Watching television while forcibly displaced: Syrian refugees as participant audiences

Abstract

The author demonstrates that Facebook serves as an outlet for interactivity between displaced drama producers and audiences in a way that imitates the dynamics of live theatre. While such interactivity is facilitated by technology, the emergence of this interactive relationship is owned to the desires for (re-)connection of both drama creators and audiences stemming from the alienation of war, violence and displacement. The particularity of the Syrian war-related topic in GN and its applicability to both the creator of the series as well as to audiences’ lived experiences evoked a significant level of online participation with Chamat. She uses the term ‘participant audiences’ to describe the interactive, emotional responses of displaced audiences and their online engagement with TV content that address the disconnections they experience because of conflict and displacement while offering them possibilities for coping with violence, marginalisation, and suffering. She shows how the entertainment interventions of drama creators help displaced people both to mitigate the traumatic effects of a highly polarising conflict, and to find a healing space from violent and alienating dominant media discourses. This work is part of the Conflict Research Programme managed by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and funded by the UK Department for International Development