Who is your favourite character? Audience engagement with fictional characters

Abstract

Transmediality, where narratives and fictional worlds are dispersed on multiple media platforms, has become a dominant feature of media production. As fictional characters are central to our relationship with stories and storyworlds, the transition into transmediality poses the question of how audiences engage with fictional characters in transmedia. This dissertation addresses this question empirically by focusing on how audiences articulate and construct character engagement, how character engagement is positioned in relation to transmedia engagement in general, and how character engagement is intertwined with broader meaning-making processes. This empirical study was conducted within two contexts, the audiences of The Hobbit film trilogy and the players of the multiplayer online game, Overwatch. Both media products are part of a larger transmedia universe. The main research data consisted of surveys and online discussions. Textual data from survey responses and online discussions were analysed using open coding and thematic analysis, and discourse analysis methodology was applied to parts of the online discussions. These methods were supplemented by descriptive statistics and analysis of transmedia content. The results offer empirical evidence to the notion that character engagement is connected to how audiences engage with the transmedia universe. Audiences articulate character engagement based on character traits, such as appearance, personality, gender, sexuality, as well as elements of character creation, such as character design or actor’s performance. Analysis of these articulations revealed different interpretative contexts for character engagement: (1) individual text/work, (2) transmedia universe, (3), genre(s), (4) medium(s), and (5) socio-cultural context(s). Different audiences prioritize different contexts, which can lead to negotiations and struggles over meanings. These articulations and negotiations reveal and construct hierarchies among audiences and creators. Characters are also used in in creating places of belonging outside of these structures. Fictional characters are indeed central to our relationship with fiction; however, they are also important in negotiating, defining and constructing broader structures of belonging, identity, and power through fiction.