Consumer Value and Modes of Media Reception: Audience Response to Ryan, a Computer-animated Psycho-realist Documentary and its Own Documentation in Alter Egos

Understanding entertainment value: an investigation into the subjectivity of people who experience entertainment

“…At the same time, Q methodology has been employed since the 1960s, especially in the larger fields of media studies and mass communication (Davis & Michelle, 2011). However, it remains unfamiliar to most audience researchers, it goes unmentioned in most recent communication, media, or audience research methods handbooks, and its use is still infrequent in the audience and entertainment research areas (Davis & Michelle, 2011;Davis & Vladica, 2010).…”

“…Technically, it is a comprehensive set of stimuli or items regarding the research topic and problem. Items can be self-referring statements about the experience of viewing a film (Davis & Vladica, 2010;Michelle, Davis, & Vladica, 2011), visual methaphors of the Internet (Hogan, 2008), photographs of landscapes (Fairweather & Swaffield, 2001), names and logos of television channels or programs (Atwood, 1968;Reber & Harris, 2003), song lyrics (Maxwell, 2001), stories about dolphins (Sickler, et al, 2006), cartoons to study humour communicability (Kinsey, 1993;Kinsey & Taylor, 1982) and, in general, any other related factor which can be used to produce the Q sample. The main objective at this stage is to ensure enough breadth in the concourse to capture the diversity of thoughts, feelings, opinions and overall attitudes of respondents to the research subject.…”

“…Having a theoretical framework for structuring the Q sample may also help in deciding on the size (Davis & Vladica, 2010;Michelle, Davis, & Vladica, 2011). Rules of thumb exist, such as to correlate the size of the Q sample with the size of the P set (Webler, Danielson, & Tuler, 2009) and thus have fewer respondents than sample items (i.e.…”

Understanding Variation in Audience Engagement and Response: An Application of the Composite Model to Receptions ofAvatar(2009)

“…Q methodology only permits us to claim that in the population who participated in the study, four distinct subjective orientations were revealed that appear to closely resemble the four modes of reception theorized in the composite model, and that if our research procedure were repeated with a similar population of respondents, these four modes would likely be uncovered again. We note also that in an independent study of receptions of the animated short film, Ryan, four factors were identified that similarly resemble the theorized modes, despite these researchers having drawn on a radically different conceptual schema-Holbrook's framework of consumer value-in selecting their Q-sample statements (see Davis & Vladica, 2010). We can, however, gain insight into the social characteristics of the holders of each of the identified viewpoints in the population we examined, and conjecture that these characteristics are germane to the media reception experience communicated to us by each of the respondents.…”

Modes of Engagement Among Diasporic Audiences of Asian New Zealand Film

“…Smets identifies manifestations of the transparent, mediated and discursive modes, but there is no mention of the referential mode of engagement (Smets, 2012). 5 However, two other studies applying the Composite Model found the referential mode to be the most common (see Davis & Vladica, 2010;Tager & Methee, 2014). However, both these studies found each of the other three modes to be substantially present as well.…”