Abstract
This article addresses the question of how engagement with fictional entertainment can enable audiences to function as citizens. It argues that existing theoretical perspectives assume spurious links between the use of fictional entertainment and politics. This article mobilizes the theoretical perspective of public connection to show how audience’s engagement with fictional entertainment can forge manifest links to the sphere of politics. The article presents five functions that capture the main varieties of how the engagement with TV series enables public connection. These functions are conceptualized as ‘Charging’, ‘Deepening’, ‘Affinitive motivation’, ‘Introduction/Extension’ and ‘Solidification’. These functions are theoretically qualified and empirically grounded in extensive qualitative research into people’s use of TV series in Norway. The article argues that these functions also apply to the engagement with other forms of fictional entertainment, including film and fiction literature.
TV-series, film or other forms of fictional entertainment engage audiences on a daily basis with narrativized accounts of the world and the relations within it. By bringing depictions of social, public and political life into the private sphere of audiences, fictional entertainment constitutes a potential resource for citizenship. Yet, whereas people’s use of news and other factual content constitute a self-evident precondition for engaged and critical citizenship, the role of fictional entertainment remains unclear and contested.
Some scholars have indeed argued that popular culture is bad for citizenship. Adorno (1973) famously argued that the consumption of mass-produced film reduced audiences to passivized objects for ideological manipulation. More recently, Putnam (2000) in Bowling Alone concluded that people’s increasing time spent on entertainment was a main reason for the decrease in civic participation and social capital in the United States. Whereas these criticisms are important reminders of the fact that engagement with popular culture is not inherently good for citizenship, they are also one-sided and based on either unfounded assumptions about the competency of the audiences or on crude quantitative measures. Neither do these criticisms account for the experiences audiences have when engaging with fictional texts.
How audiences engage with fictional entertainment and the civic dimensions of such engagement remains a long-standing concern within various strands of communication scholarship, including political communication (e.g. Holbert, 2005; Pittman & Sheehan, 2015) public sphere studies (e.g. Larsen, 2010), and media psychology (e.g. Shah, 1998). Yet arguably, the most comprehensive recent theoretical and empirical efforts come from the cultural citizenship tradition (Hermes, 2005; Stevenson, 2004; Van Zoonen, 2005). Placing people’s media experiences at the centre of analysis, a major contribution from this tradition is the qualitative insights into how the engagement with popular culture can stimulate senses of civic belongings, passions and identities. However, I argue that a cultural citizenship perspective has a clear limitation in that it assumes weak and spurious links to the sphere of politics proper. The tradition centres on what are essentially social and affective dimensions of engaging with popular culture. The ‘citizenship quality’ of engaging with popular culture thus remains opaque and divorced from political issues, processes or arenas.
In this article, I mobilize and develop the public connection perspective to illuminate how audience’s engagement with fictional entertainment can forge democratically desirable and manifest orientations to the sphere of politics. The public connection perspective has so far proved valuable in the study of how the use of news and factual media connect people to public and political life (Couldry et al., 2010; Hovden and Moe, 2017; Kaun, 2012; Markham and Couldry, 2007; Ong and Cabañes, 2011; Swart et al., 2017). Couldry et al. (2010) conceptualize public connection as ‘an orientation towards a public world where matters of common concern are addressed’. The key idea is that for democracy to work, citizens need to have a minimum of orientation towards issues or problems that are of collective significance. As such, public connection constitutes a bottom-line factor in functioning democracies, and a factor inherent to all major theories of democracy (see Couldry et al., 2010: 8–10).
This study conceptually clarifies how the use of also fictional entertainment can enable public connection. The study identifies what is argued to be the five main functions through which engagement with fictional entertainment enables attention, interest and reflections concerning issues we commonly think of as politically significant. These functions are theoretically developed yet empirically grounded in extensive research into audiences’ use of TV-series, including in-depth interviews of 50 informants (interviewed twice) and media diaries.
In this study, I concentrate on TV-series. From a civic perspective, TV-series are particularly interesting for three main reasons. The first is concerned with media habits and repertoires. The use of TV-series, from sit-coms to fantasy, is interwoven into most people’s everyday lives and make up substantial parts of their media repertoires. In Europe and Northern America, TV-series today arguably make up for the prime source for fictional entertainment. The sheer scale of people’s engagement with TV series thus itself warrants attention. The second is concerned with content and subject matter. TV-series offer to its audience depictions of the world and the relations within it. These relations may be of a mundane character, but they are always set within more or less pronounced socio-political conditions. TV-series routinely thematizes issues or questions we consider being of relevance to public or political life, be it in the form of political drama or crime. Hence, TV-series provide their audience with narratives that may connect them to the world of politics.
The third reason is concerned with mode of address. TV-series addresses its audiences by means of a variety of different devices inherent to its expressive form. These include for instance fantasy, dramatization, humour and suspense. When effective and good, TV-series most of all evokes pleasure in its audience. The pleasure of watching TV-series may come in the form of emotional engagement, feeling part of communities, but also from learning or understanding something. This article argues that these qualities, inherent to most forms of fictional entertainment, constitute potentially effective vectors for public connection. A key objective of this article is thus to account for how these qualities of televisual experience are relevant for people’s orientation towards the world of politics.
This combination of vast usage, socio-politically relevant content and affective modes of address, sets TV-series up as a potential resource for public connection. Yet important to note, the engagement with TV-series may very well also work as a primer for public disconnection. As will be addressed in the conclusion, watching TV-series in many cases reinforces an overall orientation away from the world of politics. The objective of this study, however, is to specify how and through which capacities TV-series actually work as a resource for public connection.
In the following, I first outline how the public connection perspective is adapted and operationalized in this study. I then outline and discuss other relevant theoretical perspectives. I thereafter outline methodology and data material. Subsequently, I present what is argued to be the five main functions engaging with TV-series have for public connection. Each function is conceptually fleshed out and empirically substantiated using examples from the data material. Conclusively, I first outline the relevance of these functions for other forms of fictional entertainment, and then critically discuss the main arguments made in this study.
Public connection: An orientation towards the sphere of politics
Couldry et al. (2010) conceptualize public connection as individual’s basic orientation ‘ . . . towards a public world where matters of common concern are addressed’. A first issue that needs clarifying then, is how such an orientation is constituted. This orientation must be seen as embedded in a person’s lifestyle – the structured whole of their behaviour and practices (Weber, 1993). This orientation thus extends the mere attention towards the public and political world. As argued in depth elsewhere (Nærland, 2019), public connection is constituted by a complex of interlocking factors, such as people’s news repertoires, political interest, civic values and resources. Together these factors may reinforce each other in ways that strengthens or solidifies a person’s public connection. Or conversely, they are configured in patterns that weaken and disperse a person’s public connection.
A second issue that needs clarification is the direction and scope of such an orientation. Towards where or what should this orientation be directed in order to evidence public connection? Or put in other words, what is and what is not the object of this orientation? Interest and attention towards anything public – be it football, celebrity or music festivals – do not in itself evidence public connection. As argued by Couldry et al. (2010: 7), public connection is an orientation towards ‘a space where, in principle, problems about shared resources are or should be solved (. . .)’, and that public connection (Couldry et al., 2010: 36) is ‘more than a matter of expressing belonging to various communities’. Public connection thus foregrounds orientations towards issues related to collective struggles, negotiations and contention or the arenas where such issues are routinely addressed.
On this basis, a key demarcation can be made. This study operationalizes public connection as manifest orientations towards issues related to institutional politics, its processes and mediations, and to issues of resource distribution more generally. It also encompasses questions concerning values or identities – when these are either contested or on the public agenda. Arenas may include news sites, discussion forums or physical spaces where such issues are addressed. Consequently, to take one example, the ways in which audience’s engagement with TV-series may stimulate affinities to fan communities does not in itself evidence public connection. Neither does the preoccupation with actors or celebrity more generally.
This narrow conceptualization of politics allows for the elucidation of concrete links between engagement with fictional engagement and politics proper. This confinement also limits the scope of the public connection perspective. Fundamental qualities of televisual engagement such as the passions, belongings and excitement TV-series evoke in audiences become less relevant, unless, as this study aims to show, these motivate or enable an orientation to the world of politics. Important to note, such qualities are also important in their own right; they bring pleasure and well-being into people’s lives.
From passions and belongings to politics
This study takes inspiration from previous theoretical efforts to conceptualize the civic uses of fictional entertainment. The cultural citizenship tradition (Hermes, 2005; Stevenson, 2004) offers one key perspective. These argue that audience’s engagement with fictional entertainment is significant to citizenship in forging interpretive communities, critical subjectivities and civic identities. The public connection perspective as operationalized in this study builds upon yet departs from these ideas in significant respects. These social, affective and pleasurable affordances of TV-series are significant only in as much as they enable or motivate manifest orientations – attention and interest towards, or reflections about – issues of political significance, or the arenas where these issues are addressed. Van Zoonen’s (2007) work on audiences’ engagement with political TV-series like ‘The West Wing’, offers another important contribution that is partly contingent with the scope of the public connection perspective. She found that watching ‘The West Wing’ for the audience enabled reflection about political dilemmas, judgements about ideological matters, and fantasy about utopian politics.
Street et al.’s (2013) conceptualization of teenagers’ use of entertainment serves to further clarify the scope of the public connection perspective. They argue that audiences’ engagement with soap drama, music and computer games involve ‘contact points’ with the world of politics. These contact points hinge on three key capacities. The first capacity is ‘the cognitive’ (what people learn and know about politics), the second is ‘the affinitive’ (if people feel civic belonging), and ‘the affective’ (if feelings animate political matters or opinions). The public connection perspective places primary emphasis on the cognitive – the attention and reflexivity people have towards the world of politics – rather than affects and affinities in themselves. Yet, as this article aims to demonstrate, in the context of viewing TV-series, passions and belongings are highly important as these may prime interest, attention and reflections concerning the world of politics.
Furthermore, this study draws on political theorist Goodin’s (2000) work on deliberation and film. Goodin (2000) asserts that film becomes a powerful vehicle for citizens ‘emphatic imagining’ of distant others, as well as for internal reflection upon the conditions and problems of the other: Suppose our imagination has been fired by some film or fiction; we have been led by those artifices to imagine vividly what it would be like to be them, or to be in that situation; we ask ourselves, ‘What we would say, then?’(. . .). (Original emphasis; p. 180)
Goodin thus highlights how fictional entertainment may evoke democratically desirable imaginations which in turn may affectively connect audiences to the world of politics.
Moreover, this study draws upon Ellis’ (2000) concept of ‘working through’. This concept illuminates how televisual engagement can elevate audience’s understanding of complex real-life phenomena. Developed from the psychoanalytic term whereby patients work through major revelations, Ellis argues that watching television, for its audiences, functions as a ‘mechanism for processing the material of the witnessed world into more narrativized, explained forms’. This article builds upon these previous theoretical efforts to specify the particular ways in which people’s engagement with TV-series enable links to the world of politics. In the remainder of this article, I develop a set of key functions that audience’s engagement with TV-series have for their public connection.
Method and data
The functions presented in this study are theoretically developed yet empirically grounded in extensive research into audiences’ use of TV-series. Empirically, the study is based upon qualitative data collection among Norwegian media audiences carried out in the autumn of 2016. A team consisting of five researchers and three assistants carried out in-depth semi-structured interviews of 50 informants. Each informant was interviewed twice. In between the two rounds of interviews each informant also kept a media diary. The interviews (each lasting 40–60 minutes) amounted to approximately 100 hours of recorded material, which was subsequently transcribed by assistants. The informants were split across age, gender, and across social, ethno-cultural and regional background, and recruited to reflect the socio-demographic composition of the Norwegian population. In order to systematically capture diversity in social background, the recruitment was based on pre-established occupational categories adopted from Norwegian sociological register data class schemes (Hansen et al., 2009). Whereas, the objective of this study is not to systematically uncover links between social background and televisual experience, the number and diversity of the informants helped ensure greater validity in identifying reoccurring traits and experiences in the material.
In the first round of interviews, we investigated a broad variety of factors such as news habits, political engagement and everyday life conditions in general. In this round, we also investigated their cultural tastes including that of TV-series. These data provided biographical context in which viewer-reflections and experiences could be interpreted. In the month-long diary phase, we asked the informants to chart their media and cultural habits: what sort of media output they had engaged with, and if some of this had made a particular impression on them. In the first week of the diary phase, the informants made daily entries, the subsequent 3 weeks weekly entries. The diaries constituted a valuable source of simple self-monitorial data on the informants’ everyday use of TV-series, and were used instrumentally to design a more case-specific interview guide in interview round 2. Significantly, in the first round of interviews and in the diary phase it became evident that TV-series – of varying subject matters and sub-genres – formed part of all sampled informants’ media repertoires. Thus, the overall data provide empirical support for the premise of this study: that TV-series constitute a potentially important source for public (dis)connection.
In the second round of interviews, we focused specifically on the informants’ experiences of watching TV-series. Based upon specific series mentioned in their diaries, we asked the informants to reflect upon why they enjoyed these series, their formal qualities (such as mode of storytelling, characters, etc.), and the degree to which they perceived the series to be realistic and credible. Furthermore, we asked the informants broadly if they experienced the particular series to be depicting themes or topics that are problematic, unfair or important in any sense. Each informant was also asked if any series had made them think about issues or conditions in society and were further encouraged to freely elaborate on their experiences of watching these series. In addition, the second round of interviews contained a sub-case where all informants were asked about their reflections upon watching the particular series Skam (Shame).
The functions presented in this study were developed dynamically, through the interchange between theoretical conceptualization and empirical analysis. The functions were developed through the following process. First, based on existing theoretical perspectives and on initial probing of the data material, a set of basic assumptions about how engagement with TV-series can enable public connection was established. From here, it was posited that central qualities of televisual experience such as affects, affinities and reflection in each their way, or in conjunction, were consequential for the informants’ orientation towards the world of politics. Then, trough systematic analysis of the data, the validity and accuracy of these assumptions were tested. This step involved, first, identifying the relevant instances in the overall material where intersections between televisual engagement and politics emerged. Thereafter, the basic assumptions were scrutinized in the light of relevant informant examples. To take one example, the basic assumption that emotional engagement with TV-series can prime interest in issues of political relevance where tested against pre-identified informant examples where affective articulations were made in relation to issues of political significance. Subsequently, the assumptions were conceptually sensitized to empirical detail, and finally formulated as a set of functions.
Five functions of watching TV-series for public connection
The following section introduces the five main functions watching TV-series have for enabling public connection. Each function is empirically illustrated and conceptually fleshed out with reference to relevant literature. These functions are exhaustive in as much as they capture what is argued to be the main capacities through which engagement with TV-series enable public connection. The functions sometimes overlap, and they are often at work simultaneously. Yet importantly, each function cannot be reduced to one another. Each function is unique in that it captures a particular variety of how and through which capacity the engagement with TV-series enables either interest in or attention to issues of political significance, or strengthens general orientations towards the world of politics.
These functions conceptualize differing dimensions of televisual engagement. The three first functions, Charging, Deepening and Affinitive Motivation accentuate experiential dimensions of textual engagement. The fourth function of Introduction/extension accentuates temporal dimensions of attention to and interest in political matters. And the fifth function of Solidification accentuates the relationship between the practice of watching TV-series and other components of people’s overall lifestyle.
Charging
Charging is a function that captures how the experience of watching a particular series involve emotional investment and thus energize or charge interest in particular issues or questions of political significance. Charging is thus a function that primarily hinges on the affective affordances of fictional entertainment.
Often such affects are induced by the fictional portrayal of injustices or hardship. One example from our interviews is how an informant felt empathy with Norwegian war veterans after having seen the Norwegian series ‘Nobel’. ‘Nobel’ thematizes Norwegian war efforts in Afghanistan and the private lives of homecoming soldiers. Anne, a 50-year-old nurse, makes the following reflection upon watching ‘Nobel’: I now carry pictures of Nato soldiers . . . where coming back to Norway must be terribly difficult . . . to get your everyday life to work out . . . ! I now have a lot more respect for that . . . you’ve been to war and people don’t seem to understand that.
The example illustrates how the watching of a specific TV-series evoked empathy and thus energized interest in Norway’s military involvement in Afghanistan. A similar point is brought forward by democratic theorist Robert Goodin (2000), who argues for the importance of emotionally appealing fiction in deliberative democracy. According to Goodin, fictions have an important function in facilitating ‘emphatic imaginings’, which in turn enable citizens to understand and empathize with the experiences of distant others.
The identification and sympathy with characters emerge as another vehicle for the emotional charging of public connection. One example is Synne, a 37-year-old social worker, who is a long-standing fan of the series ‘West Wing’. ‘West Wing’ is the fictional and largely sympathetic pre-Trump portrayal of the inner life of the White House and its staff. In general, Synne has a limited interest in the world of politics, neither does she have extensive news habits. Yet, she has an extensive interest in American presidential politics. Synne is drawn to ‘West Wing’, according to herself, because she likes the characters and the relationships between them, and the female characters in particular: The president and all of his closest staff . . . are such nice people (. . .) I like the relations between the staff, and that’s important. I tried to watch House of Cards, which is maybe also realistic, but I don’t know . . . there, I did not like any of the characters. I got to like the characters.
Both these examples illustrate the same dynamic where audiences are emotionally drawn into real-life case-complexes by means of identification, sympathy or empathy with fictional character and thus maintain or strengthen an interest in the world of politics.
Deepening
Deepening is a function that captures when TV-series function as a narrative vehicle for audiences to make sense of politically significant events in real life, and to reflect and elaborate on their meanings. It is a function that primarily foregrounds the cognitive – how engagement with TV-series facilitates sense-making and reflection. Yet, both affect and social affinities may very well be central in priming such sense-making.
One such example is offered by Tina, a 34-year-old secondary school teacher, and her experiences of watching the series ‘Nobel’. ‘Nobel’ centres on Norway’s contested military involvement in Afghanistan, and offers graphic portrayal of Norwegian military operations. Upon watching ‘Nobel’, Tina reflects, (In the series) . . . we are shown that orders are given to shoot children and similar kind of stuff. And you are shown children with suicide bomb vests. (. . .) Norway is supposed to be a peace-keeping nation . . . we’re so concerned about peace . . . but they (the Norwegian soldiers) actually engage in battle and shoot and they kill. They don’t hang around down there helping in hospitals. It’s a war . . . Norway is part of a war. And . . . I don’t think many people realize that. This is something that this series helped me understand: Norway plays a role which is not all about peace . . . it is a war . . . and they are active in that war.
For Tina, the graphic depiction of war operations as part of the fictional universe of ‘Nobel’ thus offered a narrative through which she could make sense of Norwegian war operations in Afghanistan and reflect upon the reality these operations. On this basis, she further problematizes Norway’s collective self-understanding as a ‘humanitarian superpower’ (humanitær stormakt) or ‘nation of peace’ (fredsnasjon). These are well-rehearsed tropes in official discourse on Norway’s role in the global world, and governmental bodies have for decades worked instrumentally to promote and nurture this image (Tvedt, 2017). As part of this elaboration of meaning, Tina also displayed critical subjectivity in the form of distance-taking. For instance, she consistently refers to the Norwegian soldiers operating in Afghanistan not as ‘we’, but as ‘they’.
Another example of deepening is offered by a 66-year-old history teacher, Jens’ reflections upon watching the series ‘House of Cards’: I understood more of the political system in America from watching House of Cards. Its always like this when I watch this sort of TV-series, I think to myself . . . ‘Can this be true’?
This is thus an example that further highlights how TV-series, through dramatized and often spectacular accounts, provide a basis for critical consideration of political conditions or arrangements.
The function of deepening can be further elucidated in reference to Ellis’ (2000) concept of ‘working through’. Developed from the psychoanalytic term whereby patients work through major revelations, Ellis (2000) argues that television, for its audiences, functions as a ‘mechanism for processing the material of the witnessed world into more narrativized, explained forms’ (p. 78). A similar process of working through can be seen at play in the previous informant examples. Through the engagement with fictional entertainment, the informants here either elaborate meanings and connect dots within the wider case-complex that the Norwegian military involvement in Afghanistan is part of, or critically consider the modus operandi of American presidential politics.
Affinitive motivation
Affinitive motivation is a function that captures how audience’s engagement with TV-series spurs feelings of belonging to interpretative communities, which in turn motivates interest in matters of political significance. This function primarily hinges on the social dimension of engaging with TV-series, that is, the ways in which audiences develop affinities to social or civic communities.
Affinitive motivation was a common trait among many of the informants that watched the series ‘Skam’. ‘Skam’ portrays the lives of a group of teenage girls in Oslo, and was a huge success in Norway. It was exported to a number of other countries and subsequently celebrated as a national achievement. Stine, a 28-year-old woman working at a call-centre, for instance, reflects, It is particularly intriguing how popular Skam has become in Norway, but also outside Norway, in Sweden and Denmark and stuff . . . The issues it raises are really interesting . . . the use of alcohol and drugs, homosexuality, religion and different cultures . . . I really like it.
Similarly, Elin, a 38-year-old nurse, gives an enthusiastic account of an incident from a holiday in Denmark. Here she was recognized as Norwegian and subsequently approached by a person who wanted to talk about to her about ‘Skam’. Reflecting further upon this incident, she exclaims, This last season . . . I don’t think there has ever been made a series this good about homosexuality and youth.
These are thus examples that highlight how the watching of TV-series can stimulate affinities to Norway as social community, and further motivate interest in issues that the series addresses and that are of collective importance – in the case of ‘Skam’ issues like the status of homosexuality and Islam.
Affinitive motivation is thus a function that resonates with the notion of cultural citizenship in that it accentuates how engagement with fictional entertainment may stimulate feelings of belonging to imagined communities. A recent study (Askanius, 2017) of crime series audiences in Scandinavia, for instance, shows how audiences constructed a collective sense of regional community through their engagement with the series ‘The Bridge’ (‘Broen’). Yet, whereas the construction of community is the key component of affinitive motivation, this function explicitly captures when feelings of belonging to a social or political entity also motivate or focus interest in issues that are of importance to the collective. This interest could manifest privately (as it does in the interviews), but it may also take the form of collective interactions in non-political online spaces where political talk nonetheless emerges, conceptualized by Wright (2012) as ‘third space’. A recent and telling example of the latter (Lindtner and Dahl, 2019) is how the series ‘Skam’ engaged wide audiences in online discourse about a number of contentious issues. Affinitive motivation is thus also a function that highlights how engagement with fictional entertainment can contribute to what Dahlgren (2002) coins ‘Civic Affinity’ – a sense of belonging to communities that is centred on the same political questions and values.
Extension / introduction
Extension / introduction captures how the watching of TV-series may either initiate or prolong attention towards matters of political significance. It is thus a function that accentuates the temporal dimension of attention, rather than its experiential nature. Extension emerges when the engagement with TV-series involves a prolonged or continued interest in matters the persons were already attentive to. This could for instance be when a person is interested in a subject matter and chooses to watch series that thematizes such matters. One reoccurring trait in the material is how informants who have a developed interest in politics also choose to watch TV-series about politics. One such example is the 67-year-old retired newspaper editor and political buff Sigurd and his engagement with the series ‘House of Cards’ and the Brazilian series ‘3%’. For Sigurd, watching these series functioned as a means to extend his attention to American and Brazilian politics, to which he already had a developed interest.
Introduction is the inverse variant of extension. This function emerges when the viewing of a TV-series makes audiences attentive to or spurs an interest in issues that they were previously not aware of, or had little interest in. One such instance is exemplified by Mads, a 47-year-old district court judge, and his accounts of watching the HBO-series ‘Narcos’. ‘Narcos’ portrays the rise and fall of the Colombian drug-lord Pablo Escobar. Mads reports to have little previous knowledge or interest in Colombia and its history: It is such a capturing . . . bordering to the unbelievable . . . story where a man makes it from nothing . . . to holding considerable amounts of the worlds cash reservoir of dollar.(. . .) And it does give insight into . . . how stabile or fragile a more or less functioning democracy is when its facing these kind of . . . big attacks from enemies within.
Mads further reflects that his watching of ‘Narcos’ preceded and thus focused his attention to the peace-negotiations in Colombia and the handing out of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 to the Colombian president.
Solidification
Solidification captures how the habitual practice of watching TV-series, in tandem with other practices (such as keeping up with news), mutually reinforce and thus solidify and overall orientation towards the sphere of politics. This could thus be termed a ‘systemic’ function in that it foregrounds how the various components that constitute public connection work together. Unlike the previous functions, it does not foreground audience’s experiences of engaging with particular texts, but rather how the habitual practice of watching TV-series relate to other practices.
This is a function that is salient among many of the informants who possess high volumes of cultural capital. One such example is Bianca, a 33-year-old architect. Bianca has extensive news habits – she reads local, national and also international newspapers (online and in print) on a daily basis. She expresses a sense of duty to keep updated and informed about what’s going on in the world, and also to vote in elections. She is active in her local union and she also reports to discuss topical matters on a daily basis with friends or colleagues. Bianca also has extensive cultural habits, including TV-series. She reads fiction like the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård, she goes to the theatre regularly and also to film festivals. Importantly, Bianca identifies culture, including TV-series, as a means to understand society.
For Bianca, engagement with TV-series forms part of a robust and extensive orientation towards issues of public and political significance. Bianca’s general interest in public and political life is clearly reflected in her TV-series tastes, which are at least in part directed towards political and social realism. At the same time, the practice of watching TV-series serves to both direct and sustain attention to topical political issues. As such, there is a fit between her repertoires of news usage and their repertoires of TV-series that solidify her overall orientation to sphere of politics.
Yet important to note, TV-series repertoires need not necessarily be exclusively directed towards political or social realism in order to solidify public connection. Marcus, a 44-year-old humanities professor, for instance, makes the following reflection upon watching the science fiction series ‘Battlestar Galactica’: I think Battlestar Galactica was simply brilliant . . . It can easily be seen as explicit social commentary on what was going on in the U.S. at the time.
The example illustrates a common trait among many of the informants who have extensive news habits, developed interest in politics, and who generally possess high levels of cultural capital. For these informants, also seemingly a-political series become objects for political interpretations. Crucially, this also points to the significance of social dispositions. Engaging with TV-series as a means to connect to society constitutes a natural and morally desirable practice for some, for others it does not.
The relevance for other forms of fictional entertainment
These functions are not exclusive to people’s engagement with TV-series. Although it lies outside the scope of this article to explore this in depth, I argue that these functions are relevant to how audiences engage with most genres of expressive culture that are characterized by narrative and referential modes of expressivity. The functions introduced have obvious relevance for film, which addresses audiences in much the same ways as TV-series. Consider for instance how the engagement with political thrillers may emotionally charge, introduce or extend interest in a contentious issue (be it political violence or race relations), deepen the understanding of such issues, and contribute to the identification with the community where these issues take place. And consider further how the practice of watching political thrillers, when complementing stable and extensive news habits, solidify an overall interest in politics.
These functions are also relevant to fiction literature, which do not employ visual storytelling. None the less, and perhaps with greater force, fiction literature in many cases invite readers to engage with narratives thematizing the political world. Consider for instance the classical example of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, and how this novel invoked imaginations of an American community, for many readers introduced and emotionally charged the interests in the issue of slavery, and not least deepened their understanding of the exploitation of Afro-Americans at the time (Gripsrud et al, 2010).
The relevance of these functions to non-referential arts is less obvious. Yet, to take music as one example, the function of charging is contingent with the ways in which music in politicized contexts such as rallies invest political causes with emotional significance (Bennett, 2001). Even more so is the function of affinitive motivation, where music is central in forging communities that are also centred on political causes or values (Nærland, 2017) – national anthems being one obvious example.
Conclusion
This article has mobilized the public connection perspective to illuminate how engagement with fictional entertainment connects audiences to the world of politics. It has shown how the affects, affinities and pleasures inherent to televisual experience can enable attention, interest and reflections concerning issues we commonly think of as politically significant. As such, the aim of this article has been to go beyond existing theoretical perspectives, which are argued to assume opaque and spurious connections between engagement with fictional entertainment and politics.
The article has pursued this task by specifying the five following functions people’s engagement with TV-series can have for their public connection. First, by means of emotional investment the engagement with TV-series can charge interest in issues of political significance. Second, by functioning as a narrative vehicle for audiences to make sense of politically significant events and to reflect and elaborate on their meanings, TV-series can deepen interest and knowledge about particular issues. Third, by means of stimulating social affinities to community, engagement with TV-series can motivate or focus attention on issues of collective importance. Fourth, the engagement with TV-series may introduce audiences to issues they were not previously aware of or interested in, or extend already established interests. Fifth, when operating in tandem with other habitual practices (such as keeping up with news), the practice of watching TV-series can help solidify a general orientation towards the sphere of politics. Importantly, this study has also highlighted how these functions are not only confined to the context of TV-series but are also at work in people’s engagement with other forms of fictional entertainment such as film and fiction literature.
From this study, TV-series that explicitly address political or social conditions do emerge as a self-evident and important resource for public connection – most often in the form of social or political realism. This is an insight that resonates with previous research into the civic uses of TV-series (e.g. Holbert, 2005; Van Zoonen, 2007). Yet, public connection through TV-series is not simply a matter of watching TV-series about politics. For instance, several informants in the sample interpret genres such as fantasy, science fiction and also relational comedy as social and political commentary. Such genres may provide raw material for all five of the functions presented in this study, yet with less potency and with less pronounced connections to the political. As such, a fruitful course for future research would be to direct systematic attention to the various ways in which the engagement with series that are not politically themed or that centres on what Holbert (2005) terms ‘lifeworld content’ connect audiences to the sphere of politics.
However, watching TV-series may also very well constitute a source for public disconnection. It has not been the aim of this article to either chart or explore such disconnections. Yet, a few key points on this matter should be mentioned. For one, watching TV-series may involve time-displacement, where people spend their time on watching TV-series instead of keeping oriented about the state of the world through other sources. This is an argument stated with force by Putnam (2000) in ‘Bowling alone’. Also, as evident in the data material, when taste in TV-series is paired with little interest in topical affair and limited news habits, watching TV-series in many cases reinforces an overall orientation away from the world of politics. Thus, TV-series, for some, become a vehicle for escapism and withdrawal.
Furthermore, from our material, it is evident that the use of news is the most important source for public connection. Watching TV-series primarily works as supplement. In order for TV-series consumption to connect people to the world of politics, it generally needs to work in tandem with other practices such as news consumption, or civic practices more broadly. For instance, in our material, we do not find examples of informants who maintain a strong orientation towards the world of politics that do not also have healthy news habits. Moreover, watching TV-series generally becomes more fertile when it is underpinned by an inclination to approach fictional entertainment as a means to understand society.
Finally, connecting to the world of politics through TV-series is also a matter of interpretative resources, social dispositions and, more generally, cultural capital. These are more fundamental aspects of public connection located at what I have previously conceptualized as the ‘deep’ level of orientation (Nærland, 2019). Crucially, these fundamental aspects of public connection, and also taste in TV-series, are systematically linked to social background and class (Hovden and Moe, 2017; Nærland, 2019).
