To believe or not to believe? : an audience research on the documentary What The Health

Sammanfattning: This research employs qualitative methods to look at the audience site of veganism documentary What The Health. Through semi-structured interviews with 13 participants (6 non-vegetarians and 7 vegetarians), the thesis attempts to understand the self and individual response to veganism portrayal, truth claims and how viewers learn from the documentary. Exploring audiences’ media practices enables researchers to understand diverse strategies that audiences use to engage with and reflect on the changing nature of contemporary media (Hill 2005 and Hill 2007), especially with factual genre like documentary which occupies “an intermediate space” between fact and fiction (Hill 2007, p. 89) and goes through a reformation in the new media environment with the support from digital technology, platforms and infrastructures (Nash et al. 2014). The research is theoretically informed by the concept of spectrum of engagement (Annette Hill), double mode of engagement (Annette Hill) and genre work (Annette Hill). The findings illustrate that audiences have multiple modes of engagement with the documentary and what they learn from the film is diverse. In terms of truth claims, they employ many different criteria to evaluate including performances, authenticity and even the context of the documentary. As documentary audiences, they are well-aware of the idea of “the two worlds”. Their engagement affirms the arguments from Hill (2008), Corner (2005), Nichols (2001) and Lewis (2004) that audiences expect the documentary to show them reality. However, at the same they acknowledge that the world they see is constructed by the producers. In addition, informants draw on their previous experiences and knowledge when they watch documentary and take some time to reflect on themselves and the act of being an audience. (Hill 2007) I would argue that there are more similarities rather than differences between the two groups. Informants from the two groups have multiple responses to documentary in terms of veganism portrayal as well as truth claims. Viewers from both groups indicate affective and cognitive engagement and double mode of engagement with the documentary. The difference is that many informants in the vegetarian group perceived Kip Anderson, the host and co-producer of the film, as an activist. Another difference relates to the idea of learning. Many non-vegetarian participants learned about the benefits of a plant-based diet while this kind of engagement was absent in the vegetarian group.