ABSTRACT

This chapter describes and discusses the different ways in which transmedial audiences act as cultural and vernacular critics, and how these acts of criticism also function as a social and connective practice. Drawing on more recent theories of cultural criticism and reception, the authors discuss the practice of “recapping” on YouTube using Game of Thrones recaps as an illustrative example; and then turn to a study of the collective criticism taking place in Kosegruppa.dk, a popular Scandinavian Facebook group dedicated to the Norwegian series SKAM. These critical practices point to the fact that the transmedial audiences not only engage with transmedial worlds “in character” or purely as fictions, but also as productions to be evaluated and reflected on from a meta-textual perspective, often displaying a high level of media literacy and worldness awareness in their analyses.