Reception studies have made film audiences increasingly visible, while surveys track trends and policymakers gather information about audience preferences and demographics. But little attention has been paid to the specific contextual relationships and interactions between films and individuals that generate and sustain audiences. This monograph develops the idea of audiences as interactive and relational, introducing three innovative concepts: 'personal film journeys', five types of audience formations and five geographies of film provision. A major challenge of audience research is how to capture the richness of people's social and cultural engagement with film. To achieve this, the book uses an innovative mixed-methods research and computational ontology. It develops ground-breaking theory and concepts and an innovative methodology based on an extensive data-set derived from the under-researched area of British regional film audiences.
Author Biography
Bridgette Wessels is Professor of Social Inequality at the University of Glasgow Peter Merrington is Lecturer in the Business of the Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of York Matthew Hanchard is Research Associate in Sociology at the University of Sheffield David Forrest is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Sheffield -- .
