“Sardonic Humor is My Way of Relating to the World”: Audience Interaction With Teen Television, 2007 - Present

Abstract

There is a lengthy history of teenagers on television, and of teenagers as a television viewing audience. Over the past decade, developments in how technology allows audiences to interact with television have affected both the structure and content of television that features and caters to teenagers. Using specific texts (most notably Gossip Girl (The CW, 2007-2012), Riverdale (The CW, 2017-), and Heathers (Paramount, 2017)) and the paratexts formed by audience members in their interaction online with the original texts and their creators, this thesis seeks to understand how teen television has adapted itself to fit the models created by the internet and its users and the nature of its potential repercussions for the genre and for television in general.