Impacts of Covid-19 on Audience Participation: A case study of Survivor Turkey 2020”

In this paper, the main goal is to analyze the impacts of global pandemic, COVID-19, on the Turkish Reality TV show Survivor 2020’s fandom. The show was officially licensed from the original Survivor reality-competition television franchise, but there are some minor changes in each season regarding how the games are played and how the contestants are eliminated. The only thing that doesn’t change is that the islanders earned points by winning challenges and getting the most votes from the audiences. Therefore, the active participation of audiences plays a vital role in contestants’ fate of staying at the island.

After the global pandemic, the government has taken various precautions including full national lockdowns. Eventually, people were forced to stay home and find alternative activities to cope with the new normal. During this period, the show has achieved a great performance with rapidly increased ratings, active audience participation and the formation of new fandoms. Audiences were not only watching the show, but they were also actively engaging with the TV texts to support their favorite islander through live voting. By having the power to change the fate of islanders, audiences became more dedicated to the show, and fan-made platforms were born.

What makes the last season different than the other seasons is the role of media participants and the screen duration of the show. According to the Radio and Television Supreme Council, Survivor tripled its’ rating score in 2020. The reason behind this drastic increase is critical to understand how audience participation affects the ratings, and what drives them deeply to the TV texts. Therefore, this paper will investigate how COVID-19 has changed the face of the Turkish reality show Survivor’s fandom by analyzing the impacts on the fan activities and contestant motivations.

Covid-19 and Its Impacts on Fan Activities of Survivor

The lockdowns due to pandemic reached their peak point in the spring period, and correspondingly the TV viewings immediately went up. According to the survey results, 76% of the respondents stated that their TV viewing time increased compared to the other years because of the mandatory staying home. This can further validate the reason Survivor’s ratings have tripled in 2020. Even though the previous seasons were quite popular among the Turkish audience, the last season was a game changer in the history of Survivor. During the initial episodes, ratings had been pretty much steady compared to previous seasons, and the audience engagement had not been changed drastically. However, after 11th of March, which was the beginning of the first national lockdown, the ratings started to go up significantly. The show was the only available live reality TV where audiences could simultaneously watch and participate. The world presented was very colorful and full of excitement without any trace of pandemic.

The change in the audience behavior can be explained based on the arguments presented by Garcia-Aviles, “Incorporating online services and using the web as a new channel to enhance viewers’ participation.” (Garcia-Aviles, 2012, p. 429-430). The rising ratings were closely related to audience activities on the social media platforms, such as discussion blogs among the audiences, Instagram posts, YouTube videos and threads on Twitter. All these digital platforms contributed to the brand recognition in wider audience populations as well as the formation of unique Survivor fandom. As Evans discussed, adaptation to the technology within the audience is an important factor while analyzing its fandom (Evans, 2011, p. 69). Survivor’s target is predominantly young audiences, and these people are actively using social media outlets. In addition, the audiences actively engaged with the show by participating in live voting and had a power to change the fate of an islander. The results of the survey shows that audience participation before and during corona has drastically changed compared to previous seasons. While 84% of the participants stated that they have never voted in previous seasons, 66.7% directly participated in the voting process in 2020 because they have spent more time watching the show and become dedicated with a certain urge to participate.

The remaining questions of the survey were based on the show's fan activities. 64% of the respondents claimed that they have never considered themselves as a fan before the lockdown, while 68% of the respondents later became dedicated fans. The change in fan formation was mostly dependent on the special lockdown in Turkey. The show gathered the attention of the audience because it was a perfect opportunity to escape the reality of pandemic. One respondent stated that the only way for her to get away from real life problems was to watch the show regardless of its quality and genre. This argument also demonstrates the overall perception of the wide-range of Survivor audience. The people from various backgrounds, age and gender have started to watch the show in 2020 because they wanted to find a way to deal with the global pandemic. Watching contestants on an island without any masks-on was a good and comforting reminder of their good old days and freedom before the pandemic.

The Influence of Survivor Fandom on the Motivation of Contestants

According to Jenkins, by the contribution of other platforms, stories are told to a wider audience across multiple media. Therefore, audiences can engage with the programs on multiple levels. It creates an ability for users to vote and makes them feel as if their participation has the power to change the course of the show. Emerging new media technologies are leading to the creation of new forms of narrative content and audience engagement. In basic terms, these audiences willingly integrate with transmedia. Especially during the lockdown many people started to use social media to follow daily lives of other people, and Survivor’s fandom was mostly based on these social media activities. In the survey, 60% of the recipients stated that they followed contestants’ social media and fan accounts to keep up with the show as a whole. For instance, to reach out a wider audience, Survivor created an Instagram account and published backstage stories from the island. These posts turned contestants into characters which the audience can empathize with. Reality shows gained popularity by exploiting recent media trends including “new directions in storytelling, emotional appeals to audiences, and taking content from TV to other platforms.” (Edwards, 2012). The use of social media not only reflected different perspectives from the show, but also increased active fan-engagement within platforms. When the contestants earned trophies, they got to see fan-made productions and motivate themselves to win the game.

As the popularity of fan-made productions increased, audiences started to participate more in live voting. The increase in participation caused higher votes and motivated the islanders. Each islander had a specific group of fandoms, and they promoted the islander they support on various social media platforms. These promotions sometimes caused complications in the show. For example, the islander, Cemal Can was the best friend of a major Turkish influencer, Danla Bilic, even though he wasn’t the most successful contestant, he eventually won the season because of his popularity among social media.

Conclusion

The global pandemic has affected all aspects of our lives including media interactions. People started to spend more time watching TV or substitutes of TV. In this paper, the impacts of global pandemic on the formation of fandoms were analyzed based on the last season of Turkish reality show “Survivor”. The relationship between the TV and web 2.0 was a significant factor in shaping the fandom of Survivor. The show was aired every day of the week, and people kept discussing the lives and accomplishments of islanders on social media. These posts increased the recognition of the show, and step-by-step formed a Survivor fandom. The results of our study showed that stay-home activities drastically increased the screen time of individuals as well as the active engagement of the audiences. The show presented a new and desirable reality to the audiences where they could actively participate from various digital platforms. As the fandom of the show got wider, the competition at the island became wilder to get more votes from the audiences. The fan activities were intense, and discussion videos on YouTube hit 2 million views. This study clearly shows that the global pandemic had an enormous impact on the audience behavior, and stimulated their active participation to the media through various digital platforms due to their yearning to the pandemic free, good old days. Further studies should be conducted to determine if this new trend will continue after the pandemic.

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