Law and Order SVU

Okay I just wanted to post a little about my project and I'm borrowing portions of my proposal because it's the most concentrated information I've written on the topic.

Dramatic television shows in the police office, crime scene, and detective genre portray gruesome crimes that occur in real life or are based on real life. While popular belief is that these dramatic television shows would produce viewer discussion on the horror of these fictional crimes and their relation to real world crimes, blog responses from viewers contain no such substantial topics. Instead, bloggers respond to the actors and character portrayal on the television show rather than the horrific crimes being portrayed. This is a problem in the media community because people are missing the hard issues and discussing frivolous, superficial details of the show and actors. This shows that the viewers of the television dramas in this genre prefer to distance themselves from the issues that cross over into the real world and instead preoccupy themselves with fan responses of the actors on the show.
My method for this project is to follow the path of communication through media chronologically. I will review episodes of the ninth season of Law and Order Special Victims Unit and critically analyze the content of the episodes that deal with rape as a particularly horrible crime that occurs in society as well as on television. Then I plan to analyze the content of blogs that respond to these episodes. This entails sorting the blog responses by categories such as actor/actress commentary, fan advocation, show critique, and issue critique. I then plan to show that these blogs feature more fan advocation type responses and less issue critique. I also want to talk about the lack of pathos evoked by the show in relation to these blogs. I think it will also be beneficial to my argument to discuss the idea that television shows like Law and Order Special Victims Unit evoke some kind of hard response from viewers but these responses never make it to blogs or forums. An interesting part of the project will entail a contrast between Jenkins’ story about how Harry Potter has captivated people to respond immensely on the Internet and Law and Order which does not produce anywhere near as great of an analytical or exploratory response. I hope to show through these analyses that this dramatic television genre does not illicit a response on serious issues and shows that people have a hard time facing difficult criminal issues as reality.

Any comments, opinions, or advice would be REALLY appreciated. Thanks!