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

Abstract

Although much research documents variations in viewers' responses to screen media, the basis for divergent receptions remains relatively poorly understood and inadequately conceptualized. One possible theoretical schema is offered in the composite multidimensional model, which charts 4 distinct modes of reception that shape the specific form and content of audience responses in different contexts. In this study, the core distinctions charted in the composite model were tested in a Q methodology study of cross-cultural receptions of Avatar (2009). 120 respondents from 27 countries modeled their subjective responses to this polysemic text by rank-ordering 32 items and then commenting on their selections. Through factor analysis, 4 discrete responses toward Avatar were identified among participants, accounting for 74% of all respondents. Each factor clearly reflects key elements of the transparent, referential, mediated, and discursive modes identified in the composite model, indicating that the model is reasonably accurate in identifying broad distinctions in the underlying approaches to meaning-making that can be adopted by different viewers. Suggestive associations between viewers' subjective orientations and demographic characteristics, social group memberships, and discursive affiliations were also documented.

Acknowledgments

The authors express their sincere gratitude to Steven R. Brown for his thoughtful reflections on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

¹Almost all of the studies cited in this discussion of existing models of reception document clear distinctions in the discursive resources and approaches to sense-making that are utilized by different groups of viewers, and in some cases the same viewer at different moments (e.g., see the exemplary case of a commuting viewer, Michael, detailed in Michelle, 2007, pp. 213–215). That these are distinct and, at times, contradictory modes of reception has been noted by Schrøder (1986) and also Andacht (2004), who identifies the commuting process in relation to young people's receptions of Big Brother in Latin America, where

the most noticeable tendency … is a fair split, even an oscillation between a firm belief in the genuineness of the format's index appeal, and the strong suspicion that its most memorable moments are carefully staged by the participants of Big Brother in complicity with the producers. (pp. 124–125)

Hill (2005, p. 177) similarly notes that (some) viewers of reality TV may commute between at least two different modes in the same response: “audiences are able to switch from appreciation of these ordinary people and their experiences, to awareness of the staged nature of their experiences created for television.'” Clearly, a reading presuming that a media text faithfully reproduces authentic events or behavior is predicated on a different set of assumptions about the text and its production to one that proposes those same events or behaviors have been deliberately engineered or fabricated. That in these examples viewers are described as being split, oscillating, or switching reflects the inherent difficulty of reconciling incompatible positions, such that moving between these modes requires rejecting one set of assumptions and beliefs and adopting another, if only momentarily. See also Barker and Mathijs (2005) and Staiger (2000) for examples of viewer responses that contain inherently contradictory assumptions about the status of the text as viewers shift between different levels or modes of reading.

²As of June 13, 2011, Avatar has grossed US$2,782,275,172 worldwide, making it the highest grossing film of all time (unadjusted for inflation).

³For example, see the four-part discussion on “Ways to Cope With the Depression of the Dream of Pandora Being Intangible” in the “General” forum at www.avatar-forums.com.

⁴Because prefiguration may shape but does not and cannot determine audience response to any given textual encounter, it is not considered necessary to include it in a comprehensive model of audience engagement and response. For a similar reason, the focus of uses-and-gratifications research on motivation, selectivity, and gratifications of media use is considered less immediately relevant to an understanding of the reception process, and is not explicitly addressed in the composite model. That said, these dimensions are clearly likely to offer considerable insight into why particular modes of reception rather than others are adopted by particular individuals. Presumably, a viewer who is motivated by diversion or escape may be more likely to adopt a transparent mode, while one whose motivation is surveillance or value reinforcement may be more likely to adopt a referential or discursive mode. However, one's original motivations for embarking on an encounter with any given media text do not necessarily determine the outcome of that encounter. Many readers will have had the experience of spontaneously viewing a randomly selected movie with the explicit motivation of meeting their needs for social integration—to spend time with friends or family—only to experience completely unanticipated levels of emotional or cognitive arousal that became far more significant and enduring than the social interaction which provided the reason and context for viewing.

⁵ The number of possible variants of a rank-ordered list of 32 statements is 2.63130837 × 10 to the 35th power. If the statements were randomly ordered, it would not be possible to identify factors.