| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study is to examine whether or not the concept of informational
advantage in series has a correlation with the popularity of the series. Informational advantage
as a dramaturgical tool means that the viewer, at any given point throughout the series, either
knows more, less or the same amount as the character in the show; these stages are called
dramatic irony, mystery, and suspence respectively. Three different questions were examined.
The time spent in one stage before switching to the next is examined with an Anderson-Darling
test to see if it fits any statistical distribution, and if there is a difference between series with
high and low viewership numbers. The conclusion is that it cannot be rejected that the time
follows a log-normal distribution and that the expected time a program will spend in one stage
before switching is shorter in programs with high viewership numbers. Furthermore, whether
the total percentage of time spent in the different stages has a linear relationship with the
viewership numbers is examined with linear regression using the method of least squares. With
the collected data it was difficult to make a definitive conclusion, however the data implies that
the relationship is stronger for the time spent in dramatic irony and viewership numbers, than
the relationship for mystery. The relationship is especially stronger for the online viewership.
Lastly it is examined whether the percentage of switches between the different states has a
linear relationship with the viewership numbers, also with the method of least squares. The
result points towards switches between dramatic irony and suspence correlating positively with
viewership, while switches between mystery and suspence seem to correlate negatively with
viewership. | sv |
