Media Marathoning Through Health Struggles: Filling a Social Reservoir

Abstract

This essay uses grounded theory to analyze interviews with a dozen people who media marathoned while going through a health struggle. Three prominent relationship-focused themes emerged from the analysis: (1) Interviewees experienced “parasocial encouragement,” drawing inspiration from characters’ perseverance; (2) interviewees often marathoned stories recommended by family or friends, which led to conversations about the stories; and (3) interviewees struggling with depression or anxiety were able to learn more about human relationships through media and to use media engagement experiences as springboards for communication. In sum, through the cultivation of social support and social capital, media marathoning experiences helped study participants buildup and draw from a meaningful social reservoir in their time of enhanced need for connection. The social reservoir metaphor captures media marathoning’s embeddedness in a rich social environment of real and fictive others, with relationships that can both precede and live on beyond the media engagement experience.

Keywords

audience research binge-watching media marathoning media-related coping social support

Doctors are not yet writing binge-watching or media marathoning prescriptions, but people struggling with health problems are certainly self-medicating that way. Reddit contains several posts requesting recommendations for shows to binge-watch while “sick” or “on bed rest,” with one situated in the Crohn’s disease subreddit (“Blahcentral, 2015”). The New Yorker’s Hannah Goldfield (2013) recounted binge-watching the first season of Gossip Girl in 1 day while “holed up with the flu” (para. 4). The “get well faster” blog for zinc lozenge “Cold-Eeze” offers a list of six binge-worthy shows for people who are under the weather (“Top TV Series,” 2015). In interviews with media marathoners, Perks (2015) found that several were using the “immersive media experience” to “carve out a healing space” while recovering from surgeries and illnesses (p. 30).

This study presents a deeper look at the experiences of people who media marathoned through a health struggle that took them out of their usual routine. A dozen people were interviewed, and the transcripts were analyzed using grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2015). Participants met the study criteria if, according to their personal judgment, in the 24 months prior to the interview, they had media marathoned while “a health-related concern kept them out of work, or school, or rendered them unable to conduct their normal daily activities for at least one day.” Because this is an exploratory study on a research subject with a paucity of literature, the criteria were intentionally inclusive.¹ Participants were not specifically asked about their health struggle, but some volunteered that information. The health challenges included pregnancy bed rest, mental illness, surgical recovery, injury, recovery from cancer treatments, and the flu.² The inclusivity of the recruitment process, combined with in-depth interviews, allowed for more flexibility to probe into disparate experiences and also to distill commonalities among them. Participants in this research were asked about their marathoning motivations, their emotional and physical experiences while marathoning, and interactions with fellow viewers, among other topics.

The phrase “media marathon” and its operationalization were used when designing the study to both avoid stigmatized language (e.g., “binge”) and include multiple media. Drawing from Perks, media marathoning was operationalized as watching at least one season of a TV show in a week or less, watching three or more films from the same series in a week or less, or reading three or more books from the same series in a month or less. Although binge-watching is certainly “defined through highly individualized terms and practices” (Jenner, 2016, p. 265), other studies have operationalized it as watching two or more episodes of a show in one sitting (see, e.g., Exelmans & Van den Buick, 2017; Pittman & Sheehan, 2015). The definition of media marathoning used here focuses on holistic engagement with a narrative. Indeed, Netflix is also moving in that direction, using the definition of binge-watching as “completing at least one season of a show within 7 days of starting” in a recent study (Netflix, Inc., 2018).

Scholars researching media and coping have posited that negative perceptions of media engagement—such as thinking of media as a “guilty pleasure” or television viewers as “couch potatoes”—are a barrier to the potential stress relief afforded by such practices (e.g., Nabi, Torres, & Prestin, 2017; Reinecke, Hartmann, & Eden, 2014). Study participant Isabel³ (Latina woman, 32) noted that her doctor putting her on pregnancy bed rest was the only reason “no one will be like, ‘You’re gross. Get off the couch,’” while she was media marathoning. Helen (Caucasian woman, 45), who dealt with chronic health conditions, faced more regular scrutiny: “My husband thinks [media marathoning] is harmful. He’s like, you know ‘shut that off and do other things,’ but I disagree because it’s comforting to me.”

In contrast to the isolated couch potato stereotype, interviewees revealed that social connections facilitated by media marathoning (see also Pittman & Sheehan, 2015) were a notable part of their coping processes. Three prominent themes emerged from the analysis of transcripts: (1) Interviewees experienced “parasocial encouragement,” meaning that characters’ positive attitudes and perseverance often inspired interviewees to feel more optimistic and agentic in their own health struggles; (2) interviewees sometimes media marathoned with family members, spending quality time together while laid up. Those who watched alone frequently reported using shared, asynchronous media experiences as a communication topic with friends, family, or coworkers; (3) interviewees struggling with depression or anxiety were able to learn more about human relationships through media and to use media engagement experiences as springboards for communication with others.

These themes can be divided into two essential findings: Participants used media marathoning to (1) cultivate social support from real or fictive others or to (2) create openings for the human coordination and cooperation that constitute social capital. Although media engagement may be thought to restrict social opportunities, being ill and experiencing restricted mobility, pain, and isolation changes the calculation of opportunity costs. Media marathoning experiences functioned as a hub for meaningful social engagement for a population that often had few alternative avenues for social activity. In sum, media marathoning enabled viewers and readers to buildup and draw from a unique social reservoir in a time of enhanced need for connection.

The social reservoir metaphor emerging from this grounded theory analysis captures media marathoning’s embeddedness in a rich social environment of real and fictive others, with relationships that can both precede and live on beyond the combined media engagement experience and health event.⁴ The word reservoir connotes a vessel to be filled. Health struggles can often lead to isolation and a change in social routines. While not all changes can be negative, some marathoners connected their health struggles with loneliness and boredom. Media marathoners filled these social reservoirs from combinations of media recommendations, coviewing experiences, asynchronous media engagement, character inspiration, media knowledge, and deeper understanding of the human condition. Many participants continued filling their social reservoirs beyond the initial marathons by convincing others to view with them (perhaps at a slower pace), communicating with other viewers/readers about the stories, socializing with others after media engagement helped improve their self-concept or anxiety, and integrating certain characters into their self-concept or identity.

Mediated and Nonmediated Social Support

Social support, which refers to functional, informational, or emotional assistance provided by friends, family members, coworkers, and other significant people in one’s life, can be considered “a coping resource—in this case a social ‘fund’ from which people may draw when handling stressors” (Thoits, 1995, p. 64). Lazarus (1999) offered a simple definition of coping as “the effort to manage psychological stress” (p. 111).⁵ Social support through various dimensions is crucial to the coping process because social support can function as a buffer that mitigates the deleterious effects of stress (Thoits, 1995; Uchino, Cacioppo, & Kiecolt-Glaser, 1996). In their meta-analysis of studies analyzing social support and physiological factors, Uchino et al. (1996) found “strong evidence” connecting social support to beneficial effects on the “cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune systems” (p. 521). Buffering stress can have many notable physiological, mental, and physical health benefits that span prevention, to coping, to recovery.

Media engagement promotes social support in part because it grows social capital. Social capital, a phrase popularized by Putnam (1995), “refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (para. 7). Relevant to understanding social capital, Matrix (2014) wrote that binge-watching is “not about social exile but about enabling and enhancing participation in social conversations” (p. 127). Russell, Norman, and Heckler (2004) went so far as to describe television viewing as a “catalyst for community building” (p. 286). A shared experience of media engagement, even if asynchronous or spatially distant, can help form or strengthen a network and cultivate trust. The relationships emerging from media-related points of contact and cooperation may thus ultimately be converted into a social reservoir.

This contact need not be in person to yield benefits. Studies have revealed that computer-mediated social support helps cultivate social capital and initiate offline support. Leung (2007), for example, found that adolescents with entertainment and relationship-related Internet use motives found Internet use to be a “positive coping strategy to temporarily reduce stress and anxiety” (p. 211). Clarifying mechanisms of social media-based social support, Vitak and Ellison (2013) found that social media platform Facebook facilitated emotional and informational social support in part because it reduced barriers to communication and made it easier for users to widely broadcast messages that implicitly or explicitly requested support. Interviewees in their study were able to gain support from weak social ties but also attract support from strong ties through other channels such as phone and e-mail (Vitak & Ellison, 2013).

Comparing social support in online and offline contexts longitudinally, Trepte, Dienlin, and Reinecke (2015) found that online informational support exceeded that which was provided offline, whereas offline emotional and instrumental support exceeded online support in those areas. Also observing a flow from online to offline social support in their study of online gaming involving clans or guilds, Trepte, Reinecke, and Juechems (2012) found a positive relationship between both bridging social capital (heterogeneous, looser ties) and bonding social capital (homogeneous, stronger ties) and offline support. The authors surmised that this support mechanism would be particularly beneficial to those who are socially isolated because of health or mobility struggles (Trepte et al., 2012).

Substantial evidence cited above indicates that face-to-face and computer-mediated communication effectively channels social support. A smaller but growing body of research has emerged, which demonstrates that one-way exposure to fictive characters may also be a valuable resource for emotional social support. Horton and Wohl’s (1979) concept of parasocial relationships serves as the backdrop for understanding this mechanism of support. The phrase parasocial relationship describes the “seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer” (Horton & Wohl, 1979, p. 32). Studies have uncovered notable similarities between interpersonal and parasocial relationships: These relationships develop according to similar standards of social- and task-related attraction (Rubin & McHugh, 1987), repeat exposure helps these relationships form (Rubin & McHugh, 1987), spectators feel like they understand character personalities and habits (Hoffner & Cantor, 1991), and the intensity of a parasocial relationship is a predictor of distress following a “parasocial breakup” (Eyal & Cohen, 2006). Relevant to the current study in which participants rapidly engaged their media content (through a media marathon), duration of media exposure have not been shown to correlate with strength of parasocial relationships (Rubin & McHugh, 1987) or feelings of loss when a show ends (Eyal & Cohen, 2006).⁶

But how do parasocial relationships interact with human relationships? Although studies have hypothesized about correlations between loneliness and parasocial interaction, significant correlations have not emerged (e.g., Eyal & Cohen, 2006; Rubin, Perse, & Powell, 1985). Rubin et al. (1985) did find, however, that parasocial relationships and loneliness were both linked to greater television reliance. Thinking on the subject has evolved to see parasocial relationships as meeting various affiliative needs. Finn and Gorr (1988), for example, described a set of “social compensation” television viewing motives that met companionship and escapism needs. Greenwood (2008) discovered that people having “difficulty with emotion and arousal regulation” were more likely to experience both parasocial interaction with a favorite character and media transportation (p. 421). Offering more comprehensive findings from four related studies, Derrick, Gabriel, and Hugenberg (2009) put forth the social surrogacy theory, which argues that well-established parasocial relationships provide the experience of belongingness. These findings highlight the importance of accounting for viewers’ affective states and relationships with characters when assessing or predicting viewing experiences and outcomes.

Using television for social compensation purposes or engaging in parasocial interaction may pave the way for drawing inspiration from perseverant or optimistic media characters. Johnson, Slater, Silver, and Ewoldsen (2016) offered a narrative-based explanation for the inspirational effects of media engagement, writing that “[n]arrative worlds permit temporary expansion of the boundaries of the subjective experience of self because they allow people to experience capabilities (or the lack thereof) beyond their own [and] other relationships (wonderful or awful)” (p. 387). When adding an actively reflective component to the narrative experience—such as journaling about the content—viewers of dramatic films in Khoo and Oliver’s (2013) study exhibited “character identification and improved self-efficacy in handling sadness, [which] indirectly gave rise to greater general health, lower depression, and a tendency for lesser anxiety” (Khoo & Oliver, 2013, p. 286). Although participants in this study were not asked to journal, many seemed to be actively processing character or personae struggles and successes.

Methodology

This study was initiated after recognizing a gap in the literature regarding health coping and newer patterns of immersive and holistic media engagement. Interview questions were created to focus on behavioral, social, and affective dimensions of marathon experiences, thus presenting full-bodied answers to the study’s two research questions: What patterns emerge from experiences media marathoning while dealing with a health concern? What are peoples’ perceptions of the role, if any, media marathoning played in their coping processes? After receiving institutional review board approval in spring of 2016, participants were recruited in the United States through several means: flyers posted in a condominium complex, flyers posted around a college campus, social media posts about the study made to personal connections and community groups, and a post in a community newsletter. Interviews were conducted from June to December of 2016. All interviewees were offered $10 Amazon gift cards.

The study closed after data saturation had been achieved with a dozen participants. The average age of participants was 39, with a range of 24 to 65. The study included eight women and four men. Participants’ self-identified races and ethnicities were African American (N = 1), Asian (N = 1), Caucasian (N = 8), Caucasian/Jewish (N = 1), and Latina (N = 1). Because social support or isolation could play a role in health coping, participants were asked about their living situation. The majority (N = 6) lived with a spouse or partner and children, four lived with a spouse or partner, and two lived with roommates.⁷

The semistructured interviews were conducted by phone (N = 8) or in person (N = 4). The recruitment language specified that the media marathons during health struggles had to have taken place in the 24 months prior to the interview. This temporal boundary was designed to promote detailed recall of these significant events. The time span between interview and media marathon ranged from 0 to 13 months, with an average of 4.3 months. This relatively short time gap suggests that the experiences were likely fresh in interviewees’ minds.

Interviews were based on a list of 12 core questions about topics such as participants’ motives to media marathon, their selection of particular content to marathon, their emotional and physical reactions to the marathon, any connections to fan communities, comparisons between marathoning and channel surfing or watching/reading one-off texts, and if they would recommend a media marathon to someone in a similar circumstance. The author transcribed the interviews, which yielded 42 single-spaced pages.

Transcripts were analyzed using grounded theory, which helps to “demonstrate how logic and emotion combine to influence how persons respond to events or handle problems through action and interaction” (Corbin & Strauss, 2015, p. 11). This method was selected over others because of its explanatory power and focus on theory building. The use of grounded theory yielded recommendations to other scholars studying media-related coping and to other individuals going through a health struggle. The social reservoir theory emerging from these interviews offers one reason why study participants found that media marathoning aided in recuperation.

Using grounded theory’s recommended procedures (Corbin & Strauss, 2015), the author first read through the transcripts without taking notes. During the second reading, notes were made in the margins about key ideas and repeated themes. The third reading involved “cross person analysis” (Chávez, 2014, p. 29). In this step, core concepts repeated among three or more interviewees were listed in a transcript memo, yielding 20 total themes. Even after collapsing redundant categories (Vitak & Ellison, 2013), there were too many categories for one standard-length scholarly essay, so the findings were broken into two essays.⁸ This article arose from the identification of three cohesive themes centered around relationships—with characters and fellow viewers.

Parasocial Encouragement

Inspiration and hope springing from mediated “friendships” emerged as parasocial benefits of media marathoning while coping with health struggles. Abby was emboldened by the persistence of contestants on America’s Got Talent when she marathoned the show while dealing with depression. Citing several “encouraging” stories about contestants who succeeded despite setbacks, Abby concluded:

I pick up a lot of things that really motivate me to think that life doesn’t really have to be stagnant […] You shouldn’t let circumstances stop you. All these things, I just put them together to […] build my confidence in whatever I’m doing.

Experiments have shown that underdog stories can inspire hopefulness and the pursuit of one’s goals (Prestin, 2013) and that media content evoking feelings of admiration for a character or persona’s excellence left viewers more committed to working hard to reach personal goals (Algoe & Haidt, 2009). Abby’s proclamations affirm these findings in a natural setting. America’s Got Talent is built on unlikely American dream stories, and Abby was able to take inspiration to pursue her own dreams and recover from her own setbacks, all because of stories from people whose journeys differed greatly from hers. The marathon pace of watching television shows and several movie series offered Abby company to visit with regularly once she got home from work: “I had less people around me so [media] was like more or less like a friend I have. ‘Oh, I have this movie I want to go back to.’”

Despite a surface disconnect between interviewee/character demographics and circumstances, two additional interviewees related to characters’ challenges. Although this pattern did not have support from the majority of thus suggesting that Glen (Caucasian man, 32), an injured runner, was inspired by Katniss Everdeen’s journey in The Hunger Games books while he rode a stationary bike in his recovery process. Glen was not fighting for his survival, but he related to Katniss’s physical struggles, explaining their connection this way:

[Katniss] does describe several ordeals that she had to go through and she would describe having to deal with physical fatigue and pain and basically gritting her teeth and enduring it. While I was injured and not happy and in pain, I did find myself identifying with that.

While Glen was riding a stationary bike in his basement, he was alone in terms of human company, but he forged a connection with Katniss Everdeen and their shared physical pain. Glen drew from the character’s more arduous and painful struggle while engaged in his own coping and recovery efforts. In contrast to reading more slowly or picking up one-off books, the marathon pace of reading a series helped Glen feel “immersed” in The Hunger Games trilogy. He explained, “having one story to follow throughout that time was kind of a good thing I think. It kept me focused.”

In Maria’s case, her physical pain was not mirrored in the character she connected with; rather, both women were united by adverse conditions that they could not change. Their primary site of agency was their reaction to the situations. Maria (Caucasian woman, 63) described the character’s struggle as such:

She was kind of in a situation that was beyond her control. And she was funny, and she handled it with grace [….] Maybe I identified with her a little bit because she was dealing with adversity and how she dealt with it.

Maria hedges, using tentative language here, perhaps because of the seeming divide between her and the character: Maria went through debilitating cancer treatments and surgeries, while the character she connected to, Piper Chapman, was serving a prison term for drug trafficking on Orange is the New Black. But their stories, or at least the conditions under which they struggled, had many similarities.

Maria compared herself to Piper just after describing prison-like hospital conditions: “[I]t’s horrible, especially because when you’re in [the Intensive Care Unit] and the lights are on all the time and all that stuff. So it’s weird not knowing day from night and where you are.” Maria felt stuck in the veritable prisons of the hospital environment and her health struggles. She was unable to move comfortably, socially isolated, out of touch with the temporal rhythms of her regular life, and unable to control the conditions that surrounded her. What she could decide was how she dealt with and reacted to those conditions.

The interviewee experiences that comprise this theme have notable commonalities. Characters or personae dealt with challenging circumstances that led to frustration, emotional pain, or physical pain. The characters’ journeys left marathoners feeling encouraged, motivated, or inspired. The divergence between character and interviewee experience suggests that we are seeing evidence of bridging social capital in which weak ties among diverse beings are a potential source of meaningful social support. Characters and media personae represent an always available, no obligation social reservoir awaiting activation from viewers or readers. The fictive component of the social reservoir can be drawn from in times of need (such as enjoying a character in the moment) or it can be used to shore up one’s reserves—if, for example, a character has a more enduring impact on one’s outlook, approach to the world, or self-concept. The temporally condensed, marathon-style reading or viewing pattern may help activate the reservoir by enabling viewers and readers to more strongly connect with the characters. The narrative arc can feel more personalized and relevant as people spend an intense, focused time period in that world forging various relationships. The characters’ wisdom, strength, hindsight, and optimism are readily available for readers’ and viewers’ inspiration.

Connect With “Real” Others

The process of finding a new text to media marathon often began with human contact, human recommendations. Wendy (Caucasian woman, 26) and her husband sought television show recommendations through social media:

We put this thing out on Facebook, which is what a lot of people are doing, looking for a good show to watch […] We had a lot of requests for [Friday Night Lights], so we were like “Oh, it must be good.”

Helen’s (Caucasian woman, 45) Facebook friends would take the unsolicited initiative to offer up their opinions: “if you like that [show] you’ll like this [show].” Anjali’s (Asian woman, 24) friend offered both recommendations and viewing companionship: “In the beginning I was not into movies. I used to lose interest, so [my friend] used to sit with me and make me watch movies. All the good movies.” The homophily of these personal connections, the bonding social capital, often led to study participants finding enjoyable texts. They were perhaps more encouraged to give the texts a chance because of trust in friends’ opinions and because of the opportunity to connect through a common experience. Perks also found benefits for the one who recommended the story, notably the “enjoyment of re-visiting beloved story worlds and comparing interpretations and perspectives” with friends and family who took the recommendation (p. xx).

Spousal persuasion helped Bruce (Caucasian/Jewish man, 65) discover a show that would get him through 6 weeks of recovery from neck surgery. Bruce was drawn to Call the Midwife after catching a newer episode with his wife. He went back to the first season following surgery, and Call the Midwife became a topic of conversation for the two. Bruce recalled that conversations commonly started with his wife asking, “So where are you now in the series?” When media marathoning, one can get quickly caught up on a story line and be ready to discuss with others who have already engaged with the narrative. Perks found this to be a common practice among marathoners, which offers benefits to both the new marathoner and the one who has already read/viewed: “It’s a shared, but temporally separate, experience that reactivates latent memories” for the one who recommended the text (Perks, 2015, p. 34).

Daniel (Caucasian man, 46) also chose a show that would be of interest to his family, but in his case, they watched in person, at the same time.⁹ This Old House gave Daniel the chance to spend time with his sons while he was laid up with a shoulder injury. Daniel recalled This Old House’s appeal to all: His youngest son “was excited because they used a crane and a bulldozer. Then my older son was like ‘look at all the tools they are using.’ That’s sort of the way that I chose [the show].” Daniel noted that marathoning was an important part of the family bonding experience: “It was the intent to watch an entire season in a relatively short period of time because my older son had not seen it before so he didn’t sort of understand the whole arc of the show.” The strategic selection of This Old House worked for different ages and generations, allowing Daniel to have a temporary, enjoyable ritual with his boys during a difficult health stretch. Both the one struggling with the health problem and the social support network may need a break from talking and thinking about health problems. The enjoyable entertainment in these examples was an innocuous, escapist opportunity that facilitated bonding.

Many study participants found parasocial relationships to be enjoyable commonalities—mutual friends, if you will—in human relationships. Isabel and Rebecca, in particular, described meaningful triangulations of self, character, and human connection. After noting that she would sometimes feel lonely staying home with her new baby all day, Isabel (Latina woman, 32)¹⁰ explained how marathoning stories helped her keep communication going with characters and friends:

[Y]ou know, ‘I’m going to watch my show and I’m going to catch up with all of these [fictive] people.’ And then when I go on Facebook, I can at least talk to other [real] people through it that way. For me, it gave me like a connection to the outside world.

Being able to share experiences with others (even though not in the same room) was a valuable form of social capital for Isabel, who noted, “it also gives you a way to talk to other people.” The collective value of the media engagement experience could thus be realized in the moment and stored up for redemption in future social interactions.

Rebecca (Caucasian woman, 38) found the characters from her Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt marathon to be “very human and engaging,” noting that she “enjoyed being with them throughout the entire season.” It was challenging for Rebecca to slow down her regular pace of work and parenting while dealing with an extended illness and a hospital stay. She noted that the marathoning experience helped her to feel “happier” as she “went along through this character [Kimmy Schmidt] through her life.” Media marathoning Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Midsomer Murders, Rebecca recalled, helped “keep my mind active while I was forcing my body to rest.” The show and characters were so captivating that Rebecca recommended the show to her husband, who also watched and was then able to talk about it with her. Instead of thinking of media marathoning as a solitary, isolating activity, Isabel’s and Rebecca’s experiences position marathoning as preparation for, or facilitation of, interactions with others.

Coping With Mental Illness

The third theme specifically concerns interviewees who were dealing with depression or anxiety, which often made it difficult for them to socialize and nurture or draw from their social support networks. Existing research has shown that media can help people cope with negative emotions (Nabi, So, & Prestin, 2011), handle sadness (Khoo & Oliver, 2013), and indirectly lower depression and proclivity for anxiety (Khoo & Oliver, 2013). The experiences described here involved positive affective and social outcomes from media marathoning, most notably boosting one’s confidence and facilitating future interactions. Both Anjali (Asian woman, 24) and Abby (African American woman, 27) marathoned movie series and a few television series to cope with depression and feelings of isolation. After losing her best friend because of shared romantic interest in the same man, Anjali recounted, “I was depressed and my [other] friend suggested I watch movies. […] I picked up so many things from [viewing]. [I learned that] people who want to stay in your life, they will stay.” The vast expanse of life experiences Anjali saw in movie series helped her reduce uncertainty about interacting with others. Before she watched the movies, she said, “I was a very shy person. I wouldn’t talk to you like this,” but now, “I am just so confident in my own skin.” Anjali’s story positions movie marathons as a turning point in her improved self-esteem and comfort while socializing.

Abby (African American woman, 27) made a similar argument when citing movies as a source of transformation for her:

I used to be an introvert, more of a melancholic when it comes to my personality traits […] so I kind of decided to start watching movies that can help me build my relationships with people and at the same time try to understand people better and know how to relate with them.

Because Abby was dealing with a lot of work stress at the time, she purposely selected that which did not relate to those negative experiences: Each title she chose “had to do with family, friends, love, nothing was job related, which really helped me.” The escapism in Abby’s experiences involved a strategic, content-specific dive into fictive worlds. The social reservoirs, in the cases of Anjali and Abby, were more of a respite, helping the women temporarily escape from challenging real-world relationships into more healthy, fictive relationship models.

Helen (Caucasian woman, 45) dealt with long-term depression and anxiety and strategically used media to cultivate social support and alleviate her anxiety. At the time of our interview, she belonged to all the Facebook fan pages for Supernatural, Dr. Who, and Sherlock, plus a hybrid called “SuperWhoLock.” Helen laughed when describing her communication with fellow fans: “It’s awesome because we all talk about [the shows]. And we’re like ‘nobody else would understand what we’re talking about but we understand each other.’” The social media fan sites were a space in which Helen’s viewing constituted a form of social capital that she could leverage for social support. Helen noted that she met “a lot of online friends” through the sites. Media marathoning and connecting with fan communities made her more comfortable in her home and also emboldened Helen to go out into the world: “I watch my show, my anxiety gets a little better, then I can leave my house.” She was not changing her circumstances or ridding herself of anxiety, but Helen deliberately used familiar, engaging stories to enable her to function more comfortably with anxiety.

Helen was not tuning into just anything on television; the shows she strategically watched earned the label “my show.” Marathon viewing was an important process in forging those loyal relationships. When asked to compare random television viewing (channel surfing or watching episodes of different shows in a row) with purposeful marathoning, Helen offered, “[W]ith the marathon, with these shows, I feel like I know them better. But if I turn on the TV and anything is on, it’s not comforting to me.” The strong sense of agency in Helen’s interactions with the shows, characters, and with other people in niche fandoms provided her with support, belongingness, and relief.

Limitations and Future Research

This exploratory study has limitations that (1) caution against drawing generalizations from this data and (2) suggest productive areas of future research. To begin, this is a qualitative study that cannot yield conclusions about the general population. In addition, the study population did not include representation from demographics that are salient to this work. The mean age of the study population (39 years) was close to the U.S. median age (37.9 in 2016 [U.S. Census Bureau, 2017]), but the study did not include anyone younger than 24 years old. The study also did not include anyone who lives alone. These were not intentional exclusions in study recruitment; rather, they were simply a product of who volunteered to be in the study. Future studies should include a more diverse population in terms of age and living situations. In addition, studies should assess participants’ other sources of social support—before, during, and after a health event—to uncover what unique role mediated social support might be playing as part of that overall mix.

People with disparate health conditions were included in the study to cast a wide net regarding health-related marathoning behaviors. Although the inclusive study criteria was a methodological strength in terms of uncovering themes that transcend a variety of experiences, the disparate health struggles mean that we cannot draw conclusions about best practices for people with particular health conditions. Future studies should hone in on media marathoning experiences for people with the same diagnosis or a similar ailment. That work may illuminate best practices and cautions regarding media marathon-related coping and even suggest the types of genres or texts that are preferable to that population (see also Nabi et al., 2017).

Exploring the interactions of text and coping situation could yield additional insights about the types of characters who are most “supportive.” The “parasocial encouragement” theme supports forging a link between quantitative scholarship analyzing the effects of experience-related media messages (Kim & Tsay-Vogel, 2016; Nabi, Finnerty, Domschke, & Hull, 2006) and cultural studies scholarship focused on relevance (Fiske, 1988; Sender, 1999). Further studies should tap into the points of relevance participants find with particular texts when examining possible coping opportunities and outcomes. Although logistically challenging, experience-related media effects experiments should include a greater variety of mediated messages and greater depth of participant exposure to allow relevances to bubble up.

Conclusions

Many participants in this study were using media marathoning to build social capital and facilitate social support during a health struggle. The grounded theory analysis yielded the concept of the “social reservoir,” which accounts for the social value of media marathoning-enabled interactions with both real and fictive others. This value may begin accruing before watching—if, for example, the reader/viewer knew a character from a previous story or the marathoned text was recommended by a friend/family member. The value in one’s social reservoir may build while watching/reading by engaging in coviewing, by drawing inspiration and sense of a connection from the characters, or by escaping from stressful lived-world social situations. The value of the social reservoir may still build and be drawn from after media marathoning if one continues connecting with friends and family over the story or helps see their personal identity anew because of resonance with characters.

A notable theme, related to the idea of drawing on this reserve of social support is that most interviewees tapered from their media marathon once they started to feel better. Daniel (Caucasian man, 46) shrank his viewing pattern down from several episodes to one per day. Instead of forcing herself to make time to socialize (as she did when she was depressed), Anjali (Asian woman, 24) found herself having to make time to watch movies after she recovered—just one movie on the weekend if she was lucky. Rebecca (Caucasian woman, 38) eventually finished the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt series “in little bits” after starting to feel better. Study participants were reconnecting with friends, family, and colleagues after their health struggles, often using the stories as a way to build more bonding social capital. These findings indicate that media marathoning was often a coping strategy for an acute health event rather than a regular maintenance strategy for this population. This pattern may have emerged because of the nature of the study population (their particular characteristics and health struggles) or it may be more a widespread coping pattern—perhaps for those who are in mourning, dealing with a personal tragedy, or going through another type of hardship.

The tapering pattern may be attributed in part to three notable demographic features of our population: The age range did not include anyone younger than 24 years, no study participants lived alone, and the population was more highly educated than the average U.S. population. It is possible that people aged 24 and older have more work and family responsibilities than younger individuals; therefore, that population may have felt a stronger obligation to taper from their marathoning behaviors. In addition, Henning and Vorderer (2001) found a significant relationship between living with others and watching less television. The living situation may create additional opportunities to socialize or potentially lead to greater self-regulation of media use. In addition, formal education correlates with a higher need for cognition, which is negatively related to time spent viewing television (Henning & Vorderer, 2001). Thus, although a media marathoning viewing pattern need not exceed the national average of time spent viewing television daily, which 2016 Nielsen figures placed at just more than 5 hours per day (cited in Koblin, 2016), the study population may not have been used to that much media engagement on average. They may therefore have had an easier time scaling back to a more moderate media engagement pattern.

Collectively, these findings suggest that media marathoning during a health struggle can function as more than avoidance coping: Media marathoning can be a strategic vehicle for creating, activating, or bolstering various forms of social support and social capital in the face of potentially isolating circumstances. The essay’s literature presents much evidence to support the idea of using media for recovery, but why has not this practice been widely embraced? Why do the characteristics of introversion, loneliness, and laziness still remain attached to media (and especially television) engagement? Reinecke et al. (2014) uncovered a positive correlation between perceiving entertainment media engagement as procrastination and experiencing guilt with media engagement, along with a negative correlation between feeling that guilt and experiencing media-induced recovery. Reinecke et al.’s (2014) findings suggest that negative connotations associated with media use and negative appraisals of such experiences limit or hurt media-related recovery opportunities.

This study is one additional piece in the pile of mounting support for the efficacy of media-related coping. The qualitative evidence provided here does not conclusively prove that media marathoning is healthy in all circumstances for all people. More simply, interviewees’ stories chip away at some negative connotations attached to media engagement. These findings about purposeful, inspiring, socially engaged media marathoning can be marshaled to reduce the stigma for those who rely on media for coping and recovery from a variety of ailments. Although a media marathon may be completed alone, it is not necessarily a lonely pursuit: Media marathoning can be both inspired by and nurture real and fictive social connections. Letting people know that others cope the same way they do and that these media-related coping strategies have self-reported effectiveness paves the way for reduction of guilt and the promotion of a healing media engagement environment. The day may soon come in which the phrase “Netflix and heal” is part of the common lexicon.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Dr. Lisa G. Perks (PhD, University of Texas at Austin, 2008) is an associate professor of Department of Communication and Media at Merrimack College. Her research analyzes audience reception processes and new media engagement patterns. Her work has appeared in Communication, Culture & Critique, Communication Quarterly, Communication Studies, and the International Journal of Communication, among other publications.

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