Kam Pui Man, SID: 10550242, Blog Post 1.

Andrejevic, M. (2008). Watching Television Without Pity: The Productivity of Online Fans. Television & New Media, 9(1), 24-46.

Words Count : 400

Mark Andrejevic argues that watching television nowadays is no longer a one-way communication which information is transferred in one direction only, from the sender to the receiver. Instead, it becomes an interactive activity between the audiences and TV production crew. Thanks to high frequency of the internet, it allows most of the TV audience available to access with online platform to provide instant feedback to television writers and scriptwriters. Not only some bulletin fan board was built by the fan communities but they also paying effort on monitoring the quality, discussing the plot twists, suggesting the character and creating some fan art etc; therefore, the online viewer activity enhances their participation on the TV show production. On the other hand, the TV producer can take advantage of the fans labour and feedback in order to improve the quality of the production. 

A fan site Television Without Pity, which is a popular platform among the western television consumer since 2000s, was taken as an example to explain the mediated interactivity. TWoP is notable on its detailed sarcastic review that actually cause impact and integrate into the production process while producers analyse the feedbacks as marketing research to increase customer satisfaction. As the growth of social media presence, it enrich the dimension on participatory culture as the interactive activity shift to different platform. Take Stranger Things as an example, an official Facebook and Twitter fan pages was made to interact with the online viewer. The audience can immediately publish their commentary attached with capture or video with an hashtag #StrangerThings, at the same time, the official can collect their reviews and criticism as content analysis. Besides, the official also conduct polls on viewers’ favourite character ,scene and episodes to modify the development of the story by the preferences of the audience. 

The recent phenomenon of the online viewers in the social media proves that Andrejevic’s argument is vitally important to the TV industry in this digital era as the bonding between media audiences and TV producers are intensely close. The fan activities illustrate a new form of free labor to add value on the TV product itself and thus correspond to part of the neoliberal culture. Under the circumstances, I am questioning on “How the online creators protect their ideas to prevent the dominated media over consume the online content?” and “ Would media company invest more on the social media platform?”. 

I would appreciate hearing your opinion on my question. Welcome to comment below.Thank you.😀