International Audience's Timed Comment Use on Viki: Talking about a K-Drama while Still Watching It

Abstract

This research explores new ways of consuming digital culture by international K-Drama audiences. For this, the research methodology of social viewing and the traditions of audience studies, especially on international reception of K-Drama, have been integrated. Social viewing is a new and technology-savvy way of watching television: the traditional media is enjoyed while viewers simultaneously participate in a conversation about the television program they are watching. The research object, Viki, is a social viewing platform that provides online streaming of K-Drama as well as a service called Timed Comment that enables viewers to comment on the specific moments of the drama while they are still watching it. Through this service, viewers contribute to co-production of meaning for the drama text as active consumers

thus, timed comment can be seen as a form of participatory culture. For this research, 3 episodes have been randomly selected from each of the two K-Dramas, Pinocchio and Fated to Love You, and all timed comments on the selected episodes have been collected. 12,540 timed comments were then coded into the three main categories: meta-communication, narrative-related communication, and production-related communication. The frequency of timed comment in each category has been accessed based on the sequence of drama. The results demonstrate dominantly high frequency for narrative-related communication

this indicates that the timed comment is a reaction to a drama that is written in a fluctuating state between immersion and distancing. Though not unique to timed comment community, the construction of K-Drama metatext has been observed in this research. In a short comment that is comprised of only few sentences, viewers draw references and exhibit vast background knowledge from a plethora of other media products of East Asia and their own locality. Viewers actively employ K-Dramaland as a horizon of expectation for interpretation of K-Drama as well. These findings reinforce previous researches by demonstrating that international audience of K-Drama is a group of cultural omnivores who consume a variety of cultural products and create a new digital play culture. In Viki community, entry-level viewers who just started to watch their first K-Drama co-exist with heavy-viewers who watch almost everything that comes out regardless of the genre. These diverse group of audience interact on a special social viewing interface called timed comment. Therefore, Vikis timed comment should be interpreted as a audiences space for practicing participatory culture.

Keyword: Viki, Timed Comment, K-Drama, Social Viewing, Interface, Participatory Culture, Cultural Omnivore, International Audience Student Number: 2013-23778