1st Edition

Understanding Engagement in Transmedia Culture

By Elizabeth Evans Copyright 2020
    210 Pages 18 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    210 Pages 18 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book offers a new, interdisciplinary model for understanding audience engagement as a type of behaviour, a form of response and a cost to audiences that, combined, offer value to the screen industries.

    Audience ‘engagement’ has become the key priority of the screen industries. Understanding Engagement in Transmedia Culture explicitly asks what audiences and screen practitioners mean when they say content is ‘engaging’ and uses audience focus groups and practitioner interviews to offer a model for understanding the relationship between the screen industry, the content it produces and its audiences. In particular, the model addresses engagement within transmedia culture. As digital screen technologies proliferate, audiences move seamlessly across and between different devices, content formats and distribution platforms, blurring the boundaries between film, television and videogames. This book offers a way of understanding audience engagement that is not restricted to a single media but instead accounts for and adapts to the various ways in which screen content is experienced.

    Offering a unique approach by presenting practitioner and audience perspectives, it is perfect for students and scholars working in film and television studies, as well as media industries and audience studies.

    List of figures

    Acknowledgements

    Introduction: what's in a word?

    1. Understanding engagement as transmedia

    2. Conversation vs captivation: the type of engagement

    3. Affect and affection: the form of engagement

    4. Calculating the cost: the cognitive and contextual work of engagement

    5. Engagement that's worth it: valuing engagement as economic and discursive commodity

    6. The temporal dynamics of engagement

    Conclusion

    Appendix

    Bibliography

    Index

    Biography

    Elizabeth Evans is Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. Her research explores the intersection between media industries, audiences, technology and narrative. She is the author of Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media and Daily Life (Routledge, 2011).

    'This is an exciting book on a timely and relevant topic, the innovative aim of bringing together audience research with interviews with media practitioners.'

    Rebecca Williams, University of South Wales

    'This a timely, important and very welcome critical engagement with the idea of engagement! Where themes of "immersion" and "interactivity" have received so much academic attention, Evans draws us to the under-examined but significant concept of engagement. Through a rigorous application of her own analytical model, Evans provides rich insights into the audience dimension of the contemporary immersive, participatory and mixed reality media landscape. Combining rich primary evidence gathered through interviews with both creators and participants, with illustrative up-to-date case-studies, this is a highly accessible and insightful book. Evan’s work is crucial to enriching understandings of our complex interactions with the ever-expanding media content that proliferates around us, revealing what it is to be engaged and how it is to be engaging.'

    Sarah Atkinson, Professor of Screen Media & Head of Culture, Media & Creative Industries Department, King’s College London