The Fake Friends Infiltrating Your Friend List
Despite having always lived in Australia, between April and June my Instagram Explore page fills up with American high school prom photos. While scrolling glamourous dresses and reminiscing on my own formal, I come across this image.
To the average scroller, it looks like a regular picture of a prom queen with her friends. But to a SKAM Austin fan, this is the latest insight into the Season 2 storyline. As a fictional web television drama series, SKAM Austin’s story unfolds across Facebook Watch and Instagram. The account, ‘maryswanson01’ has been created for the lead character Grace Olsen.
So, while this image appears organically in my Instagram feed and looks similar to many of my friends’ posts, it is actually all fake. This transmedia story has infiltrated my social media, blurring the once distinctive lines which separated television fiction from real life. And if you’re not in on the secret, these powerful media companies are probably deceiving you as well.
SKAM Austin’s use of multiple social media platforms to sustain a narrative is what Professor Henry Jenkins coined “transmedia storytelling”. In his ideation, the concept was perceived to be a translation of one plot into a different medium. Say, for example, a physical book gets turned into a digital film. It’s still the same storyline, just conveyed in a new format. As an audience member, you are in a position to then choose your level of investment in the narrative.
However, with the concentration of media ownership fuelling convergence, Jenkin’s description has become outdated. We now see transmedia storytelling evolving into a highly engaging entertainment experience.
Professor of Television Studies, Lother Mikos describes this shift from a producer’s point of view. In his version, a creator strategically orchestrates a storyline in which audiences must follow the plot on multiple mediums to understand the full story. With Facebook owning Instagram, transmedia stories can now be accessed through the affordances of both platforms. We see this with Facebook Watch’s distribution of SKAM Austin videos which feature the characters using both Facebook Messenger and Instagram.
In most transmedia instances, producers build a fantasy world where audiences can easily separate real life from fiction. SKAM Austin thrives on the opposite experience, focusing heavily on everyday life. A Facebook video will be posted at 1pm local time while the characters are at school talking about attending a concert. Later that night, the same characters will post an Instagram picture at a Kendrick Lamar concert. Meanwhile, in Austin, Texas, Kendrick Lamar is performing ‘The Championship Tour’ live.
While SKAM Austin’s strategically timed posting was praised by The New Yorker for “encouraging human interaction” on a traditionally lonely platform, this share-in-the-moment experience is where fiction begins to blur with real life. If you see nine of your followers posting from a concert, you are not going to question the legitimacy of a tenth post which seamlessly enters your Instagram Explore feed…even if that post was deliberately planted by a web television series.
This line becomes increasingly blurred if you like, follow or comment on a character’s Instagram account. The producers will reward your engagement by following you back and regularly interacting with your personal Instagram posts. So, if you are not acutely aware of the creators manipulating these actions behind the scenes, you may just think you’ve found yourself a new friend.
This deception built by transmedia storytelling was predicted by Jeff Gomez during a TEDx Talk in 2010. He believed the storytelling technique misled audiences and obscured the truth. At what point does this stop being a television show seeking connections with a younger demographic, and become something more sinister? A fake account owned by an adult who is intentionally pretending to be a teenager, actively seeking and infiltrating real teenagers’ lives; is this now more reminiscent of catfishing or child grooming?
These stranger danger incidents on the Internet have severe psychological and emotional ramifications for victims. It was my understanding that social media companies, like Facebook, were once trying to protect their users from succumbing to fake online relationships. Instead, it appears that when a popular, lucrative show is produced on their platforms, it is the exception.
While SKAM Austin employs similar manipulation techniques to online predators, I do not believe their motivation has the same malicious intent. Nevertheless, these media entities are still allowing their teenage consumers to become targets of digital deception. Without written disclaimers from Facebook Watch and Instagram, we will never truly know if the person behind the screen is real or merely pretending to be a character from a transmedia story.
