Watching Foreign TV in an Age of Online Sharing: the Cultural Implications of Cross‐Border Television Experience
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Watching Foreign TV in an Age of Online Sharing: The Cultural Implications of Cross‐border Television Experience Yu‐Kei Tse Goldsmiths, University of London 2016 Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Department of Media and Communications 1 Declaration I hereby declare that this submission is entirely my own work and that any information and/or material derived from other sources has been indicated and duly acknowledged in the thesis. Signature: ____________________________ Date: _______________________ 2 Acknowledgements I wish to express my greatest gratitude to my supervisor Professor David Morley for always giving me invaluable, rigorous and insightful advice over the years. His supervision helped me to develop the abilities I needed for my PhD study. It is only through his continuous encouragement, support and guidance that I was able to finish my PhD program at Goldsmiths and keep my research interest in examining the media’s roles in our lives. His painstaking corrections and comments throughout his reading of the several versions of this dissertation have been essential for its completion. I would also like to thank Professor Nick Couldry, who was my co-supervisor in the early stage of my study. His comments inspired me to develop my PhD research project into its present form. He was also instrumental in helping me to explore different research interests beyond my dissertation. I am incredibly fortunate to have Dr. Rayna Denison and Dr. James Bennett as my examiners. They generously gave me their invaluable, intelligent and inspiring remarks and feedback, while providing me with the guidance and confidence that helped me to improve my work. I truly appreciate their encouraging messages and support. Professor Marianne Franklin and Professor Natalie Fenton rendered me the opportunities that helped me to participate in and substantially benefit from various academic activities within and outside the department. I deeply appreciate their kindness and generosity. Meanwhile, I am also grateful to Dr. Shinji Oyama, Dr. Hsiao-Wen Lee and Dr. Dawei Guo for being not only good mentors but also good friends to me throughout these years. This dissertation would not have been completed without the help from all my interviewees. I thank them for being so willing to spend their time and share their stories with me. They provided me with the most significant and interesting insights I could ever ask for. I am also truly thankful to the friends who kept helping me to find interviewees when I had difficulty in recruiting research subjects. 3 To my copy-editor Tadgh O’Sullivan, who helped me tremendously in improving my writing and always provided me with insightful comments on my work, I am immensely grateful. My friends played an important role in making my PhD life more colourful. The friends I met in London made London much more homely to me than it was when I first arrived. My friends in Taiwan also gave me their generous support and the warmest welcome whenever I was back there. I am grateful to all of them. I owe my parents and my brother immeasurably for providing me with their endless and unconditional love and support over the years. They never stop believing in me. I would not have been able to gather the courage and strength to complete my study without their warmest love and encouragement. I am incredibly lucky to have them as my family members. 4 Abstract In recent years, unofficial and/or illegal forms of online file sharing have been increasingly used by audiences worldwide to consume foreign TV programmes which would not previously have been available to them at the time when such shows were first broadcast in their original regions. This form of consumption shortens the time-and-space gap between foreign broadcast and local consumption, highlighting audiences’ desires for borderless, transnational viewing. Taking Taiwanese audiences as an example, this research studies the implications which transnational foreign television consumption via online sharing may bring. Based on in-depth interviews with thirty-six audience members conducted from 2010 to 2011, I focus on two issues: 1. The meaning of television for its audiences: This research examines how and why audiences employ online sharing to bypass temporal, spatial and legal constraints on consuming foreign programmes, and elaborates the ways in which such consumption is becoming an emerging norm of television experience. It sheds light on how our existing understandings have changed, regarding what is meant by “watching TV”, and what television’s role is in providing a sense of liveness, shaping audiences’ sense of social togetherness and their cultural identity. 2. Transnational media flows and cultural power relationships: This research looks at the implications of this cross-border Taiwanese consumption of television for transnational media flows in the post-colonial East Asian contexts. It examines cultural power relationships between East Asian countries, as well as those between the East and the West. Furthermore, by elaborating how audiences’ sense of co-temporality with (and understanding of) other cultures develop via their consumption, this research analyses how such consumption shapes the direction of media flows and cultural power relationships of Taiwan with other countries and thus offers a contemporary understanding of what television means as a cultural form, and what features television audiences have, in the post-network era today. 5 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 9 I. Preamble 9 II. Research Questions 14 III. Studying Media with a Historical Perspective 33 IV. Overview of the Remaining Chapters 40 Chapter 2: Locating Television in the Context of Taiwan 45 I. Historical and Geopolitical Backgrounds of Taiwan 45 II. Development of the Taiwanese Media Environment 49 III. Japan Fever and Korean Wave as Regional Cultural Flows 59 IV. The Legal Context Shaping the Consumption of Foreign Media in 68 Taiwan and East Asia Chapter 3: Television as Technology and Cultural Form in the Online and Cross‐border Viewing Context 75 I. Television and the Notion of Togetherness 77 II. Television’s Notion of Liveness in the Online Setting 82 III. Debates on Media and Cultural Flows 88 IV. Media and National Identity in the Global Age 96 V. Dubbing, Subtitling and Their Alteration of Foreignness 103 VI. Television, Co‐temporality, and Cross‐cultural Relationships 106 Chapter 4: Methodology and Research Design 114 I. Ethical Concerns 114 II. Online Ethnography and Its Implications for This Study 116 III. Applying Online and Offline Methods 120 IV. Research Design and Conduction of the Interviews 124 V. Description of the Sample 135 VI. Concluding Remarks 143 Chapter 5: Social Togetherness via Online Viewing 145 I. Personal and Shared Screens in the Household 145 II. Pleasure of Personalising Viewing 150 III. Conflicts Between Personalised Viewing and Social Togetherness 158 6 IV. Live Broadcast in the Context of Online Viewing 163 V. Togetherness via Time and Space‐shifting 168 VI. Concluding Remarks 178 Chapter 6: The Sense of Coevalness in the Consumption of Foreign TV via Online Sharing 182 I. Live Connectivity to Foreign Locales with Re‐streaming TV 183 II. Real‐time Discussion Threads as a Form of Live Event 195 III. Online Platforms’ Promotion of Foreign Schedules and Ratings 200 IV. Living within Dual TV Times 208 V. Ratings in Japan as a Taiwanese Media Sensation 223 VI. Conditions Complicating Relations Between Access to Foreign 232 Cultures and Coevalness VII. Concluding Remarks 238 Chapter 7: The Perception of the Local and the Foreign 241 I. Foreignness as an Attraction 244 II. Dubbing vs. Subtitling: Domesticating vs. Foreignising? 251 III. Maintaining Foreignness with Cultural Capital: Access to 260 “Raw” Texts IV. Embodying Foreignness and Identity Shaping 266 V. The Role of Chinese File Sharing in Taiwanese Online Consumption 278 of Foreign TV VI. Korea as a Significant Foreign Other 293 VII. Transnational Cultural Relationships and Local Identity 300 VIII. Concluding Remarks 310 Chapter 8: Conclusion 313 I. Review and Summary 313 II. Television in a Global and Digital Context: Border and Power 323 Geometry III. Limitations of This Study and Suggestions for Future Studies 330 Bibliography 337 Appendix 1: Outline of the Interviews 362 Appendix 2: Interviewees’ Backgrounds 364 7 List of Tables Table 4.1 The Age Groups of the Subjects 137 Table 4.2 Subjects’ Education Background 138 Table 4.3 Subjects’ Access to and Control over Television 142 Table 6.1 Comparison of Names of the Days of the Week 211 List of Figures Figure 1.1 YouTube Screenshot 20 Figure 6.1 The Index Page of Tokyolive.tv 187 Figure 6.2 The Post Proposing to Start Live Threads 196 Figure 6.3 Part of the Ongoing Threads 197 Figure 6.4 The Index Page of the BBS Board Reality Show on PTT 201 Figure 6.5 The Index Page of The Little Otaku’s Weekly Drama Journal 202 Figure 6.6 Sohu’s Weekly Calendar of the Latest American TV Series 204 Figure 6.7 The Rating Chart of Japanese Dramas in 2012 Summer 207 Season on the BBS Board Japandrama on PTT Figure 6.8 The Ratings Chart for Current Korean Dramas Winter 208 2014‐2015 on Dorama.info. Figure 6.9 Evan’s Hand‐written Timetable of the American TV Series 220 Figure 6.10 TVBS’s News Item Regarding Hanzawa Naoki on 23 Sept. 2013 226 Figure 6.11 ETTV’s News Item Regarding Hanzawa Naoki on 23 Sept. 2013 226 Figure 6.12 Reaction to the Bogus Rating on PTT on 23 Sept. 2013 226 Figure 6.13 Online Coverage of the Official Rating on 24 Sept. 2013 by 227 Apple Entertainment Figure 6.14 ETTV Coverage of Hanzawa Naoki on 24 Sept. 2013 227 8 Chapter 1: Introduction I.