A Narrative Analysis of the Use of Social Media in SKAM

SKAM (a Norwegian word meaning “shame”) is a Norwegian television show for teens, written and directed by Julie Andem for NRK, and had its fourth and final season in spring 2017. Each season, the show followed a different teen in an Oslo high school, and it has dealt with topics such as sexual harassment, mental illness, same-sex-relationships, drug use and Islamophobia.

This presentation analyses how the popular Norwegian show SKAM used social media as its main narrative platform. The paper uses narratology as well as contemporary theories of distributed narrative (Walker, 2005) and transmedia narrative (Dena, 2009; Ryan, 2013) to analyse how SKAM develops storylines across multiple media. It will compare this to works of electronic literature that have pioneered similar techniques, and relate the intense engagement of fans on the official site and independent sites to fan fiction studies and to net prov. 

A key feature of SKAM is that it is published online first. Traditional Friday-night broadcast episodes are compilations of video clips published almost daily on http://skam.p3.no, where fans also screenshots of text conversations and occasional Instagram photos. In addition, many of the characters have Instagram accounts where content is often released without being featured on the official website. SKAM has become popular well beyond its target audience of Norwegian 16-19 girls, with a large international fan base providing translations and extensive discussions and analyses on Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter.