Audience Reactions Research Articles

Atoning for an Indiscretion: The Impact of Reception, Publicity, and Censorship on the Re-editing of Stazione Termini

ABSTRACTThis essay evaluates how negative publicity, mixed reception, and censorship regulations impacted the re-editing of Stazione Termini (1953) and its re-release in the United States in April of 1954 as the newly titled, and much shorter, Indiscretion of an American Wife. The primary archival documents used include correspondences to and from producer David O. Selznick, surveys of negative audience reactions during test screenings in Berkeley and Palo Alto in late 1953, and mixed reviews of both versions from various press outlets. Particular attention is paid to the translations and reporting of the reception of Italian audiences, who did not seem to be able to reconcile the film’s neorealist expressions with the melodramatic plot of the end of a love affair. Overall, this essay argues that Selznick’s editing should be contextualized with the perceived mixed reception of Stazione Termini in Italy, the poor reception from test audiences, the foundational flaws in the story, the negative publicity surrounding the American release, and American censorship standards that conflicted with – though they did not completely curb – some of the sexual content.

Communicating uncertainty about facts, numbers and science.

Uncertainty is an inherent part of knowledge, and yet in an era of contested expertise, many shy away from openly communicating their uncertainty about what they know, fearful of their audience's reaction. But what effect does communication of such epistemic uncertainty have? Empirical research is widely scattered across many disciplines. This interdisciplinary review structures and summarizes current practice and research across domains, combining a statistical and psychological perspective. This informs a framework for uncertainty communication in which we identify three objects of uncertainty—facts, numbers and science—and two levels of uncertainty: direct and indirect. An examination of current practices provides a scale of nine expressions of direct uncertainty. We discuss attempts to codify indirect uncertainty in terms of quality of the underlying evidence. We review the limited literature about the effects of communicating epistemic uncertainty on cognition, affect, trust and decision-making. While there is some evidence that communicating epistemic uncertainty does not necessarily affect audiences negatively, impact can vary between individuals and communication formats. Case studies in economic statistics and climate change illustrate our framework in action. We conclude with advice to guide both communicators and future researchers in this important but so far rather neglected field.

Twitter and social accountability: Reactions to the Panama Papers

Abstract The potential of social media to disseminate, aggregate, channel and democratize social accountability processes has encouraged a variety of organizations to actively promote and champion such initiatives. These initiatives typically envision a three step social accountability process where, for example, the publication of previously-private financial information about the inappropriate wealth accumulation activities of politicians and their business allies (step #1), combined with social media dissemination and discussion of these activities (step #2), can result in an accountability conversation that spills out of the medium and that sometimes results in positive social change (step #3). The current study examines Twitter reactions to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalist’s (ICIJ) publication of the Panama Papers. The analysis illustrates that there was a Twitter reaction: furthermore, that there were different styles of response and that certain styles were more likely to elicit an audience reaction, especially if the tweeter was a journalist or organization. While the provided analysis focuses on step #2 within the social accountability process, the results imply that publicly-interested accounting academics qua activists can facilitate social accountability by helping to make previously-private financial information public and by cultivating sympathetic individuals within the traditional media as well as within organizations that are active on social media.

What’s so funny? Audiences of women’s stand-up comedy and layered referential viewing: Exploring identity and power

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I discuss audience reactions to stand-up clips by Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Margaret Cho. Women’s comedy is arguably at the height of its popularity, but there is a seeming lack of research on audience interpretations of humor produced by women. This research builds on and extends current notions of “referential viewing” in audience research. Utilizing focus group analysis, I elaborate audience decoding practices and the role of identity in layers of referential viewing. Audiences in this research centered their discussions on identification of the comedians, identification of the targets of jokes, and identification of whom they perceive to be the intended audience. Discussed are implications for how audiences understand various power dynamics through humor and distinctions created between comedy that “laughs with” or that “laughs at.”

Inconvenient National Discourse and the People Who Walk to Hear It: the Case of the Slovak National Pilgrimage

The presence of nationalism in the Catholic Church, ostensibly global in its mission and outlook, has been a contentious issue especially in the post-communist countries of East-Central Europe. Events like the Slovak national pilgrimage to Šaštín, broadcast across the country on television, radio and internet, offer Catholic elite in Slovakia a rare chance to freely weave national history and national devotion into religious practice and discourse, but what does elite discourse actually tell us about the production and reproduction of nationhood in the Church? This article calls for increased exploration of reception of elite discourse in the media, not only to gauge audience reaction, but to better understand how the would-be recipients of these messages play a role in producing, reproducing or contesting these media constructions of national identity.

Who cares for the suffering other? A survey-based study into reactions toward images of distant suffering

A growing number of scholars have empirically engaged with audience reactions toward mediated distant suffering, albeit mainly on a small, qualitative scale. By conducting quantitative research, this study contributes to the knowledge about people's reactions toward distant suffering on a greater scale, representative of a Western audience. Following a critical realist approach, a survey was developed and several independent constructs were found by doing an exploratory factor analysis which represents people's engagement with distant suffering. We also found four clusters based on a k-means cluster analysis that portrays typical ways of responding to distant suffering. These clusters have been controlled for people's background, indicators of age, gender, education and people's donation behavior, media use, and news interests.

A Secondary Audience's Reactions to “The Real Cost” Advertisements: Results From a Study of U.S. Young Adult Smokers and Susceptible Nonsmokers

Exposure to "The Real Cost" campaign has prevented smoking initiation among its target audience (U.S. youth aged 12-17 years). This study examines reactions to "The Real Cost" advertisements among a potential secondary audience: U.S. young adults. An online convenience sample of young adult (ages 18-29 years) smokers (n=225) and susceptible nonsmokers (n=339) participated in a within-subjects experiment in 2017. Participants viewed three TV ads from "The Real Cost" campaign and reported their past exposure to, conversations about, and reactions to the ads. In 2017, analyses examined message-level and person-level predictors of perceived message effectiveness using multilevel modeling. About half of smokers (47%) and susceptible nonsmokers (51%) had seen at least one of the three ads in the past 3 months. About one in four smokers (23%) and susceptible nonsmokers (24%) had at least one conversation about the ads in the past 3 months. Susceptible nonsmokers rated the ads higher on perceived message effectiveness than smokers (p<0.01), but lower on message relevance and negative affective reactions to the ads (both p<0.05). In both samples, ads that elicited higher negative affective reactions and message relevance, and lower message reactance (i.e., resistance) received higher perceived message effectiveness ratings (all p<0.05). "The Real Cost" ads have reached and generated conversations among a convenience sample of young adult smokers and susceptible nonsmokers. Increasing the perceived relevance and emotional reactions of campaigns may increase their impact. Future studies should examine reactions to "The Real Cost" campaign and effects on smoking behavior using nationally representative samples of young adults. This article is part of a supplement entitled Fifth Anniversary Retrospective of "The Real Cost," the Food and Drug Administration's Historic Youth Smoking Prevention Media Campaign, which is sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Dossier: Cross-Media Slowness

Dossier:Cross-Media Slowness Katja Kwastek and Erin La Cour For this dossier, we selected six pieces that elaborate upon artistic practice and the relationality of slowness. We begin with two considerations of measurement and time that call into question our anthropocentric views, and offer new avenues for exhibitions, in terms of the "here" and "now" of mediation. In "Phase to Phase: On Oceanic Oscillations, Measurements, Predictions, and Chronographs," DAVID GAUTHIER offers a reading of two of his recent sound art and video installations. In exploring the operations of instrumentation used to measure and predict tide and wave oscillations, his work questions both the move from measurements to predictions as well as what could be termed the perspectives of the metrological machines themselves. HANS FIDOM's "Coping with Cage: On ORGAN2/ASLSP, Listening, and Music-Making" also engages in a consideration of slowness in terms of machinic possibilities. In exploring just how fast or slow the piece could—and should—be played, what comes to the fore is that rather than having an answer to "how to cope with Cage," we should always engage with the question itself. The dossier continues with the documentation of two performances from the ASAP/Amsterdam symposium. Adding to clocked time the presence of the past and a multiplicity of timescales, the performances work to further elucidate the layeredness of slowness. In "SCORE for Wavelength. An Homage to Michael Snow," Alexandra Karl offers a condensation of a recording of Snow's forty-five-minute Wavelength to twenty minutes, during which time she presented critiques of his film and technique, alongside quotations from interviews and audience reactions. In effect, Karl's performance served both to speed up a very slow zoom and to slow down its mediation—both by her in the present and by interviews, reviews, and her students in the past. Greatly expanding the timescales presented, Jeremiah Day's "The chair remains empty / But the [End Page 485] place is set," with accompaniment by Bart de Kroon, invited the audience to ponder the political connections between disparate times and places, including Istanbul during the Gezi protests, Kant's Berlin versus Arendt's Berlin, and the first town hall meetings in New England in the seventeenth century. While his rhythmic repetitions of movements, sounds, and slideshow images cannot be directly experienced in the transcript as presented herein, his way of choreographing through language is evident, and his words and stills forcefully call to mind the clocking of them all. The final two dossier pieces further speak to how artistic intervention can effectively mediate the experience of space and time. In "Hasten Slowly: On the Perception of Time and Space in Ian Hamilton Finlay's Little Sparta," Ekaterina Kochetkova offers Finlay's landscape architecture as a productive engagement with slowness. She explores the cross-historical dimension that Finlay sought to engender in his garden near Edinburgh by having his visitors move back and forth between antiquity, the World Wars, and the present day through a demarcation of tiny details, framing vistas and other points for pause, and careful placement of plaques with Latin phrases, cited poetry, and wordplay. The experience of the walk Kochetkova relays thus becomes more than a meditative experience of calm and renewal—it makes clear Finlay's, and perhaps our own, preoccupation with speed and mediation. Maria Fusco's "Then speech is not an impediment, a sort of brake on the wheel of intellect but like a second wheel running parallel with it on the same axle," also offers an engagement with the mediation of time through artistic intervention. In her excerpt from her unpublished novella, Sailor, she not only develops a practice of slowing down her writing process by scoring the Belfast dialect but also, in so doing, forces the reader to slow down the reading process in order to decipher, pronounce, and thereby hear the dialect. Her delocalizing of dialect—from the aural to the textual, as well as from the writer to the nonlocal reader—raises further questions of labor, patience, and intent. —Katja Kwastek and Erin La Cour [End Page 486] Copyright © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press

Visual priming and framing of the 2016 GOP and Democratic Party presidential primary debates.

In an on-demand media environment, the 2016 presidential primary debates provided a ratings and economic boost to host networks surpassing all prior primary debates and even major sporting events in viewership. In turn, millions of viewers were exposed to and subtly influenced by the ways in which these candidates were visually presented. We analyze how the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates were presented in their initial two debates (Fox News and CNN; CNN and CBS, respectively). Candidates are considered in terms of visual priming through aggregate camera time and average camera fixation time and how contenders were visually framed through the proportion of different camera shot types used (solo, split screen, side by side, multiple candidate, and audience reaction). Findings suggest that while the front-runners from both political parties benefited from preferential visual coverage, Donald Trump stood out in terms of the visual priming and framing that presented him as a serious contender.

Score for Wavelength. An Homage to Michael Snow

Score for Wavelength.An Homage to Michael Snow Alexandra Karl (bio) PREAMBLE The following score outlines the sequence of a performance of Michael Snow's 1967 film Wavelength, available on YouTube. The following are listed: Stopwatch Minute denotes the real-time unfolding of the spoken word performance. Wavelength + time stamp denotes the time of Michael Snow's Wavelength. Spoken Word to be read aloud in a deliberate and steady voice. Stopwatch Minute 2–Wavelength 6m, 0s. Spoken Word: Wavelength is a forty-twominute continuous camera zoom from one end of a New York City loft to another. It was shot by Canadian artist Michael Snow in 1967. For years, the artist requested that the original film be screened in a darkened theater, but it is now available on YouTube. In film, a zoom is created when the lens of a camera changes smoothly from a long [End Page 510] shot to a close-up, or vice versa, by varying the focal length. I say this because today's digital cameras achieve this electronically instead of mechanically. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Michael Snow, still from Wavelength (1967). Image courtesy of the filmmaker. So technically speaking, Snow's camera took forty-two minutes to move the lens a few inches away from the celluloid film inside the camera obscura. In other words, it took forty-two minutes to go from the camera's widest possible field to the smallest final field. The film was shot during one week in 1966. It took Snow one year to plan for this forty-two-minute sequence. Stopwatch Minute 3–Wavelength 7m, 30s Spoken Word: When the film opens, the lens is at its smallest, the audience looks onto an eighty-foot expanse of a New York City loft. The room is sparsely furnished with three large windows on the adjacent wall. Over the forty-two minutes, the camera frame slowly approaches and eventually subsumes a black-and-white photograph located on a wall between two of the windows. This photo depicts an expanse of waves on a body of water. As the camera frame narrows over forty-two minutes, we witness the gradual [End Page 511] elimination of cinematic space as our gaze converges on the flat black-and-white photograph. So from three dimensions to two dimensions. Stopwatch Minute 4–Wavelength 8m, 10s Spoken Word: While the zoom progresses, millimeter by excruciating millimeter, it is pierced by what Snow calls "modulations." Theatrical events take place: a bookcase is delivered into the room by two women. Some glass is shattered. A man collapses and dies on the floor, and a woman places a call to have the body removed. Cinematic devices also intercede. The zoom is shot at different times of day and night, which impacts the lighting of the room. Different film stocks are used, affecting a range of colors and textures. Stopwatch Minute 5–Wavelength 9m, 3s Spoken Word: It should be noted that my description of the film is not true to the experience of the film. In short: I have given away the final scene and the punchline. Typically, the audience reaction begins with disinterest and apathy. Because the zoom is so slow, it is nearly imperceptible. Hence, the audience typically finds themselves sitting in a darkened theater, staring at another room, wondering when something is going to happen. Besides the few [End Page 512] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Michael Snow, still from Wavelength (1967). Image courtesy of the filmmaker. modulations mentioned earlier, nothing else really happens. Stopwatch Minute 6–Wavelength 10m, 47s Spoken word: (none). Stopwatch Minute 7–Wavelength 12m, 30s Spoken Word: That is, until an awakening occurs. At some point during the forty-two-minute screening, the audience acclimates. Perhaps they abandon their reliance on conventional narratives and realize that the camera is headed "somewhere." Aggravated by the increasingly irritating soundtrack, their apathy is suddenly replaced not just with anticipation, but with that most modern of preoccupations: anxiety. Stopwatch Minute 8—Wavelength 15m, 13s Spoken Word: When the work was first screened in 1967, it invited many readings. At the onset, it embodied the conceptualist's love of...

O Teatro de Bertolt Brecht no Brasil

This article analyses the reception of Bertolt Brecht’s theater in Brazil. It focuses on issues such as alienation versus appropriation, the influence of Brazilian cultural and political aspects on the directors’ options as well as the audience reactions to theatre performances.

Staging The Frozen Deep as Practice-led Research: "Illusion can only be perfected through the feelings."

Staging The Frozen Deep as Practice-led Research:"Illusion can only be perfected through the feelings."1 Joanna Hofer-Robinson (bio) Rapturous tributes to performances of The Frozen Deep by Wilke Collins in 1857 may be hard to understand when we read the drama today; indeed, they even provoked skepticism at the time. Writing in the Examiner in 1857, for example, a reviewer worried that audiences familiar with the sentimental language and stock characters of melodrama, but "who have not seen and judged" Collins's play for themselves, "may not unreasonably suspect us of exaggerated eulogy," when he recorded "the silent tribute of irrepressible tears" recently observed at a private production ("Tavistock House Theatricals" 38). This article suggests that we likewise receive only a partial impression of the play's effect when reading the script in isolation. Emotion is writ large in melodrama and direct verbal articulation is only one device through which nineteenth-century actors communicated heightened feelings. Practitioners also utilized a combination of gesture, music and staging to create affective action and arouse sympathy.2 Such effects are now lost because, like many Victorian melodramas, the play is rarely performed. However, in response to a recent research production of The Frozen Deep, viewers reacted warmly, noting surprise at the play's "emotional intensity" and "emotional power." Although the dialog is stagy and overblown by current standards, the drama retains the potential to communicate and elicit emotion when words are contextualized in performance. A practice-led methodology that decenters Dickens's involvement and [End Page 329] ignores questions about collaborative authorship, biography, and managerial methods has several advantages.3 First, it enables us to conduct a "theatrical close reading" (Whipday and Cox Jensen 292) which illuminates interactions between the ensemble of players, and dialog and movement, that are not accessible when reading the playscript alone. Attention to the cooperation required for any performance by an ensemble of players, musicians and auxiliary personnel also helps us understand the play's emotional effects and intensity. I make this claim based on a research production James Phillips and I co-directed in October 2016, when we staged selected scenes from The Frozen Deep at the annual Dickens Day conference held in Senate House Library, London.4 Drawing on this production, I explore how nineteenth-century performance techniques (including attitudes, realization and tableaux) shape the actor-audience dynamic and the emotional impact of the play. Practice-led research, I should explain, uses "creative performance as a method of inquiry" (Kershaw qtd in Fleishman 28) to examine what can be gathered from "specialised embodied knowledge" (Walton 123).5 The methodology is particularly apt for enquiries led by scholar-practitioners (Peters), theater historians (Bush-Bailey), and musicologists (Hibberd and Nielsen), as each expert investigates bodies of work that are activated by the "experiential and tacit knowledge" of performers (Symonds 212). It is also appropriate to studies of Dickensian dramaturgy.6 The findings presented here are the outcome of a collaborative and interdisciplinary practice which echoes the characteristic intertheatricality of Victorian theatrical cultures [End Page 330] (Robinson, Cox Jensen and Whipday 163).7 Our production would have been impossible without the contributions and advice of musicologists, theater historians, site managers and performers. In addition, by taking advantage of an audience broadly familiar with the play, we were able to position delegates as "co-researcher[s]", rather than "test subject[s]" when we examined their reactions and written responses to post-show questionnaires (Walton 132). Naturally, I do not claim that contemporary audience reaction can be mapped on to those of the original spectators. Affective responses are ephemeral and cannot be empirically measured, particularly at a historical distance. Instead, analysis of actor and audience experiences contribute to a theatrical close reading by offering multiple perspectives on the production. Accordingly, I use the term "practice-led research"–as opposed to "practice-as-research" or "practice-based-research"–to describe "the process of staging Dickens's play[s] as a mode of exploration, rather than as a means of testing a pre-existing hypothesis" (Robinson, Cox Jensen and Whipday 162). My emphasis, therefore, is not on "what is intended but what is learnt" (Symonds 222; italics in original). Practice...

Disbelief in Othello

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Belief and disbelief play an important role in Othello: between the figures and between the action and the audience. The focus here is on audience reactions. They are notoriously difficult to determine as they are poorly documented. Two general factors apart from historical evidence are used here to sketch them: the difference between reading and attending a performance, and the generic frames suggested by the play: comedy, tragedy and, in Shakespeare’s own time, the morality play. Audiences would easily get confused. It may be surprising, then, that Othello is the Shakespeare play where the most violent audience reactions are documented. It may be the very confusion produced by it that is responsible for them.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

Secrets to design an effective message on Facebook: an application to a touristic destination based on big data analysis

ABSTRACTThe objective of this research is to identify which are the key variables for designing a message in a social network that can be used by an advertiser to generate Positive/Negative Engagement. The message’s design variables have been classified into four main groups: (i) Message Tools (presence of text, images, video, labels, applications, interactive games and events calendar or others), (ii) Appropriate Message Structure (length and intelligibility), (iii) Informative Cues (links to the brand, orientation towards the product or the brand, topics relevant to the audience, and a remuneration’s promise) and (iv) Persuasive and Emotional Cues (emotional signals, valence, endorsement and influencer mentions). The focus has been a tourist destination: Brand Spain that is advertised through Facebook. A content analysis was carried out and regression analysis with optimal scaling was used on 180 Spain brand’s publications; 57,626 audience reactions to such publications; and 1361 audience comments on the Brand Spain Official Fan Page. According to our results, from the four blocks of predictive variables, only two of them are useful to predict Positive/Negative Engagement: (i) the use of Message Tools (videos), and (ii) the use of informative cues (relevant topics, links on posts, and post’s orientation towards product).

Justified exoticism, or, Kabuki Theatre touring the Soviet Union in 1928

The article offers a detailed account of the first tour of a Kabuki troupe in theSoviet Union, commenting on its political and cultural significance. Kabuki performers were invited to theUSSRfor primarily political reasons: establishing contact between the two governments came first, and the tour was regarded as a success for Soviet diplomacy rather than an achievement of Japanese culture. However, the political hype soon subsided and more people realized the extraordinary significance of this tour for the history of the theatre. The tour became a nation-wide event. The authors cite numerous newspaper reviews of the Kabuki plays, as well as correspondence between politicians, who had anticipated a flop, but were amazed at the reaction of Soviet audiences to this Japanese ‘exoticism’ because the tour had been mostly targeted at the Japanese community. The latter saw the tour as a sign of the Soviets’ readiness for peaceful coexistence withJapan.

Americans

Americans

Organizational identities of U.S. art museums and audience reactions

Organizational studies have yielded conflicting answers to the question of whether having a clear, focused organizational identity or a complex, category-spanning one leads to more favorable reactions by external audiences. We propose one approach to reconciling apparently divergent findings by focusing on the social roles and relative importance of different audience segments for different organizational outcomes. Using longitudinal data on U.S. art museums, we examine four hypotheses concerning audience responses to museums with complex (e.g., art and science) versus focused (art only) identity. These hypotheses are based on a conceptual distinction among three key audience segments for art museums, elite professional critics, art connoisseurs, and casual consumers, and theorized preferences by each segment for museums with different types of identity. In concluding, we discuss the implications of our arguments and findings for future work on cultural organizations specifically, as well as for other types of organizations.

New Education beyond the school: Rosemarie Benjamin’s Theatre for Children, 1937-1957

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the work of Rosemary Benjamin’s Theatre for Children in Sydney as a compelling narrative of the New Education in Australia in the late 1930s, an historical moment when theatre for children emerged as a cultural experiment rich in educational ideas.Design/methodology/approachContemporary sources and archival records are explored through several interpretive frames to develop a historical account of Benjamin’s Theatre for Children from 1937 to 1957.FindingsBenjamin’s concept of children’s theatre was shaped by English progressive education as much as the Soviet model she extolled. She pursued her project in Sydney from 1937 because she found there a convivial European emigré community who encouraged her enterprise. They understood her Freudian ideas, which commended the use of the symbolic resources of myth and fairy tales to help children deal with difficult unconscious material. Benjamin also analysed audience reactions applying child study principles, evidence of the influence of Susan Isaacs and the New Education Fellowship. More successful as a Publicist than a Producer, Benjamin was able to mobilise support for her educational cause among performers, parents, cultural figures and educational authorities. Her contribution was to pave the way for those who would succeed with different models of theatre for children.Originality/valueThis is the first study to employ archival sources to document the history of the Theatre for Children, Sydney and address its neglect as a theatre project combining educational and theatrical values.

Audience Reaction to Comedic Advertising Violence After Exposure to Violent Media

As comedic violence has increased in advertising, questions arise about whether and when it is effective. This research addresses the impact that audience preexposure to violent (nonviolent) media might have on audience responses. Study 1 finds that audiences respond more favorably to comedic advertising violence if they are primed with violent media, akin to commercial viewed during a violent TV program. Study 2 finds that viewers respond more favorably to comedic advertising violence if they have habitual exposure to violent video games. The findings indicate that prior exposure to violence is related to more favorable responses to comedic advertising violence.

Characterizing Online Public Discussions through Patterns of Participant Interactions

Public discussions on social media platforms are an intrinsic part of online information consumption. Characterizing the diverse range of discussions which can arise is crucial for these platforms, as they may seek to organize and curate them. This paper introduces a framework to characterize public discussions, relying on a representation that captures a broad set of social patterns which emerge from the interactions between interlocutors, comments, and audience reactions. We apply our framework to study public discussions on Facebook at two complementary scales. First, at the level of individual discussions, we use it to predict a discussion's future trajectory, anticipating future antisocial actions (such as participants blocking each other) and forecasting the discussion's growth. Second, we systematically analyze the variation of discussions across thousands of Facebook sub-communities, revealing subtle differences (and unexpected similarities) in how people interact when discussing online content. We further show that this variation is driven more by participant tendencies than by the content triggering these discussions.