Course description
Transnational Televisions and their Audiences (preferred semester 1)
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 students 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 television’s effects through audience study? What does fandom look like in a so‐called ‘participatory culture’? Students will be encouraged to produce their own audience research project based on a television show (or shows) of their choice, thinking about how transnational flows affect production and reception, and how audiences position and structure their own identities in relation to these products.

Learning Outcomes
• Explain the recent history of television and its evolution via streaming platforms globally
• Explain different theoretical approaches to television audiences
• Apply selected theoretical approaches to analysis of television
• Conduct and analyse an oral history or ethnographic interview/ carry out a qualitative survey of audience
• Integrate qualitative interview analysis/survey into analysis of television
• Through written or videographic analysis, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, 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 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

Week 1: The Netflix Effect and Convergence Culture

Week 2: What are people watching and how? The state of contemporary television audiences (Invited speaker: Luca Barra, University of Bologna)

Week 3: Language and subtitling: What role do they play?

Weeks 4‐5: The SKAM phenomenon – how television travels (Invited speaker: Ilaria De Pascalis, University Roma Tre)

Week 6: Case Study: A national product? The Italian series Baby, and how UK students consume it.

Week 7: Studying audiences: Theoretical approaches

Week 8: Studying audiences: survey and interview methods

Week 9: Developing your own study (Invited speaker: Professor Romana Andò, Università La Sapienza) Weeks 10‐12: Sharing student case studies ‐ workshops

Bibliography/Recommended Reading
Romana Andò 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, forthcoming
Stefania Antonioini, 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
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
Intro to The Audience Studies Reader ed. by Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn (London: Routledge, 2003)
Mark Jancovich and James Lyons (eds), Quality popular television: cult TV, the industry and fans (London: British Film Institute, 2003)
Henry Jenkins, Textual poachers: television fans and participatory culture (London: Routledge, 2013)
Ramon Lobato, Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2019)
Kevin McDonald and Daniel Smith‐Rowsey (eds), The Netflix Effect: technology and entertainment in the 21st century (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)
Stefania Marghitu, Teen TV (Routledge, 2022)
Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The poetics of contemporary television storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015)
Louise Ellen Stein, Millennial fandom: television audiences in the transmedia age (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2015)

Teaching Assessment
The course will be assessed on the following basis: Participation: 10%
Student presentation: 20%
Sample interview/survey/collection of data: 30%
Video essay (5‐7 min max) or final essay (3,000 words): 40%

Last updated: February 29, 2024