International cinema, comedy, and online film and media practices: audience research at PARTICIPATIONS

Frame grab from A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971). You can read about audience responses to this film in Peter Krämer's excellent article '‘Movies that make people sick’: Audience Responses to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in 1971/72'

Film Studies For Free takes to the blogwaves today to shout out about a truly excellent issue of the Open Access, and openly refereed, international audience research journal Participations.

It's a bumper issue with 27 articles - an advantage of an online journal format over its offline, paper-bound relatives, as editor Martin Barker outlines in his interesting introduction to this issue.

FSFF particularly appreciated the section on international film audiences, and also especially enjoyed Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore's study 'Reviewing Romcom: (100) IMDb Users and (500) Days of Summer' and also Anne Collins Smith and Owen M. Smith's article on 'Pragmatism and Meaning: Assessing the Message of Star Trek: The Original Series'.

Special Edition Contents

Editorial

• Martin Barker (Joint Editor): 'Editorial Introduction: A Small Diatribe, and a Serious Challenge to Other Journals'

Articles

• Adrian Athique: 'Diasporic Audiences and Non-Resident Media: The Cast of Indian Films' 
• Pietari Kääpä and Guan Wenbo: 'Santa Claus in China and Wu xia in Finland: Translocal reception of transnational cinema in Finnish and Chinese film cultures' 
• Tonny Krijnen: 'Engaging the Moral Imagination by Watching Television: Different Modes of Moral Reflection' 
• Kim Trager Bohley: '“Browsing Madness” and Global Sponsors of Literacy: The Politics and Discourse of Deterritorialized Reading Practices and Space in Singapore' 
• Anne Collins Smith and Owen M. Smith: 'Pragmatism and Meaning: Assessing the Message of Star Trek: The Original Series' :

Special Section: Comedy Audiences

• Sam Friedman, Brett Mills and Tom Phillips (Guest Editors - Special Section): 'Editorial Introduction' 
• Lesley Harbidge: 'Audienceship and (Non)Laughter in the Stand-up Comedy of Steve Martin' 
• Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore: 'Reviewing Romcom: (100) IMDb Users and (500) Days of Summer' 
• Sharon Lockyer and Lynn Myers: '‘It’s About Expecting the Unexpected’: Live Stand-up Comedy from the Audiences’ Perspective' 
• Richard McCulloch: '‘Most People Bring Their Own Spoons’: The Room’s participatory audiences as comedy mediators' 
• Sophie Quirk: 'Containing the Audience: The ‘Room’ in Stand-Up Comedy' 
• Eve Smith: 'Selling Terry Pratchett's Discworld: Merchandising and the Cultural Economy of Fandom' 
• Simon Weaver: 'Definitions of the humorous in Chris Rock and Russell Peters fan blogs: A discussion of the problem of incongruity' 
• Nathan A. Wilson: 'Divisive Comedy: A Critical Examination of Audience Power'

Special Section: International Film Audiences Conference

• Ailsa Hollinshead (Guest Editor - Special Section): 'Editorial Introduction' 
• Karina Aveyard: 'The Place of Cinema and Film in Contemporary Rural Australia' 
• Jacqui Cochrane: '16 Years of Alcohol: An Allegory of a Nation ' 
• Elizabeth Jane Evans: 'Superman vs Shrödinger’s Cat: Taste, Etiquette and Independent Cinema Audiences as Indirect Communities' 
• Roberta Gregoli: 'Transnational Reception of City of God and Elite Squad' 
• Amy Hardie:  'Symbolic Cinema and Audience Engagement' 
• Ailsa Hollinshead: '“And I felt quite posh!” Art-house cinema and the absent audience – the exclusions of choice' 
• Peter Krämer: '‘Movies that make people sick’: Audience Responses to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in 1971/72' 
• Claire Monk: 'Heritage Film Audiences 2.0: period film audiences and online film cultures' 
• Tom Phillips: 'When Film Fans Become Fan Family: Kevin Smith Fandom and Communal Experience' 
• Pavel Skopal: '"It is not enough we have lost the war – now we have to watch it!" Cinemagoers' attitudes in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany (a case study from Leipzig)'

Special Section: Approaching the Online Audience: New Practices, New Thinking

• Craig Hight, Ann Hardy, Carolyn Michelle and Adrian Athique (Guest Editors - Special Section):'Editorial Introduction' 
• Charles H. Davis and Carolyn Michelle: 'Q methodology in audience research: bridging the qualitative/quantitative ‘divide’?' 
• Luke Goode, Alexis McCullough and Gelise O'Hare: 'Unruly publics and the fourth estate on YouTube' 
• Ann Hardy, Craig Hight and Carolyn Michelle: 'Reservoir Hill and audiences for online interactive drama' 
• Bevin Yeatman: 'Still seeking the audience' 
• Ruth Zanker: 'Child audiences becoming interactive ‘viewsers’: New Zealand children’s responses to websites attached to local children’s television programmes'

Reviews

• Samantha Holland:Pole Dancing, Empowerment and Embodiment (Elke Weismann) 
• Michael V. Tueth: Laughter in the Living Room: Television Comedy and the American Home Audience (Tom Phillips) 
• Graeme Turner:  Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn (Simon Cross) 
• Richard O. Young: How Audiences Decide: a Cognitive Approach to Business Communication (Martin Barker)