Live tweeting, reality TV and the nation

This article argues that the live tweeting of reality television allows the creation of an imagined community, bounded by national borders. In an era of audience fragmentation and time-shifting of television engagement, live reality television encourages audiences to watch at time of broadcast; this is amplified by the move of some audience members to live-tweet the broadcast, communicating amongst themselves within a dispersed backchannel. A crucial result of the digital conversation is to reinstate the importance of the nation as a space for the reading and reception of culture. The article utilizes a discursive analysis of the concurrent Twitter conversation around the second season of The X Factor NZ in New Zealand in order to highlight the ongoing role that is played by the nation as a cultural formation in such discussions, as well as the ways that it makes understandings of national cultural identity visible.