Transformation of the audience in the digital era: The Irishman case

In this thesis, the change and transformation of today's audience habits and viewing patterns are examined through digital platforms and The Irishman (Scorse, 2019). In the study, based on how The Irishman is watched and received, it has been tried to reveal how the practices developed and adopted by the audience around watching movies as a form of cultural consumption have been transformed by digitalization and the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is theoretically and methodologically based on Morley's (2002) ethnographic stance, which opposes the tendency to singularize the audience and generalize audience experiences; Barker's concept of "viewing strategies" (2006), which emphasizes conditional viewing styles and the emotional involvement of the audience in the film and Bourdieu's (1990, 1996) relational approach, which deal with the cultural field with both the social structures that shape it and the practices of the subjects within that field. Within the scope of the field research, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 audiences, and the findings were analyzed in the context of how the participants generally relate to the media in their daily lives and the way they consume cultural products. As a result of the research, it was concluded that the consumption habits of the audience were transformed not only under the guidance of emerging technologies, but also depending on the social functions, needs and uses that should be addressed in a historical path. It has been revealed that the meanings produced from media texts in the new forms of cinema and television (such as video on demand) are almost always shaped by previous experiences, dispositions, expectations and emotional investments. On the other hand, the digitalization of accessing and watching movies has been made more visible, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, and in this process, the necessity of re-questioning the cinema experience and the social meaning of cinema has arisen. Cinema is expected to remain as a hard-to-reach and therefore more private experience, as non-cinema viewing is increasingly embraced by viewers and becoming the default mode of film watching. In addition, it has been found that access to movies still remains a problem and that social inequalities caused by it are transferred to the digital space even if it is discursive, and distinctions based on cultural tastes on the audience are reproduced through digital platforms and their "contents".