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This article introduces quantitative reception aesthetics as a method and demonstrates how big data derived from social media services and textual analysis can be employed to uncover hitherto hidden processes of media spectatorship. It demonstrates how mixing quantitative and qualitative methods allows us to understand textual engagement and how media spectatorship evolves over time. Taking the Norwegian web series, Skam (2015–2017), as its case study, the article demonstrates how (web)television engagement on Instagram is linked to aesthetics and narrative events and how textual engagement is more universal than perhaps post-structuralist reception studies of media reception might have us believe.

Since its launch in late 2015, the Norwegian web-series Skam ( Shame), produced by public broadcaster NRK, has become one of the most notable successes in Norwegian television history, both in terms of ratings and critical acclaim. A high-school web-series about teenagers, mostly girls, coming of age in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, the series not only depicts young people in their everyday digital-media use but also reaches its audience through these same media and in a variety of formats extending far beyond video clips. Its success, we argue, is significantly tied to its multimedial form and distribution. We unpack the show’s sociocultural potential by analyzing its various outputs (video clips, screen grabs of the characters’ messenger chats, and updates from their Instagram accounts), as well as the audience’s/users’ responses to these in the form of comments to the web page. We argue that the show functions as a “transitional object” (per Winnicott) for its teen audiences, providing them with a “potential space” (also from Winnicott) in which they can learn how to cope with the challenges of a media-saturated society.

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Gorlin syndrome is a rare genetic condition in which patients may develop medulloblastomas, jaw cysts and basal cell carcinomas and show congenital skeletal malformations. If left undiagnosed, Gorlin syndrome can have a number of negative consequences. Early diagnosis and good follow-up is important for all patients with rare disorders. We wish to make doctors and dentists aware of Gorlin syndrome so that, whenever the syndrome is suspected or a patient has been diagnosed, the patient is referred for assessment, treatment and follow-up by specialists who know the disorder well. Dermatology departments at university hospitals and departments of medical genetics have a key role to play in assessment and follow-up. A national support group for Gorlin syndrome has been established, consisting of a dermatologist, oncologist, geneticist, paediatrician, specialist dentist, ophthalmologist, orthopaedic surgeon, plastic surgeon, oral and maxillofacial surgeon and counsellors. Patients, relatives and health professionals can contact the Centre for Rare Disorders directly for information about Gorlin syndrome, or to be put in touch with members of the group.