The Mediaverse and Speculative Fiction Television: Understanding Speculative TV Fandoms

Some (web) television texts achieve immense commercial success. Certain commercially successful texts boast dedicated, creative, and exponentially growing fandoms. These fan communities engage in specific fan practices that are significantly influenced by the textualities of the texts and their contexts of production, distribution, and consumption. Increased fan engagement resulting in the acceleration of the text’s popularity leads to the following inquiries:   ·         How is the series influenced by the interactions among and the relationships between the producers, consumers, distributors, and content? ·         What are the sites of these interactions? ·         What are the social, cultural, economic, and political factors that impact the series? ·         How do the text’s contexts of production, distribution, and consumption lead to the text’s popularity in mainstream media?   In pursuit of an answer to these questions, the analytical lens of the ‘mediaverse’ is developed. An inductive study, this book explores four television series’ that fall within the scope of speculative fiction to characterise the mediaverse and highlight the interconnectedness among the networked nodes of new media. These wield a significant influence on the production and consumption of media and its presence in our everyday lives, thus outlining the mediaverse as a tool for the analysis of a media texts and practices that shape contemporary media culture.