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Living on Dawson’s Creek

Teen viewers, cultural convergence, and television overflow

Richmond, the American International University in London, UK, BROOKEW{at}Richmond.ac.uk

This paper explores issues of cultural convergence around television audiences, with a particular focus on the Warner Brothers (WB) teen drama Dawson’s Creek and its viewers. It argues that contemporary television increasingly ‘overflows’ from the primary text across multiple platforms - particularly onto dedicated internet sites - and that certain programmes invite a participatory, interactive engagement which constructs the show as an extended, immersive experience. My ethnographic research with American and British viewers asks whether viewers actually follow this pattern of structured interactivity, whether they produce any ‘folk’ culture of their own or simply follow the culture provided from ‘above’, and whether factors such as age, nation, gender, and economic background shape their engagement with these secondary texts.

Key Words: audience • cultural convergence • fans • overflow • teenagers • television studies

International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4, 456-472 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/136787790100400406


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