How audiences form: theorising audiences through how they develop relationships with film

This paper introduces and discusses a new theory of film audiences, which is that the audience, in all its variations, is a process. This refers to a process that involves the ways people develop relationships with film considering the level and types of film provision. Advances in theorising audiences are related to developments in film as a cultural form, which include changes in distribution and exhibition and in how audiences access and view films. In general terms, there has been a move from studies of cinema-based mass audiences to those depicting niche, fragmented and diffuse audiences (Livingstone, 2003). There has also been a shift from depicting audiences as passive, positioned by texts which give little room for interpretation, to one that sees the audience as active viewers who are able to interpret the texts in various ways (Livingstone,2007, 2013). These general shifts and their theorisation, however, do not fully address the characteristics of contemporary film audiences. The process of audiences involves distinctive relations that audiences have with film and its exhibition, which involve a set of interactions (Hanchard et al., 2020, 2021). The key relations are with screens; venues and place; audiences; others in social and cultural life, and in lived film culture. The interactions are with friends, family, and wider communities; screens and venues; film throughout the life course; film stories through interpretive work; and practices of audiences. Film audiences’ relations and interactions are interwoven and come together in varying ways, depending on audience members’ personal life experience; life stage and circumstance; access and engagement with culture; the media (broadly defined) and screens; and with place-based film culture at the local level. The new theory of audiences addresses a lack of understanding about how contemporary audiences form, the types of audiences and audience experience, and how people develop meaningful relationships with film. The insights of new theory can inform current scholarly debates about audiences and is relevant to film policy in terms of its focus on developing audiences