Course description
With the introduction of streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney Plus, and the growth of web television, television from different national contexts has acquired a much broader audience capacity. Audiences can now move from repeat screenings of the US Friends to French Call My Agent or the Italian My Brilliant Friend. At the same time, the means for audiences to communicate their responses to television have also grown exponentially. This course will give you the opportunity to learn more about how television travels across national borders and what audiences are making of it. What are the material limits on the apparently ‘free’ travel of television across borders? Who controls what gets made and how? How might access be limited? How do language and context affect reception?

How might we understand better this new television’s effects through audience study? The central aim of this module is to provide you with the tools and knowledge necessary to understand the experience of television audiences. This means that we will explore two key areas: methods of collecting rich, qualitative data about film audiences, and the means of interpreting that data. You will then deploy these skills and abilities in a project-based, inquiry-led environment. In this sense, the module seeks to give you ‘hands-on’ experience of audience research of the type undertaken routinely in academia and the media industries. As such, you will learn real-world skills and processes that will make a meaningful contribution to your employability.

You will receive specific training in ethnographic research methods, including questionnaire design and delivery, interview technique, and focus group management. You will also be trained in ethical research conduct, enabling you to deploy the skills you gain in an environment that minimises risks and maximises the viability and usefulness of the data you collect. The module will also cover theoretical approaches to audiences, enabling you to interpret and frame the data you collect through the latest developments in thinking about the audiences you study.

Learning Outcomes
• Explain the recent history of television and its evolution via streaming platforms globally

• Explain different theoretical approaches to television audiences

• Understand and apply ethical considerations to audience studies

• Conduct and analyse oral history or ethnographic interviews/ carry out a qualitative survey of audience

• Through written or videographic analysis, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, and a capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument

• Through work on the video or written essay, demonstrate the ability to research, collate and manage video and/or written material in the creation of an argument, using diverse IT skills

• Through research, seminar discussion, and essay writing/video essay making, demonstrate a capacity to question assumptions, to distinguish between fact and opinion, and to critically reflect on your own learning process.

Syllabus: (drawn from material co-developed with Dr. Matthew Rule-Jones at the University of Exeter)

Week 1: Television in the Streaming Era
Reading: Luca Antoniazzi and Luca Barra, ‘Internationalization and localization of media content. The circulation and national mediation of ready- made TV shows and formats’ in The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Media, London, Routledge, 2022, pp. 74 – 90

Week 2 (beg Sept 23): Introduction to Television Audiences
Reading: Kristyn Gorton, Media Audiences: Television, Meaning and Emotion (Edinburgh University Press, 2009), pp. 1-29

Week 3: Key Principles: Project Design and Good Data
Reading: Ruddock, A. ‘Questions of theory and method’ in Understanding Audiences (pp. 17-36). SAGE Publications, 2001.

Week 4: Ethics
Reading:
• Social Research Association, ‘Research Ethics Guidance’ (2021). Available at https://the-sra.org.uk/common/Uploaded%20files/Resources/SRA%20Research%20Ethics%20guidance%202021.pdf
• British Sociological Association, ‘Statement of Ethical Practice’ (2017). Available at https://www.britsoc.co.uk/media/24310/bsa_statement_of_ethical_practice.pdf
• Information Commissioner’s Officer, ‘A Guide to the Data Protection Principles’. Available at https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/data-protection-principles/a-guide-to-the-data-protection-principles/

Week 5: Methods 1: Questionnaires and Surveys
Reading: G. E. Fey, "Communication Principles in Questionnaire Design, Conference Record on Crossing Frontiers, Santa Fe, NM, USA, 1992, pp. 211-215, 10/11/2009.

Week 6: Project presentations (assessed) – research questions and design

Submit ethics application end of this week

MIDTERM BREAK

Week 7: Methods 2: Conducting Interviews and Focus Groups (Danielle)
Reading: Magnusson E, Mareck J. ‘Designing the Interview Guide’, in Doing Interview-Based Qualitative Research: A Learner’s Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015 and Magnusson E, Mareck J. ‘Doing the Interview’, in Doing Interview-Based Qualitative Research: A Learner’s Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Week 8: Data Analysis
Reading: Andò, Romana and Hipkins, Danielle, ‘A Girls’-Eye View: Exploring TV representations of Italian girlhood through the lens of Italian female adolescence’, chapter forthcoming in Barra, Luca et al (eds), Italian Youth TV (Bloomsbury, forthcoming)

Week 9: Aspects of Audiences 1: Gender, Generation and Nationality
Reading: Storey, John, ‘Consumption and Identities’ in Theories of Consumption (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 87-101.

Week 10: Aspects of Audiences 2: Taste and Distinction
Reading: Pearson, Roberta. 2007. “ Bachies, Bardies, Trekkies and Sherlockians.” In Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 98–109. New York: New York University Press.

Week 11: Aspects of Audiences 3: Fandom and Popular Culture
Reading: Fiske, J. 1992. ‘The Cultural Economy of Fandom’ in Lewis, L. A. (ed.) Adoring Audience. Fan Culture and Popular Media, London: Routledge: pp. 30-49.

Week 12: Writing up your work: assignment tips

EXAM WEEK – HAND IN ESSAYS AFTER DROP-IN DISCUSSION SESSION

Teaching and Evaluation Methods
Each week will consist of one interactive lecture (1.5 hours) and one seminar/workshop (1.5 hours). Students will be expected to prepare at least one reading for each seminar.

There will be class presentations in Week 6 to give students feedback on their project design, and to assess their work to that point. They will also need to submit an ethics application for assessment and project approval before the midterm break. These two elements will determine their mid-term mark.

Finally, they will be asked to reflect on their project findings in a final essay (or if they desire a video essay).

Teaching Assessment
The course will be assessed on the following basis:
Participation: 10%
Student presentation: 20%
Ethics application: 20%
Final essay (3,000 words) or Video essay (5-7 min max): 50%

Recommended Reading: (required reading is listed in the syllabus)
Abrams, Lynn, Oral History Theory, London: Routledge, 2010, Chapter 2, ‘The peculiarities of oral history’
Andò, Romana and Danielle Hipkins, ‘Teen Identity, Affect and Sex in Rome: Italian teen girl audiences and the dissonant pleasures of Netflix’s underage prostitution drama Baby’, Studi culturali, 2023
Antonioini, Stefania, Luca Barra, and Chiara Checcaglini, ‘ ‘SKAM Italia did it again’. The multiple lives of a format adaptation from production to audience experience’, Critical Studies in Television, 16 (4), 2021, 433-454
Bolin, Göran, ‘Media Generations: Objective and subjective media landscapes and nostalgia among
generations of media users’, Participations, 11:2 (2014)
Bolin, Göran, Media Generations: Experience, identity and mediatised social change (London: Routledge, 2016)
Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. by Richard Nice, with a new introduction by Tony Bennett (London and New York: Routledge, 1984, 2010)
Brooker, Will and Deborah Jermyn (eds), The Audience Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 2003)
Chalaby, Jean K. ‘The Rise of Platforms’, in Television in the Streaming Era: The Global Shift, Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 56-73
Chen, Shu-Hsin (2011), ‘Power Relations Between the Researcher and the Researched: An Analysis of Native and Nonnative Ethnographic Interviews’, Field Methods 23(2) 119-135
Iarossi, Giuseppe, ‘How Easy it is to Ask the Wrong Question’ Power of Survey Design: A User's Guide for Managing Surveys, Interpreting Results, and Influencing Respondents, World Bank Publications, 2006.
Jenkins, Henry, Textual poachers: television fans and participatory culture (London: Routledge, 2013)
Jenkins, H. 1992. ‘Get a life! Fans, Poachers, Nomads’ in Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. London: Routledge, Chapman and Hall: pp. 9-49.
Kuhn, Annette, An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory, London: I.B. Tauris, 2002, pp. 1-15.
Lobato, Ramon, Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2019)
Madianou, Mirca, ‘Beyond the Presumption of Identity? Ethnicities, Cultures and Transnational Audiences’ in Virginia Nightingale (ed.) The Handbook of Media Audiences, pp. 444-458
Marghitu, Stefania, Teen TV (Routledge, 2022)
Mark Jancovich and James Lyons (eds), Quality popular television: Cult TV, the industry and fans (London: British Film Institute, 2003)
McDonald, Kevin and Daniel Smith-Rowsey (eds), The Netflix Effect: technology and entertainment in the 21st century (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)
Missero, Dalila, 'Memory and gender as migrant audience formations', Participations 18 (2) (2021) pp.436-453
Mittell, Jason, Complex TV: The poetics of contemporary television storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015)
Morley, D. ‘Cultural Transformations: the Politics of Resistance’ in H. Davis and P. Wilson (eds) 1983. Language, Image, Media. Oxford: Blackwell: pp. 104-17.
Ralph, Sarah, ‘Using stars, not just ‘reading’ them: the roles and functions of film stars in mother–daughter relations’, Celebrity Studies, 6 (1), 2015, 23-38
Stacey, Jackie, Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship, London: Routledge, 1994.
Stein, Louise Ellen, Millennial fandom: television audiences in the transmedia age (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2015)
Stokes, Melvyn, Matthew Jones and Emma Pett, A People’s History of Cinema-going in 1960s Britain, London and New York: BFI/Bloomsbury, 2022.
Treveri Gennari, Daniela et al., Italian Cinema Audiences: Histories and Memories of Cinema-going in Post-war Italy, London: Bloomsbury, 2020.

Last updated: July 4, 2024