From the Beginning

In 2004, America's Broadcasting Network (ABC) aired the first season of what would become one of television's most acclaimed dramas – Lost. Through it's six year run, the show has proven to be a cultural phenomenon, and would go on to be critically deemed one of the top ten best television series. Though a large part of Lost's success was due to the creators, writers, production teams, and the cast of the multi-million dollar drama, it is without a doubt that the main driving force behind the sensational show was it's ability to also maximize interactivity within the show and its fans in order to create a new form of active participation not only outside of the show, but within Lost itself, but demanding full participation and commitment from its viewers.

The end result was not only a community created by the show's fans, but a new form of participatory fan culture that broke the rules of new media. Through its demand of a new, more involve form of active viewership and fan culture through a participatory model of cognitive surplus, Lost took the participatory fan culture that was provided by new media and elevated it to a new standard.

Lost in Participatory Culture

In a talk in 2010, Clay Shirky defined cognitive surplus as “the ability of the world population to volunteer and to contribute and collaborate on large, sometimes global projects”. New media is not only reliant upon this cognitive surplus, but also a contributing factor, as cognitive surplus is dependent on both human motivation and modern media tools that “let us do more than consume..we also like to create, and we like to share” (Shirky). Like many other forms of television, movies, or music reliant on new media, the culture of Lost relies on cognitive surplus and is “design[ed] for the assumption that people like to create and we want to share” (Shirky). 

As a result, Lost, like many other shows, has a “communal value, created by the participants, for each other” (Shirky), resulting in the creation of many parodies, spoofs, and fan fiction and art that makes up the participatory culture within not only fans, but pop culture itself, as references to Lost has appeared in many popular streams of music, movies, television, and magazines today.

Lost in Music

The show has not only inspired many amateur video editors, but it has also infiltrated mainstream pop culture through music.  Although the main musical score within the show is orchestrated specifically for Lost, many musical artists have written songs about the popular show.  Other popular songs have been used by the producers to promote the show in between seasons, and Weezer even named their latest album after a character on the show, Hurley.

Lost in Television

Since it first aired, Lost has become a popular cultural icon, and is referenced in many official television shows such as How I Met Your Mother, The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, and many many more.  Below are just a few examples of the cultural impact the show has had within the realm of television. 

Lost Across the Mediums

The participatory culture around lost is further strengthened through the establishment of a brand loyalty to the show. Through the horizontal integration of the Lost franchise across variety of media platforms, the producers ensure that Lost viewers are “buy[ing] into a prolonged relationship with a [its] narrative universe, which is rich enough and complex enough to sustain their interest over time” (Jenkins) through mediums such as an alternate reality game, canonical mini web-episodes, books, encyclopedias, video games, and more.

For example, the Verizon-sponsored series Missing Pieces consists of short, minutes long episodes based upon characters of the show.  The thirteen clips are all unrelated from each other, in no chronological order.  The series allow fans to learn more about individual characters, allowing a personal, biographical exploration into their lives.  The Missing Pieces can be viewed here.

The Lost Experience is another example of how producers of the show expanded the franchise across mediums to allow for multiple points of consumption and involvement of its fans.  It is an alternate reality game that served a dual purpose of both marketing the show and exposing more content to its fans.  Many websites are dedicated to the game, such as The Lost Experience, The Lost Experience Timeline, and The Lost Experience Clues.  

What sets Lost apart from traditional shows is that it not only designed to establish a relationship with viewers across various mediums, but it also actively demands a strong commitment and participation from viewers within the show themselves. Through it is an example of recent “corporate movement towards media convergence and the unleashing of significant new tools which enable the grassroots archiving, annotation, appropriation, and recirculation of media content” (Jenkins) that is participatory culture, Lost also pushes this participation and involvement of fans to the next level through a new form of heightened interactivity between not only the fan community, but the show itself.

(A video created by fans laying out all the unanswered mysterious within the show at the beginning of the final season.)

The format of the show itself forces viewers to shift from the passive viewership of traditional television into a more active participation and involvement through its extensive plot twists, mysterious philosophical and mythological nature, and format that somewhat resembles a video game, as it keeps viewers guessing and on edge throughout its seasons. Its mysterious nature demands from viewers 100% participation and commitment, encouraging them to find the many mysterious and easter eggs hidden within both the episodes and the various mediums of its horizontal convergence. It is through this new level of active engagement and involvement of its fans and viewers that allows Lost to bridge the gap from traditional new media to an new era of interactivity and active engagement. 

Lost in Blogs

At the heart of this interactivity – the heart and soul of the Lost community that deviates from more traditional fan cultures - are forums and the medium of blogging. Through the show, the blogging format has transformed from merely a “log of personal thoughts and weblinks, a mixture of diary forms around what is happening in a person's life, and reports and comments on what is happening on the web and the world out there” (Lovink, 3) to a prominent medium that allows viewers to share and expand on their personal repertoire of experience and theories within the community.

Above: Screenshots of one of the many Lost Theories.  The Time Loop Theory can be viewed here, and is just one example of the work, dedication, and research on elements of the show in conjunction with real life phenomena.

Whilst blogs remain to be a “personal voice and a rapid response”(Lovink, 3), it breaks out of what scholar Geert Lovink deemed to be “hastily written personal musings, sculpted around a link or event...[to form a] dense cloud of impressions around a topic” that is usually lacking research and depth. This manifestation of the transformation of the medium is prevalent in the many blogs within the Lost community, and can be seen in both the blog posts themselves and the discussion that each post catalyzes. Lost blogs serve to be a platform in which not only the traditional participatory forms of fans can be seen through the posting of fan videos and fan art, but in which the true interactivity of the show can be discovered through the Lost theory discussions.  

Due to the nature of the show, Lost's viewers encounter questions and mysteries about real life paradoxes, philosophy, mythological phenomenon, and the supernatural within the show. Lost's many allusions to historical mythology (such as Gilgamesh), real life philosophers (at least eleven historical philosophers and writers are referenced in the movie through character names, such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Stephen Hawking, to name a few). Allusions to the apocalypse and purgatory, and conflicts and explorations of the dualisms between things such as good versus evil, coincidence versus fate, and destiny versus science forces the viewers to not only sit back and watch the show, but also actively become involved within its mythology. 

The Man in Black represents chaos, whilst Jacob, the Man in White, represents good.

This new active viewership is the catalyst behind the blogs and forums, as many are dedicated to well-thought out and researched theories about the show that breaks the blogging platform out of the shallow, ill-researched medium described by Lovink. As a result, the fans of Lost sees the blogging format through its transformation of vague media based upon shallow and ill-prepared assumptions to a format that is well researched, and in which full interactivity between not only fans, but with the producers of Lost themselves takes place. As consequence, one sees the transition of not only blogs, but of television viewers themselves – from a passive audience that only receives from the main media, to a new, activated audience that is purposefully committed and involved in not only the show, but its theories and aspects.

Popular lost theories include the Garden of Eden Theory, the Centre of the Earth Theory, and many more in regards to time travel, astrophysics, and the supernatural at popular blog theory sites.  Ultimately, some theories come to fruition in the form of published books, as many have been published as an exploration into the philosophy of the show.

Thus, one can see that Lost changed the format of new media and pushed it one more step towards bridging the gap between television and interactivity and engagement. Not only does Lost utilizes new media and technological convergence to broaden its viewership and brand loyalty, the show also takes full advantage of the interactivity of new media to create for itself a brand community that takes the participatory model of cognitive surplus and elevates it to a new standard. By demanding a new, more actively engaged viewership and participation within the shows theories and show as well as within the brand community, Lost transformed the participatory fan culture that resulted from new media and further transformed it into a platform of optimal intelligent interactivity.

Lost in Citations

Jenkins, Henry. “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?: Digital Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture.” Accessed March 26, 2011. [http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/starwars.html].

"Lost (TV Series)." Wikipedia. Web. Accessed March 26, 2011. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_(TV_series)].


Lost: A Theory on Time Travel. Web.  Accessed March 27, 2011. [http://www.timelooptheory.com/].


Lost Missing Pieces. Web. Accessed March 27, 2011. [http://lostmobisodes.blogspot.com/].


"Lost Theories." Americas Broadcasting Company. Web. Accessed March 26, 2011. [http://forums.abc.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?webtag=lost].


Lostpedia: The Lost Encyclopedia. Web.  Accessed March 27, 2011.  [http://lostpedia.wikia.com/].

Lovink, Geert. "Blogging, The Nihilist Impulse." Zero Comments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture. Routledge, 2007. 1-38. Print.

Shirky, Clay. “How Cognitive Surplus will Change the World”, 2007.

Accessed March 26, 2011. [http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world.html].

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