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Audience experience of television adaptation of viral social media content in Indonesia
Abstract
Background: Transformation of the media industry due to digitalization has encouraged television to adapt viral social media content through repackaging practices as a strategy to maintain relevance and institutional legitimacy. This phenomenon not only changes media production practices but also the audience's viewing experience in a converged media ecosystem. Purpose: This study aims to uncover the essence of the viewing experience when social media content is recontextualized in a television format. Methods: This study uses a qualitative approach within the social phenomenology tradition to understand viewers' subjective experiences in interpreting television programs that adapt viral social media content. Data were obtained through interviews with 25 informants and observations of media programs. Informants were selected purposively based on their experience watching viral content-based television programs and active social media use. Results: The findings illustrate that the viewing experience is formed within the audience's lifeworld structure that has been influenced by previous digital media consumption. Television is interpreted as a space for recontextualization, symbolic legitimation, and reinterpretation of digital content. Audiences not only reconsume viral content, but also compare, interpret, and verify meaning through the institutional authority of television. The viewing experience is also social and intersubjective through collective discussions in everyday environments. Conclusion: The integration of viral social media content into television results in a transformation of the viewing experience that is cross-platform, where television functions as an institution of legitimacy of meaning in the convergent media ecosystem. Implications: Television adaptation strategies not only impact media production, but also shape the structure of audience experience and belief in media reality in the digital era.
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