The End of Stigma? Understanding the Dynamics of Legitimization in the Context of TV Series Consumption

This research focuses on the consumption practices and meanings associated with television series. Specifically, we investigate the tensions in consumer narratives arising from traditionally negatively-laden television consumption and the positive evaluations of current television series viewing, gained from increasing legitimization and normalisation processes. We show that these tensions generate complex dynamics through which legitimization is accompanied by the reproduction of existing stigmas and the creation of new stigmas. TV watchers have been stigmatized for a long time. Collins (1993) reports that television has traditionally been regarded by scholars as the least legitimate form of popular culture, judged as a “bad object” despite increasingly sophisticated textual analyses and equally sophisticated audience research. Lodziak’s assertion (1986) that heavy TV consumers cannot afford to do anything else is illustrative of this stigma. These early findings are echoed in Mitu (2011)’s recent work which shows that television is still regarded as a low-quality medium nowadays. However, while television remains stigmatized, TV series are widely popular. In 2011, fiction was rated the top genre world wide (41% of the best performing programmes), and among fiction, TV series were the best performing format, accounting for 69% of the fiction entries (Cassi, 2012). Some TV series like Madmen have even acquired the status of cultural object in highly educated spheres (Glevarec, 2012). This suggests that perceptions towards TV watchers, or at least towards individuals who watch certain TV programs, are gradually shifting.