Points of connection close and far: German and Argentinian audiences of Danish TV drama

HERAM, YAMILA; EICHNER, SUSANNE

Cartagena de Indias

Congreso; International Association for Media and Communication Research Conference (IAMCR); 2017

IAMCR

With its small population of only 5.6 million inhabitants, its public service broadcasting dominance, and no recent history of world colonization or immigration, the near global success of Denmark?s television industry over the last five years is as unprecedented as it is impressive. Previous work on transnational media distribution and reception has repeatedly shown that non-Anglophone content rarely exports outside its geo-linguistic region due to the perception that audiences in other regions would be too far removed culturally and linguistically. Similarly, theories on the consumption of audio-visual content have tended to neglect transnational, ?non-resident? viewing and, instead, emphasised the importance of geo-linguistic, national or ?resident? viewing. How, then, do we begin to account for the success of Danish language drama around the world? The Danish TV Drama serves as a case as to show how media practices and cultures have transformed and developed into a more transnational and global phenomena where not only production and distribution processes must be accounted for in the light of globalization and transnationalization but also audience activities. Through an analysis of focus group discussions of Argentinian and German audiences of Danish television as well as online ethnography and an online survey, this paper argues that transnational and global media flow has given rise to an increasingly complex sense of cultural space and identity. It also suggests that contemporary audiences are continually zooming in and out between the familiar and the strange and between the local and the global in their engagement with transnational content. As such, a transnationally oriented model of media reception must be developed in order to be able to accommodate this continuum.This paper presents some intermediary results of the ongoing research project ?What makes Danish TV Drama series travel?? (Based at Aarhus University; affiliated partner: University of Buenos Aires). It draws mainly on the Argentinian and German and focus groups while integrating results from the UK, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Turkey and Denmark - to shed light on the specificities of the media landscapes as well as on the audience preferences that enabled the formats to successfully ?travel? to these distant places.