Representations of adolescence in contemporary American Teen TV and its online fandom (PDF)

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,7, Humboldt-University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: The work explores the convergence of teen television and the Internet and the underlying concepts of adolescence and fandom, focusing specifically on the American teen series Dawson's Creek and Veronica Mars and the fan-discussion and fan-work in the online fan-communities Fan Forum and Television Without Pity. In the first part the three fields - fandom, adolescence and Teen TV - are defined and the relevant literature is reviewed, paying special attention to the period of the late 1990s till now. The second part examines two case studies of Internet fan-communities and the way they re-contextualize the television text and construct performance space. The third part consists of two case studies of contemporary American teen-television to show the way the series are contextualized by their broadcasting space and its rhythms and temporalities, and how online fandom changes the possibilities of acquisition and the spaces provided for individual use of the media text.
It is an important area of study for several reasons. It acknowledges the growing significance of fancultural production and its importance for the understanding of contemporary pop culture, and the value of the Internet as an innovative and fruitful source on television fan discourse. It brings together traditionally separated concepts that are essentially intertwined. This is an attempt to incorporate a fan view in an academic work to allow a deeper look in the fancultural practices.