Online Moral Deliberations – Investigating The White Lotus audiences on Reddit

With the advent of streaming platforms enabling audiences to view their favourite shows across a variety of media in a time slot that fits one’s personal schedule, the fragmentation of audiences increased. Television narratives’ function as social cement, informer, and as a moral laboratory dwindled. However, (younger) audience members gather online to discuss what they saw, think, and feel about their favourite TV shows. This study centres on such online audiences, and questions streaming TV’s function as a moral laboratory. Can TV shows still from a ‘moral laboratory’ for its viewers? In other words, can TV shows still offer audiences the opportunity to experiment and reflect on moral issues, in the safe environment of the imagination (i.e. without repercussions for everyday life)? (eg. Krijnen, 2011)/ The research questions is ‘How do Reddit users construct moral evaluations of the upper-class characters in Seasons 1 and 2 of The White Lotus? The White Lotus is an interesting case as it is typified as a social satire (HBO Max, 2022) aiming to question and critique social class. As always, when TV shows claim to evoke some debate, it is interesting to investigate whether debate is indeed instigated, and if so, what it is about. Do audiences do what producers intended them to do?
Methodologically, the first two seasons of The White Lotus were investigated on a narrative level, with an emphasis on the moral messages embedded therein (cf. Krijnen, 2007). Next, 600 discussion threads that were active between December 2022 and February 2023 on Reddit for a ‘r/TheWhiteLotusHBO’ and ‘r/WhiteLotusHBO’ were saved. Of these 600 threads, those containing at least 15 comments engaging in moral deliberation were retained, resulting in 30 discussion threads. Rachels and Rachels’ (2012) description of moral language was employed to unravel the moral discussions present in the Reddit data (eg. Krijnen, 2011). Hence, all threads were studied concentrating on an evaluation of good/bad, while aiming to influence conduct, and taking all into account all stakeholders involved in the issue.
The results show two interesting developments. First, the discussions suggest that the users’ narrative imagination is engaged when it comes to the non-upper-class characters and the female characters. However, this imagination seems conspicuously absent when it comes to the upper-class men. Second, and worthy of more investigation, it became manifest how viewer literally reconstruct different narratives regarding characters actions and motivations, and what should be viewed as central to the narrative. This ‘reconstructing narratives’, we feel, might be an interesting addition in understanding the multiple interpretations, especially in relation to moral imagination.

HBO Max. (2022). The White Lotus. https://www.hbo.com/the-white-lotus.
Krijnen, T. (2007). There is More(s) in Television: Studying the relationship between television and moral imagination. [Doctoral dissertation, Universiteit van Amsterdam].
Krijnen, T. (2011). Engaging the moral imagination by watching television: Different modes of moral reflection. Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 8(2).
Rachels, S., & Rachels, J. (2012). The elements of moral philosophy (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill.