Defining a Phenomenon of the Digital World

The first assignment on our course was to define a phenomenon of the digital world that does not yet have a name (like 'selfie'). After searching for the members of our group and establishing what we needed to do we started brainstorming.

This lead to conversation mostly about two subjects. One of them was TV series, television culture and how it has changed in the past years. The other was the selfie culture and we did come up with some good definitions for certain 'selfies', but we found the TV conversation more interesting.

Do you know what a serial watcher is? We do.

He or she is a person, who likes to binge on TV series. He/she watches American TV series in marathon sessions usually on Netflix or on DVD sets. He/she is likely to know multiple quotes, is passionate about the characters and takes the TV series very seriously. He or she can watch the same series multiple times.

Recognize anyone? Serial watcher was the term defining a certain phenomenon we all found familiar, but we also discussed how the television culture and the role of TV series have changed. Now you don't need to wait for that time of the week that your favourite series is on with a new episode. 

Instead, you can watch them all on Netflix or somewhere else online, or on DVD sets. We also talked about how dominating the TV series enthusiasm seems to be among us 20-somethings and how it can almost be a question of status if you have seen a certain TV series or not, or at least someone might form an opinion about you based on that fact. 

What do you think? Do you recognize this phenomenon? I (Erika, the leader of our group this week) am also a little bit uncertain of the English of our term. Would serial viewer have been better? By the way, we are also uncertain of the language of the coming posts on our blog, as we decided that we can write either in English or in Finnish, whichever seems more appropriate.

Anyway, that's all we have for this time. Have a n... Sorry.

E.I.