This thesis explores young people’s watching practices of television series in their leisure time, focusing on how engagement, meaning-making, and competence are expressed in discussions about television series. As television series constitute a central form of contemporary leisure-time fiction among young people, the study seeks to deepen understanding of viewers’ experiences and the competences developed through engagement with this form of fiction. The thesis is situated within comparative literature with a focus on the subject specific area and draws on perspectives from media and communication studies.

Adopting a moderate social-constructivist perspective, the study centres on engagement and competence. The empirical material consists of thirteen focus-group discussions with 46 viewers aged 16–19. Participants discussed the television series Friends, Gossip Girl, Breaking Bad, Stranger Things, or Euphoria. The material was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis in a two-stage process combining inductive and deductive approaches.

The analysis identifies four modes of watching television series: the immersive mode, the savvy mode, the mirroring mode, and the mode of watching around. These represent different ways of engaging with television series as fictional worlds, resources for understanding self and society, and objects embedded in broader media ecologies. The findings show that viewers move flexibly between modes of engagement.

The study further demonstrates that participants display a high degree of competence in relation to television series, particularly regarding domain-specific knowledge, attitudes towards fiction, and the ability to discuss viewing experiences. The findings suggest that competences traditionally associated with literary reading are also relevant to television-series viewing. The thesis therefore proposes the concept of fictional competence to encompass competences developed through encounters with fiction across media.

Många unga ägnar sig åt fiktion på sin fritid. Mellan 70 och 80 procent väljer att titta på tv-serier. Samtidigt finns en oro, inte minst i gymnasieskolan, att audiovisuella fiktionsformer tränger undan skönlitterär läsning och därmed försämrar ungas läsförståelse. Men vad innebär egentligen ungas fritidstittande på tv-serier och vilken fiktionskompetens skulle det kunna bidra med? Kunskapen om detta är bristfällig.

I sin doktorsavhandling undersöker Sofia Oldin Cederwall gymnasieelevers engagemang i tv-serier som fritidsfiktion och sätter resultaten i ett litteraturdidaktiskt sammanhang. Det empiriska underlaget består av tretton fokusgruppssamtal med sammanlagt 46 gymnasieelever som i sina diskussioner utgår från en gemensam tv-serie (Breaking Bad, Euphoria, Friends, Gossip Girl och Stranger Things). I avhandlingen analyseras de unga tv-serietittarnas engagemang, meningsskapande och litterära kompetens, som de kommer till uttryck i samtalen. 

Resultaten visar att tv-serietittande kan förstås som en komplex aktivitet som förenar emotionellt och kognitivt engagemang. Avhandlingen synliggör de unga tv-serietittarnas fiktionskompetens och visar att de är kvalificerade deltagare i tolkningsgemenskaper.