Analysis Of Audience Response Research Articles

In the space between us: reflections for adult audience members of youth-centered participatory research

Performances of research are moments of encounter – between audience and performer, between audience and researcher, and in the instance of youth-centered critical participatory action research, between adults and young people. This piece considers the form and metaphor of artistic performances of research to interrogate the social constructions of adolescent and adult. Using an analysis of adult audience responses to five artistically embodied performances of youth-centered research, I focus on adult audience members’ declarations of shock, appeals for direction about taking action, and expressions of feeling inspired by the youth and their research. Through an analysis of these audience responses, I consider how research narratives travel, how data is interpreted, how power might be (re)arranged, and especially the ways that research performances can be an opportunity for making sense of and radically re-imagining adulthood, adolescence, and the spaces between us.

Ear Trumpet: investigations in ‘sonic geology’

ABSTRACTGobbledegook Theatre’s Ear Trumpet is a site-responsive outdoor theatre performance in which a team of sonic investigators have discovered pockets of sound, trapped in the Earth beneath our feet. The show allows audiences to listen, using ear trumpets, a collection of recycled trumpets, trombones and gramophone horns that are repurposed as listening devices. In this article, the aurality of Ear Trumpet is described through a qualitative, practice-led methodology of first-person performance-as-research, artist interviews, and analysis of audience response. The article considers Augoyard and Torgue’s notion of ‘sharawadji’ in Ear Trumpet, arising, the author argues, through a combination of the sonic effects of anamnesis, decontextualization, delocalization, attraction, phototonie and quotation. The article considers how Ear Trumpet positions the relationship between physical environment, the socio-cultural milieu, and the individual listener and reveals how participants’ suspension of disbelief in the pseudo-science of ‘sonic geology’ allows them to posit multiple historic dimensions of sound in a way that reframes their everyday soundscape and magically and suddenly transports [them] elsewhere. Finally, it raises questions about the effect of sharawadji in terms of the tension between theatrical illusion, belief and critical distance among audiences, and considers a politics of aurality in performance contexts.

Performance of Possibilities: A Critical Analysis of Audience Responses to Pipaashaa by Ananya Dance Theatre

This paper critically analyzes audience responses to Ananya Dance Theatre's work Pipaashaa: Extreme Thirst. Ananya Dance Theater intervenes in colorblind racial politics through casting only women and girls of color. Different responses by audiences of different social locations constitute critical discourses about race and social justice—catalysts for personal and social transformation. An examination of the discourse around Pipaashaa demonstrates that materiality of both performing and viewing bodies are important factors in creating meaningful art that envisions and inspires change.

The Societal Construction of a Criminal as Cultural Hero: The Case of “The Brinks Truck Theft”

This study examines the identification with, and encouragement and admiration of, a celebrated thief among the Internet audience of a popular Israeli web site. A content analysis of audience responses highlights the carnival atmosphere that emerged in Israel as the story unfolded of the exploits, arrest and punishment of this new criminal folk hero, a “trickster” who toppled the social order. Astonishingly, the public mood, as manifest in the online message boards, is mostly supportive of the crime and its perpetrator, with very few condemnations.

Bruno et le fou sacré : Mythe, Mimesis et la transmission des mémoires traumatiques

Interest in PTSD and traumatic memory extends beyond psychiatry. Over the last two decades, “trauma theory” has emerged as an influential discourse within the humanities and social sciences. The theory is based on an unlikely combination of sources: Freud's accounts of traumatic neurosis in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Moses and Monotheism; Bessel van der Kolk's research into the neurophysiology of PTSD and somatic memory; and post-modern writing on collective memory. Trauma theory writers are intensely interested in explaining how traumatic memories are transmitted between and within generations. Explanations focus on the roles of contagion as a mode of transmission and the Holocaust as a shared collective trauma. This chapter argues that the clinical and cultural phenomena that are being explained by these writers are better understood in terms of mimesis or imitation. The argument is illustrated with the help of a fraudulent Holocaust ‘memoir’ by Benjamin Wilkomirski, and an analysis of audience responses once the fraud was exposed. This chapter underlines important concerns regarding the clinical epistemology of posttraumatic stress disorder.

The gatekeeping funnel: tracking a major PSA campaign from distribution through gatekeepers to target audience.

This article presents the gatekeeping funnel as a model of the process that a public service announcement (PSA) goes through from distribution until it reaches its target audience. Process measures such as bounceback postcards, the Broadcast Advertisers Report (BAR), and analysis of audience response are suggested as ways of monitoring this funneling process. The model is then applied to the National Cancer Institute's PSA campaign designed to promote cancer prevention awareness. Three waves of PSAs were distributed between March 1984 and May 1985. Two of these waves of PSAs were targeted to the general public and the third wave was targeted to black audiences. Bounceback postcards, BAR data, and the Cancer Information Service (CIS) call data exemplify the gatekeeping funnel model described in the article. When the messages were distributed, they had the potential of reaching 170 million adults with televisions. BAR data show that the gatekeeping function narrowed the number of people potentially exposed to the messages to 24 million, or 14% of the total. Yet only 144,000 people, or less than one-tenth of 1% responded to the messages by calling the CIS number and asking about cancer prevention. This analysis may help PSA campaign planners to develop more realistic expectations for message effects.

Winning presidential debates: An analysis of criteria influencing audience response

This essay argues that an analysis of audience response to Presidential debates reveals at least 6 criteria which influence audience decisions about a debate winner. Thus, without explicit reference to decision criteria, surveys which attempt to discover viewers’ perceptions of a debate winner will be misleading.