Rings around the World: Notes on the Challenges, Problems & Possibilities of International Audience Projects

Abstract

In a recent article, Sonia Livingstone has attempted to summarise some of the many problems, complexities and challenges which researchers face when conducting cross-cultural audience projects. This essay tells the story of the specific problems and issues encountered during the Lord of the Rings international audience project, in order to offer this project as a case study of how such problems can be anticipated or encountered and then managed, and to also offer up some new issues and questions that have emerged during the course of the project which, we feel, deserve to be considered and brought in to the cross-cultural debate. These include, in particular, the benefits and pitfalls of international web questionnaires, multi-dimensional forms of international research (reception research, questionnaires and qualitative interviews), and electronic and face-to-face forms of communication amongst research partners.