Expanding Television’s Cultural Forum in the Digital Era: Prime Time Television, Twitter, and Black Lives Matter

Abstract

Twitter updates and expands television’s cultural forum model by letting viewers speak to current events such as the Black Live Matter (BLM) movement. This article analyzes 1,985 tweets in response to three television episodes (Law & Order: SVU, The Good Wife, and Scandal) that dramatized BLM, and identifies five common themes in how viewers address these representations: thematic appropriateness, timing, producers’ qualifications, institutional critiques, and the purpose of entertainment television. This study concludes that Twitter facilitates a meta-commentary, which expands traditional discussions of entertainment programming, and that these programs transcend “mere” entertainment to become critiques of larger social movements.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Of the 1,985 tweets analyzed for this study, many (37.2%) engaged two or more themes, while very few (2.6%) did not engage any at all.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laurena Bernabo

Laurena Bernabo (Ph.D., University of Iowa) is a visiting assistant professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. Her research interests include television, identity politics, and global media.