The devil’s edit in Korean reality TV and audience and fan engagement : a case study of Street Woman Fighter (2021)

Sammanfattning: This thesis explores the new and contemporary audiences and fans’ studies with the genre of reality competition shows, using the Korean show Street Woman Fighter (2021) as a case study. A qualitative interview method was used to collect the empirical data of the study, and qualitative data analysis was employed to understand the data. The research takes the standpoint theory (Harding, 2008) to design the approach to the research, and it positions the researcher’s gaze as Korean female audience of SWF. The thesis aims to examine a spectrum of engagement (Hill, 2019) by audiences and fans with SWF and attempts to investigate the power relations between audiences and fans and their criticism of producers and positive support for contestants regarding gender representation on SWF. This study shows the active audience’s and fan’s positive engagement, with the contestants in the micro-level engagement such as tagging, watching, re-watching, commenting, and recommendation. It also reveals a high degree of negativity toward the producers because of the frequent adaptation of K-pop, celebrities, and idols to the show. This research illustrates the female contestants depicted by the devil’s edit in a gender-biased way. The thesis elaborates on the power relations between the fans and audiences, contestants and producers of the show and the push-pull dynamic (Hill, 2015) is extended to the broader range, including contestants as key agencies. It focuses on how each agency shows its ‘empowerment’ (Andrejevic, 2004 & Napoli, 2011) in the complex power dynamic, and social media works as a platform for empowerment. In specific, the study argues that the audiences and fans perform as ‘produsers’ (Lind, 2020) by creating new meaning ‘paratext’ (Gray, 2010) surrounding the show. As a result, the intense negativity on the producers and criticism of negative gender representation combines and affects their self-identification as fans. This study contributes to media and communication studies as a new and contemporary study on audience and fans’ engagement with negative gender representation in Korean reality competition shows.