Summary

Cinema in Turkey improved in parallel with the modernism of the Republic. The socio-economical and cultural developments and changes influenced cinema directly. Reading the whole century of Turkey through cinema would be more feasible than any other cultural representation. Cinema in Turkey came to existence with its own means without the state’s support (as a matter of fact despite its censorship mechanism) until 2004. The main determinant in this case is the connection that the film audience built with cinema. Especially during the decades between 1950-1980 which is defined as Yeşilçam (Greenwood in Turkish to refer Turkish Cinema) the audience was the key determinant for cinema’s financing, certain stories and narratives along with regional film management business.

Cinema’s periods within itself also created its own audiences and vice versa. This project focuses on the case of audience which is one of the most the essential parameters of film industry and searching for the answers to identify the current cinema audience in the Republic’s hundredth anniversary. Starting with the very first time, the film exhibition is defined as the screening of film to a paid audience. In this case, the existence of the audience becomes an important part of the definition of the device/apparatus. Audience is the main partaker in the aspect of film industry. So, who is this audience? “What do we really know about the film audience in Turkey?”. This project approaches the audience’s identity from sociological and industrial perspective by focusing on identifying the audience in the terms of cinemagoing as a cultural practice, film preferences and tastes in the context of changing film viewing practices.

Nevertheless, digitalization, the pandemic, developments of digital platforms caused major shifts in both the audience and the viewing experience, watching films became more diverse and comprehensive and the definition of the audience “expanded”. Therefore the relocation of the filmic experience weakened the collective representation of being together. This study aims to conceptualize the audience beyond the industrial concerns, explain how they emerged, the diversities within them, the shifting film viewing channels, the relation they establish with cinema in terms of place, the decisiveness of the audience’s state of cultural aspects and class along with discovering their predispositions and expectations towards cinema. The study will be able to also present the distinctions and similarities with the audiences within different periods of time in the twentieth century while defining the audience of the twenty first century. This project is authentic in terms of handling the audience of the twenty first century in a comprehensive sense. Another aspect of its authencity is, in the context of TÜBİTAK endorsements, is that this project also traces four other projects also supported by TÜBİTAK on audience studies and provides continuity and opening from their conjunction.

The purpose of the study which is going to be conducted with explanatory sequential mixed method and seeking the answer to “Who is the film audience in the Republic’s hundredth anniversary?” is to define the audience in the context of changing film viewing practices by field researches to be conducted in 12 cities and collecting data on the audience’s attitudes on changing film viewing practices, tastes and experiences. The study aims to solidify and discover the cinema audience as an abstract concept in within their demographic and socio-economic qualifications as well as taste and preferences, with reference to Bourdieu’s set of notions.

The suggested project will be conducted by Mersin University and is going to take two years. As a research method, due to the scope of the project, mixed method will be used for providing the need for multiple data collection. Mixed method design will be implemented to have knowledge of cinema audience in the context of changing film viewing practices. In line with this research design, an audience survey in movie theatres (1200 individuals) will be conducted with random sampling in 12 cities with audiences above the age of 18 who have watched movies in the last 6 months. There are also going to be in-depth interviews with reference to the survey with audiences (120 individuals) using purposive design.

Focus group meetings (9 groups comprising 12 individuals each) will be conducted by using purposive sampling. The collected data will be interpreted and evaluated with Bourdieu’s set of notions and correspondence analysis will be implemented. The scientific results to be obtained have the potential to contribute methodological/theoretical/conceptual aspects of audience studies and improve suggestions to update the theories and concepts on the twenty first century audiences.

Keywords: Audience, cinema-going, filmic experience, contemporary cinema-going