Audience Ethnography Research Articles

Inter-Asia referencing and orientalist consideration of the transnational fandom of Thai boys’ love drama in Japan

ABSTRACT This study focused on the Japanese cyber-fandom of Thai boys’ love (BL) dramas, examining how their perception of Thailand was transformed through viewership and participation in fandom activities and how it affected the fans themselves and the broader Japanese society. In the Japanese cyberfandom of Thai BL dramas, people with diverse gender identities and sexualities intermingle, learn, and become aware of their changing gazes toward Thai and Japanese culture, queerness, and other related issues. Through a qualitative analysis of audience ethnography and interviews with 25 participants, this study shows that Thailand’s culture contrasts with others, particularly the cultures of the West, and an Oriental gaze from the Japanese point of view has emerged in this context. A movement beyond the national Thailand–Japan framework has also emerged, which explores the multifaceted nature of BL dramas within a single-issue context. Thus, Thai BL drama fandom extends beyond an Oriental perspective, practising inter-Asian referencing and reflecting on the national framework by watching BL dramas and participating in fandom. In other words, this study presents new possibilities for BL: (1) overcoming an oriental perspective and reflecting on a national framework for the acceptance and consumption of BL content and (2) cultural experience and real social connection through fandom activities and discourse through inter-Asian referencing in practice.

Etnografi Khalayak Pada Pengguna Sosial Media Tiktok (Studi Generasi Z Kota Serang)

The reaction to the development of information and communication technology gave birth to new media that succeeded in becoming an interesting object as a means of communication and entertainment that became an addiction for its users, social media such as having an attachment to the social aspect of humans, Tiktok became one of the most attractive social media for its users, the emergence of Tiktok encouraged acceleration globalization era. Generation Z is the generation born in 1995-2010. The popularity of tiktok, which can be found on other social media such as Facebook, Instagram and others, is a part that contributes to user interest. Addiction to tiktok content is not immediately seen as an experience for users to receive justifiable information. The attachment to social media tiktok seems to have become a new medium in the life of generation Z. Users see the reality of the world based on what information is on tiktok social media, this is a development as a new form that has existed before in print media, columns, billboards, billboards, traditional media and so on. The purpose of this research is to see the experience of tiktok users in generation Z as a form of self-concept for its users. The research was conducted qualitatively with an audience ethnography method using a constructivist paradigm with an interpretative type. The interpretative paradigm is used to see the point of view of facts as something different that has context and meaning, looking at the experience of tiktok social media users on the user's self-concept.

Documenting prison therapy: Insider audience perspectives on The Work (2017)

This article is an audience ethnography, focusing on the documentary The Work (dir Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous, US, 2017), which depicts a four-day therapeutic programme involving men from the community and men from a high security prison. The film was screened to audiences of people who live and work in an English prison-based therapeutic community. Previous prison-based audience studies have highlighted the significance of the media text and the characteristics and experiences of the audience, but have not specifically addressed the salience of the context in which the media is consumed. By conducting the research in an atypical penal environment, the intention is to illuminate how consumption is affected by different penal contexts. The audience offered macro, meso and micro level responses to the documentary. At a macro level, they recognised the reforming intentions of the film, but also revealed the limitations of popular culture, with its emphasis on spectacle. At a meso level, the audience offered a sophisticated and expert analysis of the content and omissions of the film’s representation of therapeutic processes and cultures. At a micro level, those serving prison sentences used the content of film as therapeutic material, reflecting on their own emotions and experiences, while the prison staff used the content to explore their professional identities. The audiences viewed the film through a therapeutic habitus, and media consumption was a way of enacting and reinforcing the expectations and practices of therapeutic community life. By highlighting the salience and variability of penal contexts, the study extends prison-based audience scholarship, but also highlights a factor that should be considered in the planning and design of media and arts programmes in prison.

Closely Reading Community Audiences: A Simple Twist of Faith and Site-Specific Community Plays

This article offers a close reading of audience member reflections of A Simple Twist of Faith, a Canadian play that uses community-engaged theatre practices and site-specific dramaturgy. What can we as scholars, researchers, and artists learn from long-form audience responses? How does site, time, identity, and community infiltrate and overlap in this play? By centering audience reflections, this article offers a critical case-study in ethnographic audience research.

Unmasking the ideological work of violence in music videos: findings from ethnographic audience research into contemporary sexual politics

ABSTRACT This article demonstrates how scripts of sexual attraction and interaction in contemporary music videos are enduringly formed from heteronormative and essentialist ‘natural order’ discourses of biological difference that (re)produce and legitimise existing and harmful power relations. Uniquely, this article identifies and interrogates examples of this practice through critical analysis of the use and meaning of male to female and female to male violence in music videos. We know from extant literature that representations inform social interaction and therefore this research has significant implications for real-life sexual interactions and importantly sexual assault and violence against women. By identifying and articulating the ideological work of violence in music videos, this article reveals its significance and meaning in heterosexual sex and relationships. This study is situated within a feminist theoretical framework that priorities participant voice and calls for social change.

Transnational soap operas and viewing practices in the digital age: The Greek fandom of Turkish dramas

The viewing of Turkish soap operas in Greece is a stigmatized activity not only for reasons intrinsically related to the nature of soap operas per se, but also for reasons related to the historical past and the traditionally troubled diplomatic relationship between the two countries. Based on the data gathered during an audience ethnography, the author analyzes the use of Information and Communication Technologies made by the fans of these transnational soap operas. Online fan communities function as havens for their members as, in these communities, the norms which are dominant within the Greek society are not rigidly adhered to, stigmatized viewing preferences are endorsed by like-minded individuals and prevalent ideologies can be challenged without fear of criticism in a sympathetic, nonprejudiced environment.

Soap opera viewing in a communal context

This paper presents some of the findings of an ethnographic audience study of the soapopera viewing patterns and interpretations of Zulu-speaking students living in residencesat a South African university (Natal University’s Durban campus) who watch The Boldand the Beautiful (an American soap opera) and Generations (a South African soapopera). Although the research undertaken covered various aspects of the soap operaviewing experience and the consumption of an international vs a local soap opera, thispaper will focus specifically on the nature of the viewing process and the ways in whichthe respondents relate to both soap operas, and it touches briefly on how the viewingpatterns of the students and their motivations for watching compare with audiencestudies conducted elsewhere in the world.

Transnational melodramas and gendered resistance. The reception of Turkish soap operas by women in Greece

Turkish soap operas propose an alternative modernity marked not only by tra-ditional family structures and gender roles but also by the social conservatism im-posed by the current government. Nevertheless, the soap operas in question are also under the pressure of representing social change, particularly as far as wom-en's rights are concerned. Through this article, the author aims to highlight the ways in which Greek women resist to the patriarchate through their decoding of these particular media texts. Based on the results of an audience ethnography, the author demonstrates that the resistance of meaning receivers is neither always op-positional to the media text, nor necessarily progressive.

Is It Digital Entrepreneurship? Designing a New Sport through Audience Ethnography

In designing a brand-new sport, do basic tenets of digital entrepreneurship such as ‘solve a user problem’ apply? How is it possible to understand who the potential audience might be for a product and experience that does not yet exist in a Culture Industry such as sports? The paper examines the beginnings of an Australian startup with an early-stage product in the sports and entertainment industry and its use of digital ethnography to investigate key audience segments. The process of audience development occurred alongside the prototyping and testing of a high-tech product that is central to the sport. As the product underwent iterations of development and release, audience interaction with the product was tracked through social media. Discourse analysis of audience engagement with the product on Facebook was conducted to inform a series of user personas that indicated a heavy male bias in the future audience. In exploring the intersection of sports, Cultural Industries and digital entrepreneurship, the paper concludes with observations of how this case challenges each of those notions through the process of ‘starting up’.

Striving for Authenticity: The Foundation and Dynamics of the AlDub Nation Fandom

This paper looks at the AlDub Nation, a fandom birthed from the accidental love team formed in the Philippine noontime show Eat Bulaga in 2015. Convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006a), group dynamics (Forsyth, 2019) particularly Tuckman’s (1965) developmental stages of a group, and mixed methods approach through audience ethnography (Livingstone, 2009) were used to analyze the foundation and dynamics of the said fan community from a six-month fieldwork. I argue that the both online and offline fan activities such as attending fan events and buying fan-related items help prove and assert their identities as fans and identity as a group that continues to thrive even without their idols together in any project, which I call “striving for authenticity.” This paper sheds light on the AlDub Nation fandom through empirical data, contributes to the growing literature on fandoms in the Philippines and Philippine popular culture in general, as well as provides prospects for future studies on other fandoms that are converging in this digital age.

‘Cinema as a common activity’

Abstract This paper is concerned with the ways in which mediating spaces like film festivals function as alternative public spheres when social movements escalate, arguing that the Istanbul International Film Festival and Documentarist right before, during and following the Gezi protests turned into politically and socially inclusive spaces for marginalised groups in Turkey. To account for how audiences and organisers aimed to transform these mediating spaces into socially inclusive and heterogeneous outlets during the Gezi protests, the paper relies on an audience ethnography in the sites of these film festivals from 2013 until 2017 including participant observation, go-alongs and in-depth interviews with audiences, film crews and organizers. Although the spaces of these two film festivals functioned differently, the article shows that film festival spaces generally transformed into cosmopolitan outlets in Istanbul in this period, opening room for a dialogue between marginalised and dominant groups, which was fed by social movements

Media anthropology: studying the life of media consumers through audience ethnography

Editorial

Understanding the Cinemagoing Experience in Cultural Life

The new cinema history approach asserts the importance of investigating the historical reception of films. In the past two decades, empirical research on film audiences has significantly developed methodologies and questions related to film and memory. Some of these studies concentrate on a period of time in which cinema was an essential leisure activity for millions, before the arrival of television, multiplexes, videos and home cinema. Combining ethnographic audience study with cultural and cinema history has allowed new insights into the historical reception of films and confirmed the vital role of oral history for a better understanding of cinema audiences. Italian Cinema Audiences (2013–2016) – an AHRC-funded inter-institutional research project – sits precisely within this new body of research and responds to the urge of using a bottom-up approach to shed new light on the cultural history of a country in a particular historical moment. This article will make use of the findings of the Italian Cinema Audiences research project to explore the role of oral history in the process of understanding cinemagoing as a cultural practice and to better comprehend how this type of research can enrich our understanding of the cinemagoing experience in particular and film cultures more broadly. It will also reflect on the process of remembering what I will define as ‘memories of pleasure’.

Watching CSI: A study of British audiences watching Channel 5 and 5 USA

Despite consumption patterns gradually changing, the notion of flow remains a key concept drawn on by scholars to understand television. As a concept, ‘flow’ is connected to an understanding of the difference of television from other media as far as the viewing experience is concerned: rather than a single film, audiences encounter a number of small units that are combined in the process of audiences’ sense making. In this understanding, ephemera become as important as programmes as they interlink to create a meaningful whole. On the other hand, John Ellis argues that the more typical form for television is actually the segment which contains a separate meaning within itself. Using an audience ethnography, this article argues that in the experience of audiences, the concepts of flow and segmentation are both in evidence. Rather than seeing them as opposing, therefore, they must be understood as complementary in order to fully account for audiences’ experiences and sense making of television.

Constructing interpretive ethnicity in between two nations: television and diasporic discourses of identity in Malaysia

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the interpretation of television in relation to ethnic identity embraced by the female members of Javanese diaspora in Malaysia. The Javanese diaspora in this context refers to the descendants of the colonial Javanese migrants from Indonesia. In contemporary Malaysia, they are considered as Malays, but essentially they retain some cultural identifications of Javanese ethnicity, especially the language. As Malaysia becomes one of the destinations for Indonesian migrant labour and popular culture, the Javanese diaspora are certainly exposed to manifold images of their ethnic origin. Through the audience ethnography in a Javanese community of Selangor, this article reveals that the Malaysian Javanese women negotiate both representative and distant images of Javanese identity on television. Their interpretation of ethnic identity from television represents the notion of ‘interpretive ethnicity’.

Amazon Town TV: An Audience Ethnography in Gurupá, Brazil by Richard Pace and Brian P. Hinote.

American AnthropologistVolume 117, Issue 3 p. 599-631 BOOK REVIEWS Amazon Town TV: An Audience Ethnography in Gurupá, Brazil by Richard Pace and Brian P. Hinote. , Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2013. 224 pp. Jennifer Ashley, Jennifer Ashley George Mason UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Jennifer Ashley, Jennifer Ashley George Mason UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 07 September 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12323Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume117, Issue3September 2015Pages 599-631 RelatedInformation

Witnessing distant and proximal suffering within a zone of danger: Lay moralities of media audiences in the Philippines

Drawing on the anthropology of moralities, the phronetic turn in media ethics scholarship, and audience research in media studies, this article explores how media audiences in the global South are implicated in moral dilemmas of bearing witness. Central are the diverse audience practices of engaging with proximal suffering on one hand and distant suffering on the other, where sympathy with or denial strategies towards suffering others are shaped not only by audiences’ geographical distance to tragedy, but crucially by classed moralities that profoundly shape judgments to sufferers and the media that represent them. A synthesis of ethnographic audience research with middle-class and low-income populations in disaster-prone Philippines shows how middle-class moralities of respectability inform social denial to proximal suffering, while low-income people’s personal experiences of suffering lead to the instrumentalization of television narratives as symbolic resources to cope with their own suffering.

Critical Pleasures: Reflections on the Indonesian Horror Genre and its Anti-Fans

Drawing on ethnographic audience research carried out during 2013-2014, this article examines how young, urban, tertiary-educated Indonesians engage with the Indonesian horror genre. For most of these consumers, Indonesian horror films are the subject of ridicule and derision. With reference to Bourdieu’s theories of taste and distinction, I illustrate how the imagined “mass audience” of Indonesian horror functions as a symbolic “other,” emphasizing the cultural capital of more discerning, critical audiences. In exploring these audience members’ critical engagement with Indonesian horror, I also apply recent theories of “anti-fandom” that have come out of US cultural studies. There are many resonances between Indonesian anti-horror sentiment and US anti-fandom, but also some important divergences. I use these gaps and disjunctures as a departure point for reflecting on some of the challenges and opportunities of working at the intersection of Asian studies, media studies and cultural studies in the contemporary scholarly context.

Troubling complicity: audience ethnography, male porn viewers and feminist critique

In this article I offer a self-reflexive account of an audience reception study conducted in Paris, France, examining gay, bisexual and heterosexual cisgender men's everyday uses of pornography. The study explores the gender dynamics at work in practices such as surfing, watching, reimagining and discussing pornography, based on in-depth interviews with 34 viewers, combined with the replication of their online sexual meanderings; this positions me as a viewer among others, with specific epistemic goals. The article analyzes porn audiences’ accounts of pornographic tastes, fantasies and attractions, both in relation to the interviews’ interactional setting and to normative public representations of the ‘responsible’ viewer. As a verb, troubling refers to a strategy: I grasp viewers’ multifaceted relations to pornography through the use of complicit empathy and feminist contradicting. As an adjective, troubling refers to an aporia: while this study is oriented towards feminist goals, it implies my participation as an ethnographer in hegemonic complicity, the process by which female and feminist views are demeaned in homosocial male bonding.

Lusophone Studies: A Cumulative Area Bibliography, 2013–15

Portuguese Studies vol. 31 no. 2 (2015), 250–64© Modern Humanities Research Association 2015 Lusophone Studies: A Cumulative Area Bibliography, 2013–15 Emilce Rees Visiting Research Associate at the Department of Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies (SPLAS) at King’s College, London The following pages list publications and theses relating to the Portuguesespeaking world which were published from 2013 to early 2015 in English. Some items previously omitted have been included here. Relevant online academic search resources have been used, namely the Copac® library catalogue, WorldCat® and the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database and for consultation, the British Library EThOS, for ALL theses produced by UK Higher Education. The Copac® library catalogue contains the merged online catalogues of major University, Specialist, and National Libraries in the UK and Ireland, including the British Library. ABIL (Association of Portuguese and Irish Lusitanists) list members are also thanked for their contribution. WorldCat® is a global catalogue with more than 1.4 billion items available in libraries from around the world. I. Publications 1.1 Anthropology and Folklore 1.2 Arts, Architecture and Music 1.3 Bibliographies, Directories and Guides 1.4 Environment 1.5 History, Politics and Social Science 1.6 Language 1.7 Literature 1.8 Religion II. Theses 2.1 African topics 2.2 Asian Topics 2.3 Brazilian Topics 2.4 Portuguese Topics Lusophone Studies 251 I. Publications 1.1 Anthropology and Folklore BATARDA FERNANDES, António Pedro (2014), Natural Processes in the Degradation of Open-Air Rock-Art Sites: An Urgency Intervention Scale to Inform Conservation: The Case of the Côa Valley World Heritage Site, Portugal (Oxford: Archaeopress) xv, 311 pages. FORTE, Maximilian Christian (2013), Who is an Indian?: Race, Place, and the Politics of Indigeneity in the Americas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press) xii, 254 pages. KOPENAWA, Davi Albert Bruce (2013), The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) xvi, 622 pages. SHWALB, David W., Barbara J. SHWALB & Michael E. LAMB (eds) (2013), Fathers in Cultural Context (New York: Routledge) xxii, 419 pages. 1.2 Arts, Architecture and Music ADZ, King (2013), The Stuff You Can’t Bottle: Advertising for the Global Youth Market (London: Thames & Hudson) 342 pages. ALONSO, Natalia (2013), Dance and Modernist Architecture: The Case of Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompeía (London: London Metropolitan University) 120 pages BIRKENSTEIN, Jeff, Anna FROULA & Karen RANDELL (2013), The Cinema of Terry Gilliam: It’s a Mad World (New York: Columbia University Press ) 256 pages. BRANDELLERO, Sara (ed) (2013), Brazilian Road Movie Journeys of (Self) Discovery (Cardiff: University of Wales Press) 288 pages. BURNETT, Mark Thornton (2013), Shakespeare and World Cinema (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press) xv, 272 pages. CAMPBELL, Patricia Shehan & Trevor WIGGINS (eds) (2013), The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Musical Cultures (New York: Oxford University Press) xvii, 636 pages. CLEVELAND, Kimberly (2013), Black Art in Brazil: Expressions of Identity (Gainesville: University Press of Florida) xii, 173 pages, [24] pages of plates. COUTINHO, Bárbara (2014), MUDE: Design and Fashion Museum, Francisco Capelo Collection, Lisbon (London: Scala Publications) 128 pages. FOSTER, David William (2013), Latin American Documentary Filmmaking: Major Works (Tucson: University of Arizona Press) xiv, 215 pages. GRAY, John (2014), Afro-Brazilian Music: A Bibliographic Guide (Nyack, New York: African Diaspora Press) xiv, 585 pages. HERTZMAN, Marc A. (2013), Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil (Durham, NC & London: Duke University Press) xvii, 364 pages, [6] pages of plates. MASCARENHAS CASSIANO NEVES, Pedro & Ana Luísa DA CUNHA DE ALVIM (2014), Houses and Palaces in Lisbon: Coats of Arms (Lisbon: Scribe) 287 pages. PACE, Richard & Brian P. HINOTE (2013), Amazon Town TV: An Audience Ethnography in Gurupá, Brazil (Austin: University of Texas Press) 224 pages. Lusophone Studies 252 PARÉS, Luis Nicolau (2013), The Formation of Candomblé: Vodun History and Ritual in Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press) 424 pages. RÊGO, Cacilda & Marcus BRASILEIRO (eds) (2014), Migration in Lusophone Cinema (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan) viii, 232 pages. REGO, Paula & Adam FOULDS (writer of added commentary) (2014), Paula Rego: The Last King of Portugal and Other Stories (London: Marlborough Fine Art) 36 pages. RENSHAW, Amanda (2013), Art & Place: Site-Specific Art of...