Arts & Culture

Screen Encounters with Britain: What do young Europeans make of Britain and its Digital Screen culture

Screen Encounters with Britain (SEB) is an AHRC-funded research project that explores how transnational video-on-demand services like Netflix and YouTube affect the nature and extent of European audiences' digital encounters with the UK.

Using a mixed-methods approach, which combines document analysis to assess market trends with quantitative and qualitative audience research methods, it will establish: (1) How young Europeans define, find, access, value and experience screen content from the UK, and what motivates them to do so; and (2) how they understand the UK and British culture based on their screen consumption and wider UK-related experiences, and how this impacts their attitudes about the UK.

The research focuses on young, digital audiences (aged 16-34) in four case study markets: Denmark, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

For more detailed information, please click the WORKSTREAMS tab.

Impact

Research findings will be shared widely with industry, policy and academic communities in the form of open access interim country reports, webinars, knowledge exchange roundtables, academic publications and an end of project symposium and report.

Screen practitioners will benefit from a better understanding of how young European audiences find British content and what they like and value about it. UK political institutions and cultural policy makers will benefit from insights about how young Europeans perceive the UK and the role screen content plays in shaping perceptions.

Project team

Jay Arnold

Senior Programme Manager Film, British Council

Luca Barra

Associate Professor, Media Studies, Università di Bologna, Italy

Cathrin Bengesser

Adjunct Professor, Aarhus University, Denmark

Simon Brown

Chief Strategy Officer UKTV & Strategy Director BBC Studios UK

Susanne Eichner

Professor for Analysis and Aesthetics of Audiovisual Media, Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, Germany

Andrea Esser

Professor of Media & Globalization

Berber Hagedoorn

Assistant Professor, edia Studies, University of Groningen, Netherlands

Matthew Hilborn

Research Associate in Culture, Media & Creative Industries

Pia Jensen

Associate Professor, Media Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark

Eva Novrup Redvall,

Head of Film Studies and Creative Media Industries, University of Copenhagen

Neil Peplow

Director International Affairs, British Film Institute

Martina Richter

Managing Director, HMR International, Germany

Kate Saunders

Head of International Policy, BBC

Jeanette Steemers

Professor of Culture, Media & Creative Industries

Work package 1: Markets

Using a range of methods, WP1 collects evidence about how UK content is promoted and disseminated on the most widely used broadcast and video-on-demand (VoD) outlets in the project’s four case study markets (Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands). It provides base data to cross-tabulate the extent of UK content in broadcast/VoD circulation with WP2 and WP3 data.

Work package 2: Cultural Intermediaries

WP2 explores how cultural intermediaries from industry, education and (social) media impact the consumption of UK screen content. As influential audiences and tastemakers they contribute to how young audiences get to know about, find and access UK content, and arguably also how they interpret it. Through interviews and roundtables, British and local cultural intermediaries from the project’s four case study markets provide insights into their selection criteria, how they localise content for non-domestic audiences, how they perceive the latter, and what they know about them.

Work package 3: Young Audiences

WP3 focuses on young digital audiences (16-34) in the four case study markets through various quantitative and qualitative methods that build upon each other: surveys, digital activities, workshops and in-depth interviews. Through careful attention to context, personal, demographic, local, national and transnational factors, WP3 illuminates the complex interaction of the many factors that impact young Europeans’ consumption and reception of British content, and how this in turn shapes their attitudes & behaviours towards the UK.