Lisa Glebatis Perks

Three Satiric Television Decoding Positions

This essay explores viewer meaning-making with an ironic and satiric television text, analyzing focus group discourse from Chappelles Show viewers. Participants’ interpretations of Chappelles Shows representation repeated historical mediated stereotypes of a “Black and White” world that includes violent Black characters and “dorky” White characters. Despite nearly uniform identification of the shows stereotypes, focus group participants made varying meanings from the show using three primary decoding positions: refusing to acknowledge the shows ideological implications, attending to the texts “realistic” stated meanings, or actively deriving higher meanings from the humorous exaggerations. Explicating these decoding positions encourages viewers to be more conscious of their own interpretive practices and illuminates how critical television scholars can more thoroughly explore the interactions between viewers and satiric texts.

Spoiler definitions and behaviors in the post-network era:

Analysis of survey responses gathered from 92 television time shifters reveals varying attitudes and behaviors toward spoilers. Throughout this essay, we argue that spoiler avoiders embrace post-network era reception practices but use network era norms to evaluate their own experience and regulate the television conversations around them. We see, however, an erosion of those network era norms in people who either use spoilers to enhance their narrative pleasure or who do not actively police television conversations around them. These findings suggest that television conversation norms and individual evaluations of narrative pleasures are slower to evolve than reception patterns. Our study brings convergence culture questions of narrative pleasure, discursive patterns, active audience behaviors, and contested grounds of power to the surface.

Podcasts and Productivity: A Qualitative Uses and Gratifications Study

Through analysis of five focus groups with people who “usually (more often than not) listened to at least one podcast episode a week” in the last two months, this uses and gratifications (U&G) study uncovers several prominent themes among podcast listener experiences. In an effort to integrate old and new media use typologies within U&G research, our results are presented in two parts: emerging typologies and expansions of existing typologies. The emerging section includes reasons for podcast displacement of other media, customizable experiences, and multitasking (which involves both temptation bundling and feeding the brain). The expansion builds on the existing typologies of companionship and interaction by analyzing avenues for parasocial relationship formation and identifying social opportunities as well as social frustrations surrounding podcasts. We ultimately conclude that podcasts offer an endless supply of engaging content that travels with listeners, allowing them to be “productive” in various physical and mind-expanding ways. The enjoyment is facilitated in part by forging connections with hosts and other listeners.

Media Marathoning and Health Coping

This study uses Grounded Theory to analyze interviews with a dozen individuals who media marathoned while going through a health struggle. The analysis addresses five major themes: engaging in escapism that enables emotional and avoidance coping, regulating cognitive expenditure by embracing challenging or comforting content, being still to heal the body, reducing emotional and cognitive strain by engaging a continuous narrative, and tapering from the marathon when feeling better. Findings suggest that media marathoning can offer beneficial cognitive, emotional, and physical regulatory opportunities for those dealing with health struggles. Furthermore, media marathoning when dealing with a health concern is a strategic and active coping strategy that has potential health benefits. Video abstract Read the transcript Watch the video on Vimeo

Television Spoilers Recast as Narrative Teasers

This article analyzes online qualitative survey responses from 43 television time shifters who knew narrative content (spoilers) about a particular show before they decided to watch. Twenty of the study participants cited narrative content and/or their spoiler sources as the reason they chose to watch. We ultimately argue that television spoilers can function as teasers, leading would-be viewers to enjoyable shows. In doing so, we expand the definition of spoiler, offering insight into how spoilers can create rather than ruin opportunities for narrative pleasure.