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Fictional Entertainment and Public Connection:

Audiences and the Everyday Use of TV-series

Article in Television & New Media · August 2018

DOI: 10.1177/1527476418796484

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series

Torgeir Uberg Nærland1

Abstract
This study explores how audience’s everyday use of fictional entertainment may
facilitate public connection. Whereas the public connection perspective thus far
primarily has been employed in the study of audience’s use of factual media, this study,
first, conceptually updates the notion of public connection and develops a framework
sensitized to capture the significance also of audience’s use of TV-series. Second,
based on large-scale qualitative data collection reflecting the sociodemographic
diversity in Norway, this study empirically highlights how the use of TV-series forms
part of diverse yet typical orientations toward the sphere of politics. The study finds
that given favorable combinations of repertoires of media use and habits, alongside
resources, values, and dispositions, the viewing of TV-series clearly provides audiences
with a link to the sphere of politics. It further finds, however, that the civic exploits
of watching TV-series also hinge on a number of factors connected to audience’s
background resources.

Keywords
audience, public connection, television, citizenship, TV-series, popular culture

In Norway, TV-series today emerge as the overall most important source of fictional
entertainment. The proliferation of streaming services such as HBO or Netflix has
been pivotal for an increasing consumption of TV-series. Augmenting this develop-
ment, the established broadcasters in the Nordic countries have intensified their

1University of Bergen, Norway

Corresponding Author:
Torgeir Uberg Nærland, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Information Science and Media Studies,
University of Bergen, P.O. Box 7802, N-5020 Bergen, Norway.
Email: Torgeir.narland@uib.no
2 Television & New Media 00(0)

production of TV-series, reaching large audiences (NRK 2016). Thus, watching

TV-series makes up for a habitual practice shared by a vast and sociodemographically
diverse audience. At the same time, TV-series in its multitude of subgenres—be it in
the form of drama, soap, crime, comedy, or political realism—offer depictions of the
world and the relations within it. As such, audience’s engagement with TV-series and
the civic dimensions of such engagement warrant close and renewed inspection.
In this regard, the theoretical perspective of public connection makes up for a
promising albeit hitherto unexplored approach. 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 toward issues or problems that are of political signifi-
cance—in that these require collective solution. As such, public connection constitutes
a bottom-line factor in functioning democracies, and a factor implicitly inherent to all
major theories of democracy (see Couldry et al. 2010, 8–10). However, the perspective
as applied so far has been conceptually and empirically focused on people’s use of
news and factual media (Couldry et al. 2010, 2018; Hovden and Moe 2017; Kaun
2012; Couldry and Markham 2007; Ong and Cabañes 2011; Swart et al. 2016).
Moreover, the notion of “orientation” integral to public connection and what such an
orientation entails remain vague in previous work on public connection and in need of
conceptual specification.
Given the extensive and habitual consumption of TV-series and the multitude of
depictions of the world that the genre offers, TV-series make up for a potentially
important yet unexplored source of public (dis)connection. This study therefore asks,
(1) how can we conceptually update the notion of public connection to also account for
people’s use of TV-series and (2) how does the use of TV-series empirically manifest
as part of the audience’s public connection?
This article starts by locating the public connection perspective within the ter-
rain of existing research on the intersections between the use of fictional entertain-
ment and citizenship. Thereafter, building on the original conception of public
connection by Couldry et al. (2010), this study develops a conceptual framework
apt to capture how and by which means people orient toward a public and political
world in general, and how the consumption of TV-series forms part of such orienta-
tions. This framework posits that audience’s use of TV-series needs to be consid-
ered in relation to a number of interlocking factors such as their news repertoires,
political interest, civic values, and interpretative resources, which together consti-
tute their orientation toward the public and political world. Furthermore, based on
interviews and media diaries from a sample of fifty informants (interviewed twice),
split across social background, gender, and age in Norway, this study analyzes three
exemplary informant cases. These cases highlight key varieties in how public con-
nection is configured at the individual level, and how the use of TV-series is inte-
grated into such configurations. As such, this study offers a new conceptual
understanding of how people’s media use connects them to the public and political
world—not only through news but also through genres of fictional entertainment
such as TV-series. Moreover, it offers an empirically founded and sociologically
Nærland 3

sensitive insight into how the consumption of fictional entertainment may be rele-
vant to citizenship. Conclusively, this article critically discusses and summarizes its
main theoretical and empirical findings.

Fictional Entertainment and Citizenship

To clarify the relevance and distinctiveness of the public connection perspective, it
is first necessary to outline key existing research efforts into the relationship
between citizenship and fictional entertainment. One strand of research has
employed quantitative methods surveying links between media habits and “hard”
variables of political engagement such as voting or participating in organized poli-
tics. Although not focusing on fictional content in particular, Putnam (2000) in his
landmark-study Bowling Alone concluded that people’s increasing time spent on
television, and on entertainment in particular, constituted one important reason for
the decrease in civic participation and social capital in the United States. In this
declinist narrative, televised entertainment takes on the role of the villain. Putnam
(2000, 221) suggestively asks,

Most of the time, energy and creativity of the electronic media, however, is devoted not
to news, but to entertainment. Watching the news is not harmful to your civic health.
What about television entertainment?

Whereas several subsequent quantitative studies have found support for the argument
that high consumption of entertainment and fictional television is negatively linked to
political participation, others have nuanced this argument. Shah (1998), for instance,
found that watching science fiction, social drama, or sitcoms were linked to varying
degrees of civic engagement and trust. Hooghe (2002) found that soap opera viewers
compared with crime series viewers were prone to “mean world syndrome.” And,
Besley (2006) found that the relationship between the consumption of entertainment
television and political participation was dependent on the audience’s core values.
These studies highlight the need for approaches that are more sensitive both to the
nature of what people watch, what sorts of resources and values they inhabit, and what
they make of what they watch. By exploring peoples’ use of TV-series from a public
connection perspective, an overarching objective of this study is, thus, to re-examine
and nuance the relationship between people’s use of fictional entertainment and what
Putnam terms civic health.
Other significant efforts have been concerned with textual content (Kellner 1995;
Randall 2011; Rollins and O’Connor 2003; Van Zoonen 2005) and the ways in which
fictional television works as a carrier of, or means to subvert, dominant ideology. In
parallel, there has emerged a body of research that operates with a broader understand-
ing of citizenship and emphasizes the need for qualitative research into audiences’
uses of televised fiction. Scholars working within the framework of “Cultural
Citizenship” (Askanius 2017; Hermes 2005) argue that audiences’ engagement with
4 Television & New Media 00(0)

fictional texts is significant in forming interpretive communities, civic identities, and

critical subjectivities.
Van Zoonen’s (2005) work on audience’s engagement with popular cultural texts is
of direct relevance to the scope of this study. She argues that watching political
TV-series like The West Wing—for the audience—enabled description of what politics
is about, reflection about political dilemmas, judgments about ideological matters, and
fantasy about utopian politics. Although not focusing on people’s relationship to poli-
tics per se, Lembo’s (2000, 112) extensive ethnographic study of working-class audi-
ences’ use of television supports such claims. He argues that watching TV gives form
to free-floating ideas, which are stored in the pre- or unconscious, constituting what he
terms televisual knowledge, which in turn are mobilized to elaborate the meanings of
real-life events and media encounters.
Street et al.’s (2013) focus-group study of young peoples’ use of different entertain-
ment genres offers a recent and extensive qualitative effort to understand the civic
dimensions of peoples’ use of fictional television. In studying young people’s talk
about different entertainment genres (including soap drama, music, and computer
games), they develop a framework that aims to capture three key aspects of how young
people’s engagement with entertainment may relate to civic engagement: the cognitive
(what people learn and know about politics), the affinitive (if people feel civic belong-
ing), and the affective (if feelings animate political matters or opinions).
Whereas a public connection perspective draws on the perspectives outlined pre-
viously, it also entails some significant differences. Compared with a cultural citi-
zenship perspective, a public connection perspective does, in my interpretation,
have the strength that it foregrounds orientations toward the more politically rele-
vant aspects of public life. It is a perspective more apt to uncover links between
cultural consumption and the public world of political struggles, negotiations, and
contention. This is an interpretation that finds support in Couldry et al.’s (2010, 7)
original conceptualization, which stresses that public connection is an orientation
toward “a space where, in principle, problems about shared resources are or should
be solved . . .” (emphasis added), and that public connection (Couldry et al. 2010,
36) is “more than a matter of expressing belonging to various communities.”
Consequently, Couldry and Markham (2007) found that high consumption of celeb-
rity culture was important for audience’s social connection but did not generally
connect them to issues of political significance. Thus, compared with Street et al.’s
(2013) approach to peoples’ use of entertainment, the public connection perspec-
tive places greater emphasis on the cognitive—the attention and reflexivity people
have toward the world of politics—rather than the affinitive and affective. This is
not to say that belongings and passions are not important to the public connection
perspective—they are—but primarily when these support an orientation toward the
public world of political contestations.
Furthermore, compared with the perspectives outlined previously, the public con-
nection perspective has a clear strength in that it invites considerations of a number of
interlocking factors such as media repertoires, social biography, and everyday life
conditions. It does not aim to uncover causal relationships between single variables,
Nærland 5

such as, for instance, between consumption of TV-series and voting. Rather, the aim is
to understand how the use of media (and in this study, TV-series) is embedded in
everyday life and how such use enables or disables public connection. Consequently,
Couldry et al. (2010) define public connection as a basic orientation. Public connec-
tion, hence, extends mere attention toward issues of common concern or to politics.
Yet what such a basic orientation entails remains vague and in need for further
specification.
This study holds as a premise that such an orientation is embedded in people’s life-
style—the structured whole of their behavior and practices (Weber 1978). Public con-
nection, thus, has clear affinities with well-established concepts from the field of
cultural sociology, such as lifestyle (Bourdieu 1984) and cultural repertoires (Lamont
1992). Yet, compared with these, the public connection perspective is explicitly geared
toward understanding the civic dimensions of how media use is embedded in people’s
everyday life.

Re-conceptualizing Public Connection: Three Levels of

Orientation
Combining theoretical concepts from audience studies, cultural sociology, and demo-
cratic theory, I in the following develop a conceptual framework that aims to identify
the building blocks of the basic orientation that is public connection. It aims to clarify
how public connection—as a basic orientation—is configured, and how the practice of
watching TV-series is integrated into such configurations.
As argued by Swart et al. (2016), the orientation toward the sphere of politics is
necessarily rooted in and enabled by everyday media use, habits, and rituals. Similarly,
people’s media repertoires (Hasebrink and Popp 2006) and how these are composed
by different genres (from news to TV-series) and by different topics (from sports to
international politics) must be seen as a constitutive factor in such an orientation.
Dahlgren’s (2002) multidimensional framework of civic culture is useful in thinking
about other key factors. The two dimensions “civic practices” and “discussion” can be
regarded as observable manifestations of such an orientation (for instance, talk about
political issues or signing a petition). Moreover, not only “civic values” (for instance,
the felt obligation to be informed and to vote) but also “civic identity” and “civic
affinities” (feeling part of a polity) should be regarded as key co-constitutive factors.
Similarly, interpretative resources (and cultural capital more generally), and the dispo-
sitions and sensibilities (Bourdieu 1984) that inform audience’s engagement with
media content, must be seen as co-constitutive factors.
I argue that public connection can be fruitfully studied at the following three and
interdependent levels of orientation.

1. Manifest/observable orientation: attention, interest, reflections, discussion,

and actions concerning issues of political significance.
2. Everyday orientation: repertoires of media use and cultural consumption
(genres, topics, technologies), media habits, and practices.
6 Television & New Media 00(0)

3. “Deep” orientation: resources, values, motivations, affinities, dispositions,

sensibilities.

Together, these levels of orientation—and their associated factors—reinforce each

other in ways that strengthen or solidify a person’s public connection. Or conversely,
they are configured in patterns that weaken and disperse public connection. The task
is, thus, to explore how the practice of watching TV-series (located at the everyday
level of orientation) relates with other relevant factors, found at all three levels of
orientation.
Based on the interview and diary data, three informant cases are analyzed. The first
informant case analyzed exemplifies strong public connection, the second dispersed
public connection, and the third weak public connection. Within each case, we see
how factors located at the manifest, everyday, and “deep” level of orientation together
constitute public connection of varying strength and solidity. These cases are analyzed
in detail to highlight key varieties in how public connection is configured at the indi-
vidual level, and the complexity of such configurations. As will be detailed in the
analysis, the significance of watching TV-series becomes evident when we see this
practice as integrated in such configurations.

Method and Data

In the autumn of 2016, a team consisting of five researchers and three assistants car-
ried out in-depth semistructured interviews of fifty informants. Each informant was
interviewed twice. In between the two rounds of interviews, each informant also kept
a media diary. The interviews amounted to approximately a hundred hours of recorded
material, which was subsequently transcribed by assistants. The informants were split
across age and gender, and across social, ethno-cultural, and regional background, and
recruited to reflect the socio-demographic composition of the Norwegian population.
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). The selection of informants covered occupa-
tional categories from cultural, professional, and economic elites1; cultural, profes-
sional, and economic upper middle classes/lower middle classes2; and occupational
sub-strata of the working classes.3
In the first round of interviews (carried out in September), we investigated a broad
variety of factors, located at all three levels of orientation. These included their every-
day media habits and repertoires, interest in news, interest in topical affairs, and civic
engagement. In this round, we also investigated general cultural tastes, habits, and
general reflections and motivations concerning their own use of different forms of
expressive culture—including also TV-series. This design allowed the informants to
freely identify matters of importance to themselves, and later, for us as researchers to
explore particular cases, items, or matters.
In the month-long diary phase (carried out in October), we asked the informants to
chart both their media and cultural habits: what sort of media output they had engaged
Nærland 7

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, and in the subsequent three
weeks weekly entries. The diaries constituted a valuable source of simple self-monito-
rial data on the informants’ everyday use of media and culture, and were used instru-
mentally 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 evi-
dent that all informants watch TV-series of varying subject matters and genres on a
regular basis. Although frequency and mode of engagement vary, TV-series formed
part of all sampled informants’ media repertoires. Thus, the overall data provides
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 (conducted in November), we focused specifi-
cally on the informants’ experiences of watching TV-series. We asked the informants
to reflect on their preferences in TV-series. Furthermore, based on specific series
mentioned in their diaries, we asked the informants to reflect on why they enjoyed
that particular series. To gain insight into the informants’ interpretive engagement
with TV-series, the interview was designed to bring out the informants’ reflections
about formal qualities (such as mode of storytelling, characters, depiction of setting
and music) and also the degree to which they perceived the series to be realistic and
credible. Furthermore, we asked the informants if they experienced the particular
series to be depicting themes or topics that are problematic, unfair, or important in
any sense. We further asked whether the series had made them think about matters
in culture and society, and whether they experienced the series to have given them
any kind of insights or knowledge. This design allowed for the collection of exten-
sive and rich data about how the use of TV-series is embedded in the everyday life
of the informants.
Transcripts of first and second round of interviews for each informant, plus the
diary, were subsequently analyzed with regard to the factors located at the manifest,
every day, and deep level of orientation. The three cases analyzed in-depth in this
study were selected to represent main varieties in media repertoires and educational
background resources, and are grounded in the three main categories of media users
identified in a recent large-scale survey of media use in Norway (Moe and Kleiven
2016). The first category identified by Moe and Kleiven (2016) is the “Media plural-
ists.” This category comprises heavy users of media sources of all kinds, and is largely
composed of men and people of high education and higher age. Mads, the first case
analyzed in this study, is a typical example of a “media pluralist.” The next category,
“The TV-oriented,” watches commercial rather than public service broadcasting TV,
subscribes less to newspapers, has limited higher education, and largely comprises
women. Grete, the second case analyzed, is a typical example of this category. The last
category, “The marginal,” is largely made up by young, less educated, and to some
degree women, who consume less of a variety of media sources but use a fair amount
of online TV. Jon, the last case analyzed, exemplifies this category. The cases selected
do not offer an exhaustive account of the complexities and multitude of combinations
that characterize the overall interview material. Yet they illustrate reoccurring patterns
8 Television & New Media 00(0)

as these manifest in these three different categories of media users, and how the
engagement with TV-series is embedded in such patterns.

Strong Public Connection: The Case of Mads

In the overall informant sample, Mads emerges as a typical example of a strong con-
nector where the different levels of orientation and their various factors reinforce each
other. Mads is a forty-seven-year-old district court judge, who holds a law degree from
one of the major universities in Norway. He is married and the father of two teenage
children. He lives a busy life as a judge and father but reports that he spends a lot of
his spare time on sports, both as an exerciser and spectator. He also enjoys brewing
beer and going to the family’s winter cottage.
Mads’ manifest orientation toward the world of politics is clearly salient in both
interviews and his diary. Mads reports not only a broad and stable but also focused
interest in a number of public issues that are of a distinctly political nature. He is
among very few of the informants who reflect in detail about the negotiations of the
national budget. He keeps updated on local and national politics in general, and reports
interest in a number of more particular public issues such as juridical developments in
Norway and the EU. He is also attentive to international issues such as the peace pro-
cess in Colombia. He reports to discuss news-related issues both at home and at work,
but not publically.
Mads’ everyday orientation, his media habits, and repertoires clearly facilitate his
extensive attention to and interest in the world of politics (he calls himself a “news-
junkie”). He reads two local newspapers on a daily basis (one in print). He checks the
three major national newspapers (Aftenposten, Verdens Gang, and Dagbladet) every
morning online, and checks regularly for updates on his smart phone throughout the
day. In addition, he subscribes to a weekend edition of a national financial newspaper.
He reports to regularly read commentary and analysis, and he also occasionally visits
the online sites of international publications such as The Economist and The Guardian,
if there are particular international issues he wants to know more about. He listens to
local radio in the morning and when he comes home from work, and most nights he
watches the main news cast on TV2, one of the two national broadcasters. However,
in regularly watching the newscast on TV2, Mads is untypical of the “media plural-
ists” he exemplifies, of which a characterizing feature is a preference for The
Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK).
Whereas NRK is the the longest established broadcaster most committed to pub-
lic service broadcasting values, TV2 is partly funded by advertising and is character-
ized by a lighter content profile. He reports that he only occasionally picks up news
articles through Facebook.
At the level of “deep” orientation, he holds (civic) values and as sense of political
efficacy that can be seen to motivate the attention toward public and political affairs.
For instance, he expresses a sense of duty to keep himself informed, both as a citizen
and professionally as a judge. He thinks it is important to vote at local and national
elections. Yet, to maintain a neutral profile as a judge, he abstains from expressing
Nærland 9

political views publically and engaging in organized politics. However, he reflects

that, hypothetically, if he were to engage actively in politics, he thinks he “could make
a difference.”
Although Mads does not define himself as particularly interested in culture, he
exhibits an omnivorous cultural taste (Peterson and Kern 1996) that includes both
popular and high culture and which can be seen as indicative of high levels of cultural
capital. For instance, he likes the band Dire Straits and enjoys going to beer festivals.
At the same time, he reads novels on a regular basis of writers such as Elena Ferrante.
Although Mads enjoys culture because he thinks it is fun and relaxing (valuing its
hedonistic qualities), he also articulates a part instrumental approach to culture.
Culture for him is an important means to understand and “keep up with what’s happen-
ing in the world.” He sees culture as a means of “self-development” in that it, accord-
ing to him, “stimulates critical thinking” and that you can “learn something from it.”
This sensibility is reflected in his taste in TV series. He reflects that he likes TV-series
portraying historical events or that focuses on social and political conditions, noting
that “. . . it is a sign of quality if they offer more than entertainment and pastime.”
Implicitly Mads also places great value on realism and the ways in which series por-
tray real-life conditions truthfully. Mads watches TV-series several times a week,
alone or with his wife in the evenings on Netflix, HBO, or through Norwegian broad-
casters. He mentions favorites such as The Wire (“It was magical . . .!”), Homeland,
Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Narcos, and the Norwegian series Nobel.

Strong Public Connection and TV-series

For Mads, watching TV-series clearly provides a link to the world of politics. One such
example is his viewing of the Norwegian series Nobel. On one hand, Nobel thematizes
Norwegian war operations in Afghanistan, and on the other the private lives of the
various actors involved in these operations. When he is asked why he enjoys this par-
ticular TV-series, he reflects,

Well, it is exciting . . . the plot. And . . . it is good because I think it gives a pretty realistic
picture of Norwegian military operations in Afghanistan. It is obvious that what happens
down there . . . happens in quite a different way than how it is being portrayed here at
home, basically.

He reflects further that he as a legal practitioner found Nobel exciting because it high-
lighted the tension between the special unit in the army and the special unit in the
police.
For informants whose overall orientation resemble that of Mads’, engagement with
TV-series forms part of a robust and extensive orientation toward issues of public and
political significance. Their general interest in public and political life is clearly
reflected in their TV-series tastes, which are at least in part directed toward 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, where watching TV-series also
10 Television & New Media 00(0)

serves as a starting-point for the reflection about political matters. As such, there is a
fit between their repertoires of news usage and their repertoires of cultural consump-
tion (conceptualized at the everyday level of orientation). In turn, their practices of
using both news and TV-series embodies and enables attention to and interest in topi-
cal matters (conceptualized at the manifest level of orientation).
The civic exploits of watching TV-series also rest on factors located at the “deep”
level of orientation. First, informants who share characteristics with Mads have the
interpretative resources to connect through TV-series, including basic knowledge
about society and culture. This highlights the general significance of cultural capital as
a resource for public connection. Second, these informants have values that motivate
their use of TV-series. Their accounts of watching these series gives evidence of an
inclination to keep informed, also through entertainment. They also exhibit a general
willingness to make connections between the subject matter of the series and the world
outside. Significantly, these informants consciously identify TV-series as a means to
orient in society. To a larger degree, this group of informants justify the time spent on
TV-series in terms of learning outcomes, and are motivated by a sense of duty “to
make use” of what they watch. Their engagement with TV-series is, thus, indicative of
a more deeply seated disposition that involves a part instrumental approach to
TV-series.

Dispersed Public Connection: The Case of Grete

Our next case-informant, Grete, emerges as typical for informants where factors at all
three levels of orientation are configured in ways less supportive of an overall orienta-
tion toward issues of political significance. Grete is forty-seven years old and works as
an economist. She is married and the mother of two teenage kids. Apart from some
supplementary courses, she has no education beyond high school. She spends much of
her spare time with her dogs and at the family’s cottage.
At the manifest level of orientation, Grete is clearly attentive to public and political
issues, yet compared with Mads, her interest is more focused on local affairs, like the
buildings of roads, snow clearing, and traffic toll. However, as evident from both inter-
views and diary, she is also attentive to international issues such as the American elec-
tion (most of our informants were), and mentions the humanitarian crisis in both Syria
and Haiti as issues she has been following. She has a distinct orientation toward human
interest stories and toward issues concerning animal welfare. As she generally reflects,
“. . . news stories about animals and children.” Grete reports that she often discusses
or talks about news at work and with her family.
Compared with Mads, Grete’s everyday orientation, her news habits, and reper-
toires, are considerably less extensive. She does, for instance, not read any news in the
morning but occasionally check up on online newspapers (Verdens Gang and Bergens
Tidende) during the day. Neither does she consult international news sources. Grete
watches the TV2 news every night (the second and commercially funded public broad-
caster in Norway). She reads a regional newspaper every night, and she picks up some
news stories from her Facebook feed.
Nærland 11

Grete is an avid TV-watcher—she reports that television is switched on from eight

o’clock onward every night. She often watches TV at the same time as she knits, reads
a newspaper, or plays word-feud. She reflects that her viewing often is not very
focused. Grete’s mode of watching can be understood in terms of what Lembo (2000)
coins “undirected use,” which involves a more diffuse, open-ended, and fragmentary
use of television, geared toward relaxation. In comparison, Mads’ mode of viewing is
better described as “discrete,” involving, according to Lembo, a more selective,
focused, and instrumental use—more attentive to the narrative of the program.
At the “deep” level of orientation, Grete holds civic values that can be seen to moti-
vate her interest in public life. She is not active in organized politics but at the same
time reflects that political engagement is important. She votes in elections (“One has
to vote, otherwise one can’t complain”). Yet at the same time, she expresses a general
disregard for politicians: “. . . they talk a lot of bullshit . . . they’re cut from the same
cloth the whole bunch of them.”
Grete’s news habits, repertoires, and civic values indicate an overall orientation that
clearly extends beyond her private sphere. Yet this orientation, compared with the
previous case, is less directed toward sphere of politics (and its processes) and more
directed toward issues that are important to her in her private life. She likes to watch
reality-based entertainment programs about issues such as property investment, per-
sonal health, personal economy, and also musical talent shows (these programs figure
consistently throughout her diary). She notes, “I am generally curious about other
people’s life.” In the weekends, she also likes watching talk-shows like Skavland and
Senkveld. She reflects that she generally prefers TV2 to the NRK, because the former
is “a bit more fresh and fun” and the latter “a bit sedate and old-fashioned.” Grete’s
cultural tastes include stand-up comedy (she sometimes goes to shows), novels by the
author Dan Brown, and pop concerts.

Dispersed Public Connection and TV-series

She watches TV-series regularly, and then mainly Scandinavian crime-series like
Digte, Springflo, and Frikjent. Generally, Grete emphasizes fun and suspense as the
qualities she enjoys in the series she watches. However, when asked whether she liked
the Norwegian series Skam (Shame), she reflects,

There is a lot there that is similar to my own life . . . and my kids . . . and that’s very
important. At the same time I’m very shocked . . . but at the same time not . . . because of
all the alcohol and sex among teenagers. . . . But we thought it was quite remarkable, not
least the last season where homosexuality was made to look so normal.

As the reflection on watching the series Shame shows, she does connect the subject
matter to more general social issues such as the status of homosexuality in society.
For informants whose orientation resembles that of Grete’s, the practice of watch-
ing TV-series to a lesser degree emerges as a facilitator for an attention toward the
world of politics. This is, for one, a matter of repertoires. Crime and melodrama,
12 Television & New Media 00(0)

rather than explicit social and political thematizations are central to these infor-
mant’s repertoires of TV-series. At the same time, the use of news is less focused on
politics and more toward human interest stories. Compared with our first case exam-
ple, the repertoires of news usage and TV-series are, thus, not to the same degree set
up in ways that focus and stabilize attention to the world of politics. Second, it is a
matter of interpretative resources and sensibilities. Whereas many of the series typi-
cal for these informants are not explicitly addressing social or political problems;
they are set within a pronounced socio-political context (such as, for instance, many
of the crime series). These informants, however, exhibit limited inclination to iden-
tify and interpret these as politically or socially relevant. Tellingly, informants whose
orientation resembles that of Grete’s also rarely justify their TV-series habits in
terms of learning outcomes.

Weak Public Connection: The Case of Jon

Compared with the two preceding informants, our last informant Jon can be described
to have a weak public connection. Jon is a twenty-two-year-old, educated as a cook,
but currently studies 3D-design at college. His mother is originally from Thailand and
his father from Norway. He is single and recently moved out from his parents’ home,
and now lives in a collective with fellow students. He holds a part-time job and reports
that he spends most of his spare time on computer games.
Both interviews and his diary evidence that he has only minimal observable orien-
tation toward issues of public or political significance. Neither is his everyday orienta-
tion—his media habits and media repertoires—supporting an attention toward the
sphere of politics. Nor does Jon hold values and resources at the “deep” level of orien-
tation to facilitate a strong public connection. However, as evident also from his diary,
he keeps closely updated on developments within gaming and 3D-design through vari-
ous niche media. His news habits are limited to skimming through the headlines of the
online editions of national newspapers such as Dagbladet, VG, Nettavisen, and the
local paper Bergens Tidende. He reflects that it can be useful to read local papers “. . .
to see if there has been any road- or tunnel accidents on my way to school.”
Jon is according to himself not interested in topical affairs, or news, and he exhib-
its little knowledge about topical issues in the interviews. He reports that he never
participates in discussions about news or topical issues, at either work, with friends,
or with his family. “Discussions about stuff in society are for the grown-ups,” he
reflects. He tells that he does not care about politics and that he does not vote: “I
can’t be bothered.” He further reflects that politicians “. . . are full of empty prom-
ises” and that “. . . we are only spectators” to politics. He reflects that if he, hypo-
thetically, were to engage in political activities, it would “. . . not matter much for
anything.” However, he does reflect that it would not benefit society if everyone
were as disinterested in politics as he is.
His general cultural consumption is geared toward computer games—he is a self-
declared “gamer.” He occasionally goes to the cinema, and mentions Star Wars as a
favorite. In addition, he expresses an affinity to emo-metal music, fantasy, and
Nærland 13

animation, which altogether suggests a specific subcultural sensibility. He generally

does not articulate connections between what he watches, listens to, or plays, and the
world outside. As such, his reflections are generally limited to the aesthetical universe
of the series he watches or the games he is playing.

Weak Public Connection and TV-series

Jon represents an extreme case in the sense that very few of the other informants in the
sample share his overall disconnectedness. However, Jon’s case serves to highlight
how the use of TV-series is embedded in an overall weak public connection. John
watches TV-series on a regular basis, and mentions fantasy/historic series such as
Arrow, Vikings, and Game of Thrones as his favorites. He further notes that the quali-
ties he likes in these are the fights, narrative, curve of suspense, characters, and the
ways they are portraying history. Apart from this, Jon finds it hard to articulate any
other pleasurable aspects of viewing these series. Yet he reflects that they tell us some-
thing about human nature—“greed and egoism” in particular—and also about “injus-
tice.” However, when asked more specifically whether any of these series in any way
possible made him think about society, he reflects,

No, none of the series I have watched, at least. The chefs I used to work with, they talked
a lot about House of Cards, you know . . . How the series resembled politics and stuff . . .
But I haven’t got much to say about those kind of things. So . . . I have not seen it and
have not tried either.

As such, the quote illustrates how his TV-series tastes reflect both negative interest in
topical affairs and his self-understanding as someone detached from the world of poli-
tics. Generally, his repertories of news and cultural consumption, at the everyday level
of orientation, are not set up in a way that facilitates a stable attention toward issues of
political significance. Neither does he at the “deep” level of orientation exhibit values,
resources, or dispositions that could enable or motivate such an attention. For infor-
mants whose orientation resembles that of Jon’s, TV-series only minimally appear to
direct or sustain attention to contentious public matters, or as a starting-point for
reflection and judgment about such matters. Rather, the engagement with TV-series
appears to be both integrated into and supportive of an overall orientation away from
matters of political significance. Generally, these informants exhibit limited inclina-
tion to connect forms of entertainment to matters in society. As such, this study also
re-actualizes the significance of habitus (Bourdieu 1984) for public connection: for
some, engaging with TV-series as a means to connect to society is naturalized as a
morally desirable practice, for others it is not.

Patterns of Connection
The analysis of these three informant cases has shown how repertoires of media use
and cultural consumption—including those of TV-series—together with values,
14 Television & New Media 00(0)

Table 1. Main Characteristics of Strong, Dispersed, and Weak Public Connection.

Dispersed public Weak public

Strong public connection
Manifest/ Broad, stable, but also
observable focused attention to
orientation issues of distinctly
political nature
Everyday Extensive news habits
orientation
Omnivorous and
selective media
repertoires (news and
culture).
“Deep” Comprehensive
orientation knowledge of politics
and interpretative
resources
Duty to keep informed
and participate
Sense of political efficacy
Instrumental/discrete
watching
TV-series Approach TV-series as
and public politically relevant
connection
Reinforcing fit between
news TV-series
repertoires
TV-series solidifies
orientation toward
politics
connection connection
Dispersed attention Limited/no attention
(human interest to the sphere of
+ politics + local/ politics
private matters)
Stable yet less Minimal news habits
extensive news habits
Media repertoires Niche-oriented
partly directed media repertoires
toward
entertainment and
human interest
Partial knowledge, Limited knowledge
lesser interpretative about politics and
resources interpretative
resources
Duty to keep informed Civic awareness,
and participate, yet yet disengaged.
disregard of politicians Negative sense of
political efficacy
Hedonistic/undirected Hedonistic/Niche-
watching oriented watching
Limited inclination to Apolitical yet moral
identify and interpret readings of TV-
TV-series as series
politically relevant
Taste in TV-series Taste in TV-series
resonates with reflects negative
human interest news interest in politics
orientations
TV-series sustains TV-series reinforces
dispersed public orientation away
connection from politics

resources, and dispositions constitute public connection of varying strength and solid-
ity. The following table (Table 1) summarizes in a simplified manner the main charac-
teristics of strong, dispersed, and weak public connection as exemplified in the
analysis. The table highlights key divergences at manifest, everyday, and “deep” levels
of orientation, and the function of TV-series for each of the types of public connection
analyzed in this study.
Whereas the cases analyzed in this study are unique both in terms of their biogra-
phies and their particular repertoires, habits, interests, and so forth, they also typify
overall tendencies in the interview sample. Most informants in the sample with a
Nærland 15

strong public connection, for instance, share characteristics with our first example,
Mads. They have a focused interest in politics underpinned by comprehensive yet
selective news repertoires and habits. They have a sense of duty to keep informed and
often an instrumental approach to their media use. Most of the strong connectors, like
Mads, inhabit high volumes of cultural capital and have high socioeconomic status.
There is also an overrepresentation of men among the strong connectors.
Similarly, informants with a less focused and solidified public connection, which
count for the majority of the informants in the sample, share key characteristics with
Grete. They have an orientation that clearly transcends their private world and encom-
passes issues of public interest. Their interest in politics is stable yet partial; their
media repertoires are to a larger degree centered on entertainment and human-interest
content. Their media use is hedonistically rather than instrumentally motivated. Many
of these informants are women, and compared with the strong connectors, they typi-
cally enjoy lower socioeconomic status and possess less cultural capital.
Jon, the last case analyzed, represents an extreme case—he stands out as the infor-
mant that was overall most detached from the world of politics. However, the infor-
mants from the sample that could be described to have a weak public connection share
key characteristics with him: limited interest in politics, limited news repertoires, and
a sense of exclusion from or indifference to the world of politics. Most of these infor-
mants are young people under thirty who possesses limited educational and economi-
cal resources, and who have strong niche interests—be it sports or computer games.

Nuancing the Picture: The Role of TV-series

The examples analyzed in this study do by no means exhaust the multitude of varia-
tions in how audiences use TV-series, or the role of TV-series for people’s public con-
nection. There are, for instance, several informants whose orientation could be
described as “hyper connective,” in which TV-series of all kinds are interpreted as
politically or ideologically laden. Public connection through TV-series is not simply a
matter of watching TV-series about politics. Several informants in the sample do
indeed interpret genres such as fantasy and science fiction as social and political com-
mentary. For these informants, such genres function as starting-points for the reflec-
tion on matters of societal or political significance. The same is true for other genres
that are not explicitly addressing political issues, be it relational comedies or melo-
drama. Yet this underlines the significance of interpretative resources and dispositions
for public connection.
Nonetheless, TV-series that explicitly address political conditions do emerge as a
resource for public connection—most often in the form of social or political realism.
For many of the strong connectors in the sample, the taste for political realism both
embodies and augments a general orientation toward the world of politics and, hence,
serve to solidify public connection. Also for informants whose overall orientation does
not constitute a strong public connection, the engagement with political realism
appears to provide them with a link to the world of politics in the absence of other
connective practices.
16 Television & New Media 00(0)

Important to note, there are many informants with a strong public connection who
hardly engage with TV-series at all. For these informants, public connection is facili-
tated by other factors such as extensive and focused news habits and active political
engagement. Often, these informants also have occupations that necessitates attention
toward the world of politics. Watching TV-series is, thus, not a prerequisite for public
connection. Rather, and as is a key argument in this study, in tandem with other prac-
tices, and most importantly news habits, TV-series habits may solidify or deepen a
person’s public connection.
Furthermore, there are limitations to the conceptual approach employed in the
analysis that warrants critical comment. The conceptual approach can be described
as “systemic” in the sense that it foregrounds relationships between pre-defined
factors (such as repertoires, values, resources), rather than textual engagement in
itself. As shown in the analysis, the approach does entail a sensitivity to the reflec-
tions and experiences people have when engaging with TV-series. Yet it may leave
out more subtle but important dimensions. One such dimension is how audience’s
nonarticulated identification with fictional characters in TV-series may also involve
identification with implicit political positions. Another and related dimension is the
ways in which engaging with the fictional universe of TV-series may involve con-
siderations of a moral nature. These considerations may be described as pre-politi-
cal and are not explicitly concerned with political issues or processes. Yet such
considerations are relevant for public connection as these draw on and address
collective ethics, which in turn may translate into politics. These limitations become
apparent in the case of Jon, our last informant case. His observable orientation
toward the world of politics is very limited (he does not follow news, he is not
expressively interested in any public issues, he does not vote, etc.). Yet his engage-
ment with fantasy series involves identification with characters and considerations
about injustice and greed.
Moreover, there are methodological challenges involved in researching the public
connection of a sociodemographically diversified audience, and the ways in which
methods may prefigure the mobilization of class (Skeggs et al. 2008). Again, the
case of Jon makes for an illuminating example. In research interviews, Jon exhibits
very limited inclination and ability to articulate connections between his engage-
ment with TV-series and the public and political world. The lack of articulation,
however, does not necessarily mean that such connections do not take place. Hence,
to capture subtler yet significant dimensions of televisual engagement and to move
beyond classed informant articulations, it is important that the conceptual approach
employed in this study is complemented by methodological approaches that com-
bine sensitivity to both textual content and social biography with fine-grained obser-
vation of textual engagement.

Conclusion
Notwithstanding these limitations, the cases presented in this study highlight the need
to study the practice of watching TV-series as integrated into the complex of the
Nærland 17

practices, resources, and values that constitute a person’s basic orientation toward the
world of politics. This study has shown that when conceptually sensitized, the public
connection perspective offers a distinct approach to the study of audience’s engage-
ment with fictional entertainment—and the civic dimensions of such use.
The study has shown that engagement with TV-series offers more than identifica-
tion with interpretative communities. In tandem with other practices, the viewing of
TV-series enable interest in and attention toward issues that we commonly character-
ize as “political.” On one hand, this study, thus, nuances the rather bleak account by
Putnam (2000). The study has made evident that, given favorable combinations of
repertoires of media use, habits, and rituals, alongside values, resources, and disposi-
tions, the viewing of TV-series clearly constitutes a link to the world of politics and a
resource for what Putnam termed civic health. On the other hand, the findings in this
study problematize Van Zoonen’s (2005) somewhat celebratory account of the gains
audiences have from engaging with TV-series. Whereas she argues that engagement
with TV-series enables people to reflect on, make judgments, and fantasize about poli-
tics, this study makes evident that such affordances hinge on both repertoires and
background resources—which are, at least in part, socially conditioned and unevenly
distributed.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

Notes
1. That is, professors, artists; doctors, judges, pilots; and high-capital-income executives and
managers.
2. That is, upper middle: teachers with BA degree, lecturers, journalists; consultants, engi-
neers, lower executives; executives and medium-capital-income managers in private
sector. Lower middle: primary school teachers, social workers; nurses, first secretaries;
small-capital-income managers in the private sector.
3. That is, skilled workers, unskilled and partly skilled workers, farmers, foresters, fishermen,
and welfare transfers.

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Author Biography
Torgeir Uberg Nærland is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Information Science and
Media Studies at the University of Bergen. His research explores the intersections between
aesthetics and politics. He is currently focusing on audiences’ engagement in popular culture
and the civic dimensions of such engagement. He has previously published in journals such as
Popular Communication, The Javnost/Public, Popular Music, and European Journal of
Cultural Studies.

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