativity and participation poses new challenges to the industry and to the study of audiences. With the surge of transmediality and new platforms such as mobile phones and tablets, as well as enabling tools for massified DYI, the experience of television series consumption has been completely changed. This is particularly notable in youth audiences where television is still pervasive but networked media practices are gaining ground, namely a serialized participation culture characterized by immediacy, anticipation, control, emotional affordance and freedom. Based in a mixed methodology, composed of a quantitative online survey and a qualitative focus group approach, this paper will offer a case study of Portuguese College students’ serialized participatory culture regarding television series.
