Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: The outcome of an audience study supports theories stating that stories are a primary means by which we make sense of our experiences over time. Empirical examples of narrative impact are presented in which specific fiction film scenes condense spectators’ lives, identities, and beliefs. One conclusion is that spectators test the emotional realism of the narrative for greater significance, connecting diegetic fiction experiences with their extra-diegetic world in their quest for meaning, self and identity. The ‘banal’ notion of the mediatization of religion theory is questioned as unsatisfactory in the theoretical context of individualized meaning-making processes. As a semantically negatively charged concept, it is problematic when analyzing empirical examples of spectators’ use of fictional narratives, especially when trying to characterize the idiosyncratic and complex interplay between spectators’ fiction emotions and their testing of mediated narratives in an exercise to find moral significance in extra-filmic life. Instead, vernacular meaning-making is proposed.
Source: Nordicom review/NORDICOM review
Author: Tomas Axelson
Institutions: Dalarna University, Uppsala University
Language: English
Topic: Media Influence and Health
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1897683241