“Okay Twitter… Trend this, Sucka! #Supernatural”: A Content Analysis of the Supernatural Fandom’s Use of Live-tweeting

Abstract

Live-tweeting a TV show has become an important publicity practice for the TV industry, even though it is the fans doing the live-tweeting (not the show’s strategic communication team). The fans behind the TV show Supernatural is one example of how fandoms actively use Twitter to promote their favorite show. This study presents a quantitative content analysis of live-tweets posted by fans during the last season premiere of Supernatural. Results indicated emotional and pure information messages were the most frequently used message type. Message type did not affect how many retweets messages received, but visual components in the tweet increased the number of retweets. Results provide insight into how TV shows’ strategic communicators might contribute to fandoms’ live-tweeting and indicate that the gratifications obtained through live-tweeting science-fiction TV may differ from live-tweeting other TV genres.