Teenager and serial fiction

Teen series are a «wide range of global television manifestations considered for adolescents because of their content, their target, their programming context, or their reception demographics» (Raya, Sanchez-Labella, & Duran, 2018). They are not new (García-Muñoz and Fedele, 2011; Guarinos, 2009; Morduchowicz, 2008; Pasquier, 1997) and have been studied from different perspectives (Vázquez-Herrero et al., 2019; Escalas, 2017; Tapia Frade and Martín Guerra , 2016; Josefa and Heras, 2016; Rios, 2015; Del Moral Pérez and Villalustre Martínez, 2015; Aubrey, Behm-Morawitz, and Kim, 2014b; Whiteside, Hardin, Decarvalho, Carillo, and Smith, 2013; García García, 2011 ; Damme and Bauwel, 2010; Feasey, 2006).

The novelty is the studies that explore, in teen series, how digital and online technology, which evolves rapidly, contributes to changes in behaviors or appropriation of these audiences of the audiovisual narrative. Series such as One Tree Hill (2003-2012), Gossip Girl (2007-2012), The Vampire Diaries (2009-2017), Riverdale (2017), 90210 (2008-2013), or Euphoria (2019) are some of the series that have captured

the interest of the teen/young public and the academic world (Becattini, 2018; Ryalls, 2016; Fradegradi (2016); Santandreu Aranda, 2015; Langue, 2011; Van Damme, 2010;

García-Muñoz and Fedele, 2011; Palin, 2009; Guarinos, 2009).

Audiences assume implicit reading pacts that transform the worlds of fiction into reality (García-Noblejas, 2017). Fans of a teen series are a type of spectator who immerses themselves in fiction and at the same time participates and interacts in online environments, contributing their evaluations of what they experience watching the series. Cyberspace becomes an ecosystem shared with others to comment on these experiences: either because of the subject, the euphemistic anonymity, because of the profiles that interact, or because of the fact of expressing an opinion or specific information. Without the need for the person to have to expose their identity on the internet (Gerrad, 2017). The important thing is to be part of the network.

Internet activities "are linked to the creation of meaning" (Tortajada and Willem, 2019, p. 101). In serial fiction (Carrión Domínguez, 2019) it is necessary to incorporate the interpretations and appropriations that audiences make of these contents. Additionally, apart from the changes that technology and the audiovisual industry are bringing to the conception of audiovisual productions and their diffusion and business models, the online environment can also be conceived as «a space for the social construction of identities and communities” (Tortajada and Willem, p. 101).

The audience appropriates the narrative, interprets it, contributes meanings, and reconstructs meanings in the context of interactivity that virtual communities facilitate. Another issue is the depth of the debate during the time these communities are active on the network. The topics, sub-topics, characters, or the identification of the audiences' individual realities with fiction will be the argument to visualize specific series (Aubrey et al., 2014b; Navarro-Abal and Climent-Rodríguez, 2014; Navarro-Abal, Climent -Rodríguez, and Fernández-Garrido, 2012; Figuera-Maz, Tortajada, and Araüna, 2008). The existence of a certain degree of engagement that the audience can achieve and maintain regarding serial fiction can be considered.

The audience from the perspective of transmedia narrative

This capacity or potential of the audience to assume an active stance with greater emphasis, frequency, or depth in online environments is one of the ways for the expansion of the stories raised by the transmedia narrative (Jenkins, 2010). Taking into account the current online context -mobility, social media, hyperconnectivity, or the wide diversity of interactive platforms- the challenge is how the audience manages their opinions and in which virtual communities or channels they are shared.

Depending on the type of fiction, a specific audience profile is configured. Carrión Domínguez (2019) refers to the Quality TV series as «a specific typology of series, which began in the 80s and which exploded at the end of the century, until reaching our days turned into a sociocultural phenomenon unimaginable forty years ago» (p.

113). Series like Hill Street Blues (1981) or ER (1994). Carrión Domínguez updates the criteria that Robert J. Thompson used for the analysis of Quality TV. We selected the following contributions related to audiences: a) from a sophisticated and elitist audience, thanks to technology and another vision of the business model, at present,

«the audience they are targeting, in general, is much wider» (p. 116); b) of a reduced audience has been reached, in some series, massive audiences due to three factors: audience loyalty (Fringe), quality (The Wire), and industry recognition (Mad Men) (p. 116); c) «their plots seek controversy, they have a social implication» (p. 117).

In the new types of audience in cyberspace, and specifically in transmedia proposals such as El Ministerio del Tiempo, Scolari and Establés start from Hill's ideas: they focus the analysis on fans, «not only as possible professional creators of media products but also in their role when questioning the measurements of the audiences of series, which can be considered cult TV». That is, "they have a specialized and minority audience" (Scolari and Establés, 2017, p. 1014).

How audiences express themselves evolve and are segmented leaving behind the traditional characteristics of television; In this audiovisual framework of reference, young people assume audiovisual consumption and their participation, as an audience, with other criteria: «They are interested in new transmedia experiences that combine the different prisms in which their routine runs such as social media, the web, or gamification, and that their message-producing capacity is favored

»(Vázquez-Herrero, González-Neira, and Quintas-Froufe, 2019, p. 75). In short, they integrate them into their daily lives (Rodríguez Illera, Martínez Olmo, and Galván, 2019; Fuenmayor and García Aranguren, 2018).

Series are not viewed as before. It was usual to have to wait a few days or a few weeks to see the episodes. Access is currently possible to all episodes creating the need, anxiety, or opportunity, to view them as soon as possible to discuss them with other followers of the series. Comments that are transferred to social media or other online spaces.

From the perspective of a multiplatform narrative proposal, in which the viewer produces content from the experience with the audiovisual product, some results value the conception of audiovisual productions as narrative units that transcend the audiovisual discourse, being the audience itself who generates this "spreadability" (García Pastor, 2018). In large part because producers and directors consider the fans and the general audience as participants in the stories. The audiovisual narrative takes forms yet to be defined and the limits between transmedia, crossmedia, multiplatform narratives, or any other that may arise generate methodological problems for their study.

Antonié Vallet (1977) was visionary when he pointed out that in the transformation that society was undergoing there was a fundamental question:

«What is the language of man, of today's society? » (Vallet, p. 9). His fundamental

approach to «total language» is that it was a "verb-audio-visual language" (p. 18). The evolution of technology and narratives make this "total language" more complex. Along these lines, the need to train young people in reading and understanding the new codes is evident. Incorporate these topics into teaching (Sáiz Serrano and Parra Monserrat, 2017; Sánchez Escámez and Baena Sánchez, 2016; Aierbe-Barandiaran and Oregui-González, 2016; Llorent and Marín, 2013; Aguaded Gómez, 2005).

Transmedia narrative contributes to a renewed approach to audiovisual narrative and in which the elements of fiction are dispersed, systematically, through multiple channels to "create a unified and coordinated entertainment experience" (Jenkins, 2010, p. 944). Apart from these specific characteristics, transmedia experiences are aimed at the audience interested in the story that is being told; "To a very specific figure: the fan" (García Pastor, 2018, p. 71). This way of understanding stories influences other creative contexts by establishing different ways of telling those stories (Trillo-Domínguez, Del Moral, and Sedeño-Valdellós, 2019; Sidorenko Bautista, Calvo Rubio and Cantero de Julián, 2018; Julián Gonzales, 2018).

Henry Jenkins presents evidence of a transmedia generation that normally assumes the keys of a participatory culture that contributes its own vision of society in coexistence with its personal culture: «In countries across the globe, they combine the local traditions of popular culture with the forms of digital expression now accessible globally in ways that previous generations could not have imagined» (Jenkins, March 2010). The transmedia context requires collaborative and active participation to expand the story among the users who interact in digital spaces, a characteristic that is well received by teens and young people in a society in which interconnectivity is a constant demand.

Literacy is proposed following the multimodal reality of today. Literacy, conceived as the action of 'alphabetizing', 'teach someone to read or write', is out of date: «If traditional literacy was book-centered or, in the case of media literacy, mostly television-centred, then multimodal literacy places digital networks and interactive media experiences at the centre of its analytical and practical experience» (Scolari, 2018, p. 15).

Scolari provides evidence of the importance for teens and young people of the ability to produce, exchange, and consume content; and, all this, within the framework of globalized cyberspace accessible through mobile platforms: «The Transmedia Literacy team confirmed the existence of a broad spectrum of situations, skills, strategies, content production/sharing/consumption processes and alternative uses of media. Transmedia skills represent a diverse and uneven topography» (Scolari, 2018, p. 18). In this scenario, social media are channels that contribute to broadening the transmedia experience and to somehow value the participation of young people on the Internet. A «new derived cultural product» even arises from two or more fictional worlds: crossovers (Guerrero-Pico and Scolari, 2016, p. 187).

In this line, the data indicates that young people find a space to meet in social media: "The common thread of our social practices is narrative and its predominant form of discourse is what we call transmedia" (Fuente Prieto, Lacasa Díaz, and Martínez-Borda, 2019, p. 176). Social networks are potential spaces for participation as evidenced by research on audience and fan behavior on social media (Cortés Gómez, Martínez Borda, and De la Fuente Prieto, 2016) (Lacalle and Castro, 2018), Facebook (López and Fernández, 2016) (Gómez Rubio and López Vidaldes, 2015) (Tur-Viñes and Rodríguez Ferrándiz, 2014), YouTube (Sánchez-Olmos, 2016) (Feijoo and Pavez, 2019); Twitter (Donstrup, 2019), or other platforms with online fan communities (Zhang and Cassany, 2019).

Perception of the seasons

Viewers identified differences between the first and second seasons. The search records of the series in Google reflect this (see Graph 1): April 9th, 2017 (first season), and May 20th, 2018 (second season) are the most representative search peaks. The first season registered a greater number of days of interest since its premiere (March 31st, 2017) compared to the second season and its premiere (May 18th, 2018)

Source: Google Trends

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes (see Image 1), gives the first season a 79% critic rating and an 80% audience score; regarding the second season, the difference is significant: 25% (critic), 52% (audience). Metacritic gives the first season a score of 64 out of 100; to the second, 49 out of 100.

In Weighted Average Ratings (IMDb) the general score of the two seasons reached

8.0 (see Graph 2). However, the second season (7.6) did not reach the level of acceptance that the first one had (8.4). The episode (season 1) with the lowest score was the third with 7.9. In the second season, one episode obtained the same score (episode six) and three obtained a higher rating (episodes nine, eleven, and twelve).

In a longitudinal analysis, the following can be considered: both seasons have improved ratings as the episodes progressed. It is pertinent to highlight the ratings of the last episode: a) in the first season, it was the best-rated episode, leaving the series at a high point of expectation regarding the second season; b) in the second season, the last episode obtained the worst score; not only in comparison with the episodes of the second season but also with those of the first season.Comparison of the ratings of the episodes of the first and second season. The IMDb Parent Guide rates the following categories: Sex & Nudity (severe),

Table 1: Violence & Gore (severe), Profanity (severe), Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking (moderate), Frightening & Intense Scenes (severe). Consultation made: July 10th, 2019.

	10										Episodio 7 2017
	9
	8
	7
	6
	5
	4
	3
	2
	1
	0
		Episodio 1	Episodio 2	Episodio 3	Episodio 4		Episodio 5		Episodio 6					Episodio 8		Episodio 9		Episodio 10		Episodio 11		Episodio 12		Episodio 13
													2018
		Episode 1	Episode 2	Episode 3		Episode 4		Episode 5		Episode 6		Episode 7			Episode 8		Episode 9		Episode 10		Episode 11		Episode 12		Episode 13
2017		8.3	8.1	7.9		8.1		8.2		8.0		8.3			8.1		8.6		8.5		9.0		8.9		9.1
2018		7.2	7.2	7.5		7.3		7.2		7.9		7.5			7.8		8.2		7.7		8.4		8.1		6.3

Source: IMDb.

Frame samples and subsamples

The criteria and filters used to select the sample were:

1. Tweets recovery period. Start: May 17th, 2018 (from 03:48 a.m.). End: January 8th, 2019 (until 5:45 p.m.).

2. Tweets with specific hashtags were retrieved. Hashtags are a «keyword» (Moreno, 2014), and a way of tagging to organize, retrieve, and specify which questions to write about or create interactions with other users on Twitter. Tweets containing the hashtag #13ReasonsWhy (original title) and/or the hashtag #PorTreceRazones (title with which the series was known in Spain) were selected.

3. Retweets are excluded.

4. In this first recovery, 154,470 tweets were recovered.

5. Duplicated tweets were excluded: those where there was an exact match of the

nickname and the content of the tweet. Sample frame: N = 151,570 tweets.

Subsamples were formed from the sampling frame (N = 151,570 tweets). The first subsample (n1) was configured using keywords that were organized by categories (see Table 1). Tweets retrieved: n1 = 4,053.

From n1 onwards, the tweets were recovered by grouping them into three categories. The criteria were: retrieve the 100 tweets with the greatest impact (impact

= favorites + retweets) for each of the categories. “Sampling with replacement” was used: a recording unit (tweet) could be linked to more than one category and the analysis had to be carried out in the reference frame of those categories. At the end of this process, some categories exceeded 100 tweets and the number of analysis units was expanded. The sub-samples by categories were: bullying (n2 = 122), rape (n3 = 124) and suicide (n4 = 330).

Analysis of tweets

The analysis of the tweets was specified in: a) basic and identification data of the tweets; b) interactivity and impact; c) content of the tweets. The codebook included the definition of the categories and variables (see Table 2). Initial coding and analysis were carried out using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software.

Twitter as an area of debate on 13 Reasons Why

The registration units obtained in the recovery phase of the published tweets allow us to positively assess the interest of the followers of the series to share content about it. The outreach potential of the 154,470 recovered tweets is a reflection of that interest. The metric shows it (see Table 3). Also highlighting, regarding the country of origin of the tweets that provide this information (n=60,719), the interest in the series and the issues raised in it. However, 73.1% of the tweets are located in ten countries.

It was foreseeable, due to the origin of the series and the presence of Netflix, that the United States would be the country with the highest percentage of published tweets (27.7%), then it would follow: France (11.5%), United Kingdom (8.2%), Brazil (8.1%), Spain (6.4%), Mexico (3.2%), Italy (3.0%), Canada (3.0), Philippines (2.0). The other percentage (26.9%) is made up of 91 countries.

Bullying, rape, and suicide

The number of tweets recovered for this phase was 4,053 tweets: 66.25% (N=6,117 tweets) published from 3,568 Twitter accounts. The highest publication frequency of

tweets was in May. An expected result as the days following the premiere of all the episodes of the series is the period of greatest interest for viewing.

The distribution by categories was made up of 4,626 tweets. 521 tweets were added to the initial sample (N=4,053): the presence of keywords from different categories in the same tweet was identified and they were considered as record units. The distribution of tweets, according to the frequency of the category, allowed identifying the subject of suicide (57.8%) as the preferred one: followed by rape (32.9%) and bullying (23.4%).

Regarding the countries of origin of the tweets, among the accounts or profiles that provided this information (N=1,806), the number of countries was large (80 countries). However, 10 countries concentrated 81.95% of the tweets: United States (40.09%), United Kingdom (13.79%), Spain (6.04%), Canada (4.71%), Australia

(4.37%), France (4.26%), India (2.55%), Brazil (2.38%), Mexico (2.27%), South Africa (1.50%), and the other 70 countries as a whole (18.05%). The distribution by categories (see Table 4) allows assessing the preference of the topics in the tweets.

Suicide was the topic that had the highest preference compared to the other categories. The United States and the United Kingdom occupied the first two places respectively in the three categories. Spain ranked fifth on the subject of suicide; but, in bullying and rape, it ranked third. Canada ranked third in the suicide category.Distribution of the registration units according to categories and country of the Twitter account.

The content published in the tweets were not always limited to a specific category. Tweets that incorporated other topics were identified (see Table 5). It is complex to establish a relationship between user participation with these tags or keywords and statistical data on bullying, rape, and suicide. On the other hand, regarding these categories, tweets cannot be pigeonholed as belonging exclusively to a single topic.Distribution and percentages of tweets according to their belonging to two categories.

The debate in the tweets with the greatest impact

The sub-sample with the highest impact tweets was made up of 761 tweets belonging to 682 Twitter accounts (see Table 6). Together, these accounts allow us to establish the potential impact of the published tweets. Accounts preferably from

«personal» profiles are the ones that generated the most impactful tweets: bullying (77.1%), rape (78.8%), and suicide (69.9%).

The accounts linked to tweets about suicide add up the highest number of followers (66.4%) and can be considered the topic with the greatest impact capacity. However, the issue of rape is also significant, which occupied the second group of tweets belonging to tweets that included this category (20.7%).

Regarding the engagement generated with the tweets, a greater interest in the

«bullying» category is identified both by the numbers of favorites and the retweets (see Table 7). It is reflected in the sum of both (12.6%). The subject of suicide continues to be the category with the highest engagement (83.8%).

The origin of the accounts (see Table 8), those that have identified them (40), indicate that Spain and the United States are the countries with the highest number of tweets sent. Relevant, the majority of tweets from Spain top the list regarding bullying. It also coincides in the first place with the United States on the issue of rape.

The use of English (see Table 9) is preferred in the categories of «rape» and

«suicide». However, regarding the issue of bullying, and perhaps due to the higher number of tweets sent from profiles in Spain, Spanish has a wide presence in tweets (55.6%).

Positioning

Most of the tweets indicate, after analysis, that the series «does contribute to the debate» on bullying, rape, and suicide (see Table 10). This appreciation was greater in the content related to bullying (72.2%).

In the topics of rape or suicide, the majority also maintained a positive view towards the possibilities of the series to create debates; but those who argue that the series «does not address it adequately» are significant.

If we recalculate the percentages of the data, leaving only the variables «it does contribute» and "it does not address it adequately", the tweets that expressed that "it does not address it adequately" reflect that there is no conclusive perception about how the series approaches these issues: bullying (23.7%), rape (41.3%), and suicide (37.9%).