Multi-Platform Film-Viewing: Taipei Audiences and Generational Variation

Thanks to the evolution of modern audiovisual technology, film audiences nowadays can enjoy the flexibility of watching movies at venues ranging from multiplex theatres to living rooms and bedrooms at home through various film-viewing platforms from broadcast television, cable movie channels, VCR, VCD, and DVD to internet downloading. With the increased amount of transnational audiovisual products imported over the years, Taiwanese audiences can also consume different types of films from different places in these ways. This thesis focuses on the relationship between different generations of film audiences and their 'film-viewing' practices via various viewing platforms, attempting to reveal the social, cultural and economic significance of their everyday practices, and frame them in the structure of the local film industry and the increasingly transnational local cinema culture.

The project employs various qualitative research techniques to collect Taipei film audiences' own accounts of their quotidian film-viewing practices through currently available viewing platforms. This multi-platform approach to contemporary film audiences in today's digital-rich media environment contributes to this understudied field of film audience research. Furthermore, the empirical data on the 'film-viewing' practices of five age groups yields an understanding of the complicated interrelationships among film audiences, film texts and viewing platforms. On this basis, it is argued that the conventional 'audience-film' relationship studied in audience research should be reframed as the study of the 'audience-film-viewing platform' relationship.