Understanding Engagement in Transmedia Culture

This book offers a new, interdisciplinary model for understanding audience engagement as a type of behaviour, a form of response and a cost to audiences that, combined, offer value to the screen industries.

Audience ?engagement? has become the key priority of the screen industries. Understanding Engagement in Transmedia Culture explicitly asks what audiences and screen practitioners mean when they say content is ?engaging? and uses audience focus groups and practitioner interviews to offer a model for understanding the relationship between the screen industry, the content it produces and its audiences. In particular, the model addresses engagement within transmedia culture. As digital screen technologies proliferate, audiences move seamlessly across and between different devices, content formats and distribution platforms, blurring the boundaries between film, television and videogames. This book offers a way of understanding audience engagement that is not restricted to a single media but instead accounts for and adapts to the various ways in which screen content is experienced.

Offering a unique approach by presenting practitioner and audience perspectives, it is perfect for students and scholars working in film and television studies, as well as media industries and audience studies.

Introduction: what's in a word? 1. Understanding engagement as transmedia 2. Conversation vs captivation: the type of engagement 3. Affect and affection: the form of engagement 4. Calculating the cost: the cognitive and contextual work of engagement 5. Engagement that's worth it: valuing engagement as economic and discursive commodity 6. The temporal dynamics of engagement Conclusion Appendix Bibliography

Elizabeth Evans is Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. Her research explores the intersection between media industries, audiences, technology and narrative. She is the author of Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media and Daily Life (Routledge, 2011).