Although many digital platforms continue to appropriate and reconfigure familiar forms of media experience, this is an environment which no longer consistently constructs an identifiable 'mass' audience in the terms understood by twentieth century audience researchers. The notion of 'audiencing' takes on different characteristics within a digital environment where platforms encourage users to upload, share and respond to content, while the platforms themselves monetise the digital traces of this activity. This environment demands new ways of thinking about audience and user engagement with media technologies, and raises significant questions on methods of conceiving and researching audience-users. This volume addresses ongoing debates in the field of audience research by exploring relevant conceptual and methodological issues concerning the systematic study of digital audiences. Drawing from work conducted by researchers based in Australia and New Zealand, the book uses theoretical frameworks and case study material which are of direct relevance to audience researchers globally.

This book explores the evolution of audience receptions of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy (2012-14) as an exemplar of the contemporary blockbuster event film franchise. Drawing on findings from a unique cross-cultural and longitudinal study, the authors argue that processes and imperatives associated with Hollywood 'blockbusterisation' shaped the trilogy's conditions of production, format, content, and visual aesthetic in ways that left many viewers progressively disenchanted. The chapters address public and private prefigurations of the Hobbit trilogy, modes of reception, new cinematic technologies and the Hobbit hyperreality paradox, gender representations, adaptation and the transformation of cinematic desire, and the role of social and cultural location in shaping audience engagement and response. This book will appeal to audience researchers, Q methodologists, scholars and students in film and media studies, Tolkien scholars, and Hobbit fans and critics alike.

This book explores the notion of software literacy, a key part of digital literacy which all contemporary students and citizens need to understand. Software literacy involves a critical understanding of how the affordances and conceptual approaches of everything from operating systems, creative apps and media editors, to software-based platforms and infrastructures work to inform and shape the ways we think and act. As a cultural artefact, programing code plays a role in reproducing, reinforcing, and augmenting existing cultural practices, as well as generating completely new coded practices. A proposed three-tier framework for software literacy is the focus for a two-year empirical investigation into how tertiary students become more literate about the nature and implications of software they encounter as part of their tertiary studies. Two case studies of software learning and use in university-level engineering and screen & media studies courses are presented, investigating the mapping of students' trajectory of the learning of desktop applications against this framework for software literacy. Though the book's focus is primarily educational, its content also has implications for any field that makes use of software and information & communication technology systems and applications. As such, the book will be of interest to all readers whose work involves the challenges and opportunities presented by software-based teaching and learning; and to those interested in how software impacts the workplace and leisure activities that make up our day-to-day lives.

Although many digital platforms continue to appropriate and reconfigure familiar forms of media experience, this is an environment which no longer consistently constructs an identifiable 'mass' audience in the terms understood by twentieth century audience researchers. The notion of 'audiencing' takes on different characteristics within a digital environment where platforms encourage users to upload, share and respond to content, while the platforms themselves monetise the digital traces of this activity. This environment demands new ways of thinking about audience and user engagement with media technologies, and raises significant questions on methods of conceiving and researching audience-users. This volume addresses ongoing debates in the field of audience research by exploring relevant conceptual and methodological issues concerning the systematic study of digital audiences. Drawing from work conducted by researchers based in Australia and New Zealand, the book uses theoretical frameworks and case study material which are of direct relevance to audience researchers globally.

The first major study of mock-documentary - one of a number of screen forms that play with the assumed boundaries between 'fact' and 'fiction'. Examines mock-documentary through the specific relationship which the form has with documentary. Part of a wider discussion of the increasingly fragile association between factual codes and conventions and the discourses which underpin the documentary genre. Includes detailed discussions of a number of key mock-documentary texts, ranging from Woody Allen's Zelig, Peter Greenaway's The Falls, and the Beatles spoof The Rutles through to such classic examples as Bob Roberts, This is Spinal Tap and Man Bites Dog. Opens out this relatively new media form and by doing so throws light on the status of the documentary itself. -- .