\\ Screen & Media Studies - Audience Research Unit //

Invitation to participate in a cross-cultural study of audience receptions of James Cameron’s AVATAR (2009):

We are researchers at the University of Waikato (New Zealand) and Ryerson University in Toronto (Canada). In this research study we are investigating people’s thoughts and feelings about the award winning feature film, AVATAR. We aim to identify the range of responses to AVATAR based on viewers’ culture, ethnicity, gender, age, class, religion, and political orientation. You are invited to participate in this research study by filling out an online questionnaire. Your participation will typically last around 30 minutes, excluding the time you need to view the movie. Participation in this study is completely anonymous and voluntary, and all data will remain confidential. If you would like to get involved or to learn more, please go to: http://digitalvaluelab.com/

Audience Research Unit
Screen and Media Studies Dept.
The University of Waikato
Te Whare Wananga O Waikato
Private Bag 3105
HAMILTON
NEW ZEALAND 3240

Telephone: (+64) (07) 8384543
Facsimile: (+64) (07) 8384767
Email: screenandmedia@waikato.ac.nz

The fundamental assumption underlying research conducted within this Unit is that one cannot be engaged in media research without giving some consideration to issues of spectatorship and audience reception. But for both practical and theoretical reasons, research into how readers / listeners / viewers / users access, interpret and use media content in their everyday lives is a relatively neglected area within media studies. The study of how 'audiences' engage with any form of media is complicated by any number of factors; from the nature and configurations of technology which define each medium, the influence of social-political context at macro and micro levels, the increasingly competitive environment for media producers, through to the influence of media experiences for each member of any audience.

The focus of the Audience Research Unit is on theoretically-informed, multi-disciplinary research activities. We aim to provide a forum for interrogating established audience research traditions within the humanities and social science, and to address in our own practice the opportunities for new forms of qualitative and quantitative research into the contemporary mediascape.

Our work has implications for local media industries. Audience studies have influenced the film and television industries with producers and programme makers commissioning more in-depth and qualitative studies of audience responses to their programmes as channels increase and potentially fragment audiences. Those with skills in these areas are much sought after, both within the academic and broadcasting contexts. In New Zealand, there have been very few academic in-depth studies of audiences. Up until recently, broadcasters have also relied on market researchers and broad survey type approaches to measure audience responses. However, there has been a shift towards the qualitative approaches a demand for more in-depth information about how audiences in New Zealand make sense of screen products. Whilst ratings measurement, for example, dominates institutional conceptualisations of the audience, many programme makers and funders are keen to explore alternative ways of knowing their audiences.

This unit has, as associate members, staff from a range of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. As a unit specifically dedicated to audience studies it is unique in Australasia. Screen & Media Studies is well placed to take up the challenge of conducting audience research, both qualitative and quantitative studies. Our expertise in this area is hard to match internationally and within New Zealand it is unique. Published work in the area of audiences includes;

ARU members include:

Dr. Adrian ATHIQUE, Screen and Media Studies
Assoc. Prof. Dan FLEMING, Screen and Media Studies
Dr. Ann HARDY, Screen and Media Studies
Dr. Craig HIGHT, Screen and Media Studies
Assoc. Prof. Geoff LEALAND, Screen and Media Studies
Dr. Carolyn MICHELLE, Societies and Cultures / Women's and Gender Studies
Dr. Lisa PERROTT, Screen and Media Studies
Dr. Gareth SCHOTT, Screen and Media Studies
Dr. Damion STURM
Dr. Alistair SWALE, Screen and Media Studies
Dr. Bevin YEATMAN, Screen and Media Studies

RESEARCH projects

Assoc. Prof. Geoff Lealand
Preschoolers and Television (1995)
Shortland Street and adolescent viewers (1995/6)
What Now? and its audience (1997)
Children and new technology (1998)
The Ratings Discourse (1997/8)
Tamariki Watching Television (for Maori Television Service), 2005
Children, Young People and the Changing Media Environment in NZ (1999-2007)
Surveys of New Zealand Journalists (1987,1994,2004,2007)
Media Studies in New Zealand Schools and Tertiary Institutions (2007-2009)
The Second 25 Years of Television in New Zealand (2009-2010)

Dr Craig Hight
The 1981 Springbok Tour and audience interpretations
Mockumentary and reflexivity toward the documentary genre
Documentary hybrids and their audiences
Online documentary and its users - a software studies approach Dr Gareth Schott
Marsden project on gaming users: Videogame Violence: Understanding its seductions and pleasures for young people in New Zealand (2006-2009)

Dr. Adrian Athique
Adrian Athique has researched niche audiences for Indian cinema in Australia (2002-5), transnational audiences in South Asia (2006) as well as emeging middle class audiences in Western and Southern India (2007-8). Adrian's audience research combines ethnographic studies with political economy and new theoeretical approaches to cultural field, seriality and the social imagination.

Dr. Carolyn Michelle
Cross-cultural receptions of TV sitcom & reality TV
Audience engagements with online interactive media
Reception theory & analysis
I am currently engaged in a research collaboration exploring cross-cultural receptions of Avatar (2009) with Prof Charles Davis, Ryerson University (Canada). We will be trialling the use of Q-method in an international online survey, with the aim being to identify trends in the predominant modes of reception adopted by differently located audiences.

Dr. Damion Sturm
PhD Thesis on Formula One fandom (2009)
Co-authored book project (with Dan Fleming) on Fandom, technology and affect (2009-2010)

PHD WORK completed to date

Henk Huijser - New Zealand Film and immigrant audiences
Rose MacBeth - Citizen Juries and broadcasting standards
Ruth Zanker - Children's television in New Zealand
Lisa Perrott - Audience interpretations of The New Zealand Wars
Lisa Galarneau - Cooperative Learning in Gaming Environments
Damion Sturm - Socio-cultural analysis of Formula One fandom in everyday life
Brian Finch (Massey University) - Children and their reading of visual texts (Harry Potter)

PUBLICATIONS by ARU Members and Associates:

Lealand, G. (with Ruth Zanker), 'In search of the audience'. In Goode & Zuberi eds. In Media Studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Second edition, Pearson Longman:forthcoming.
Lealand, G. (2010), New Zealand editor, Directory of World Cinema: Australia & New Zealand. Bristol: Intellect Books
Lealand, G. (2009). Media Studies in New Zealand Schools and Universities: A Research Study. SMST, University of Waikato
Lealand, G. (2009). 'A success story: Media teaching in New Zealand'. In C.K. Cheung ed. Media Education in Asia, Springer-Verlag.
(with Ruth Zanker), Lealand. G. (2008). 'Pleasure, excess and self-monitoring: The media worlds of New Zealand children' Media International Australia 126, February, 43-53.
Lealand, G. (with J. Hollings, A. Samson & E. Tilley) (2007), 'The big NZ journalism survey', Pacific Journalism Review 13 (2), September, 175-197.
Lealand, G. (2007). 'Ratings', The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Sociology.
Lealand, G (2007). 'The problem of quality television: schedules, audience demographics and cultural policy in New Zealand'. In Akass & McCabe eds. Quality Television: Contemporary American television and beyond. I.B. Taurus.
Lealand, G. (2004). 'Children's and Youth Television: The Most Important Genre?'. In Perry & Horrocks eds. Programming the Nation: Television in New Zealand. OUP
Michelle, C. (2009). On (re)contextualising Audience Receptions of Reality TV. Particip@tions: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 6(1), 137-170.
Michelle, C. (2007). Modes of reception: A consolidated analytical framework. The Communication Review, 10(3), 181-222.
Michelle, C. (2007). Online Audiences Debate Dilana's Fall from Grace on Rockstar: Supernova. Paper presented to HO7: The 5th International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, Paris, France (17-20th July).
Michelle, C. (2002). Cross-cultural encounters: Making 'local' sense of American TV. Presented to the Annual Conference Of The Australia And New Zealand Communication Association in Coolangatta, Australia (11-14th July).
Athique, A., 'Non-Resident Cinema: Transnational Audiences or Indian Films' (PhD thesis, August 2005)
Athique, A., 'Watching Indian Movies in Australia: Media, Community and Consumption' South Asian Popular Culture (3) 2, October 2005, pp 117-133.
Athique, A., 'The Global Dispersal of Media: Identifying Non-Resident Audiences for Indian Films' in Holden, T and Scrase, T (eds) (2006) Medi@sia: Global Media/tion In and Out of Context, London and New York: Routledge, pp 188-206.
Athique, A., 'Media Audiences, Ethnographic Practice and the Notion of a Cultural Field' European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2008, pp 25-41.
Athique, A., 'Non-Resident Consumption of Indian Cinema in Asia' in Kim, Youna (ed.) (2008) Media Consumption and Everyday Life in Asia, New York: Routledge, pp. 145-154.
Athique, A., 'The "Crossover" Audience: Mediated Multiculturalism and the Indian Film', Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies Vol. 22, No. 3, June 2008, pp 299-311.
Athique, A., 'A Decent Crowd: The Social Imagination of the Multiplex Public' in Adrian Athique and Douglas Hill (2010) The Multiplex in India: A Cultural Economy of Urban Leisure, Routledge, pp 161-189.