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3.4 Survey design
Survey research is one of the best method to use when one hopes to gain a representative picture of the attitudes and characteristics of a large group (De Leeuw & Dillman, 2008).
The main purpose of this research is to investigate whether the Russian audience is ready to engage with a transmedia narrative and which medium they use to consume it.
The survey incorporates 25 questions. The study targets the audience 18 years old and up due to ethical reasons. The reason for the age limits is that people over 18 years old can freely choose the content they like to access without parental control and other restrictions. The minimum requirement for the target audience is to have at least one device through which they can watch/
play/interact with a narrative.
One of the difficulties of creating a survey was making the questions the way the Russian audiences understand them due to unawareness of the phenomenon “transmedia storytelling”.
The survey has been broken down into three parts. The very first part aims to gather basic information about the participants such as sex, age, education and so on. These are questions from 1 to 6. Basic biographical data was collected in order to identify if there is a correlation between sex, age, level of education and employment status, and transmedia engagement.
The second part was designed to answer research question 1. The third part is to answer research questions 2 and 2b respectively. Answers have been measured using a 5-point Likert Scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” in order to receive more detailed answers about the participants’ preferences. One of the advantages of Likert Scale is that it does not expect a simple yes or no answer from the respondent, but rather allow for degrees of opinion, and even no opinion at all. Therefore, quantitative data is obtained, which means that the data can be analyzed with relative ease (McLeod, 2008). Below each part of the survey will be discussed in details.
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3.4.1 New metrics of audience engagement: Research Question 1
This part seeks to measure audience engagement. The term “audience engagement” is quite difficult to clearly define as well as to measure it. Latitude argues that the future of storytelling demands new metrics to measure audience engagement that go beyond mere number of “likes”
and “clicks”. They developed The 4I’s of Storytelling that includes Immersion, Interactivity, Integration, and Impact. The term engagement in this study is seen as immersion and interactivity.
Immersion measures information-seeking which is the extent which the audience is driven to seek more information about the various aspects of a narrative. Secondly, it also measures extended experience which is whether the audience wants to consume content that is a continuance of the story in some form as spin-offs, interview, and bonus content and so on.
The author of this study is interested whether the audience consume content that is a continuance of the story in some form such as extras, trailers, prequels, spin-offs, etc. Through these questions, we are to discover how proactive the audience is in helping to shape the narrative by voting, submitting ideas to writers, and so on. In addition, we want to distinguish if the participants share their thoughts about the story on social media, if they are active in discussing, collaborating, or competing with other fans.
3.4.2 Engagement on platforms and second screens: Research Question 2 and 2b
Through the third part of the study, we would like to find out which platform(s) is more used by the Russian audience in order to engage with transmedia narrative. The reason for choosing the platforms such as Facebook, according to Portwood (2016), is that print media such as books, and video games most likely require spending money to access them. On the other hand, social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and official websites are free of any charge. Another potential problem is that mobile apps require to have some space on a mobile phone to be downloaded that
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some of the participants might not have. Our study examine Russian audience, therefore, one more platform has been taken into consideration. Facebook is considered as a platform for people with university degrees, or doing business and entrepreneurs. However, Facebook is becoming more popular among younger people who wants to communicate with their foreign friends. VKontakte still remains the top position as a social network in Russia with over 50.2 million unique visitors per month, where Facebook takes the forth place. Vkontakte is strongly geared towards providing entertainment media for users, therefore it could be a perfect platform for transmedia projects.
Vkontakte users have also specific music playlists and video pages, plus the ability to find shows and films to watch (Figure 4).
Figure 4. VK music
Research question 2b is dedicated to find out the pattern of second screen usage among Russian participants in the relation to their favorite show. This is the least known phenomenon for the Russian audience and could be misunderstood. More and more content creators are implementing this kind of way to engage the audience, therefore the result of this research question could be of a big use for the marketers. Section 2.2.1 introduces us to convergence, defined by
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Jenkins where specific type of convergence called Social or Cultural convergence describes people’s behavior to use more than one medium at the same time. Do people prefer to use smartphones while watching their favorite TV show? Or do they like to use a tablet as a second screen? These questions are of great interest to the author of this study. By answering these questions, we are only to distinguish whether the Russian audience uses second screen but not the reasons to do such. Future studies incorporating in-depth interviews could be aimed at finding the reasons for this behavior.