COLLABORATIVE SENSE-MAKING COMPLEXITIES OF (FOR?) LOST AND BREAKING BAD

International audienceRecent trends in narratology show increasing interest in narrative complexity, referencing “mind-game,” “riddle” films and serialized televisual narratives requiring “drillable engagement.” As complex systems, these narratives enhance socially distributed intelligence through interactive problem-solving. Viewers construct coherent meanings given discrepancies in plot and character. My paper argues that narrative complexity carries over into, or rather, is re-framed within, sense-making synergy observable on the Internet. The paper focuses on the user-generated content in weekly commentary sections of U.S. TV criticism blogs covering serial narratives like Lost and Breaking Bad. Confronted with half-answers and ultimately unsolved gaps (Lost) or unsatisfactory yet determined conclusions and character motivations (Breaking Bad), commenters maintain coherences by narrativizing their guesses and inferences. They blend prior contextual data and real-life knowledge with incoming narrative inputs (motifs). Consequently, new meanings emerge, external to and resisting, yet contextually conditioned by, narrative proper, because motifs induce backtracking to prior contextual data. Individual meanings merge into constitutive and collaborative constructions or beacons. These beacons, so called to emphasize their guiding principle, are “resource pools” allowing for meaning variations, jointly fixed onto particular cohesive aim. During the lengthy period of the serial experience, user-generated meaning constructions may get modified, complemented or entirely overwritten (the operative layer). Hence, beacon, too, is fluid, persistently re-evaluating the incremental alterations and re-organizing itself accordingly (the systemic layer)