How Do Media Industries Shape Media Audiences?

In my case study, I explored how media industries shape media audiences. More specifically, I aimed to illustrate how Marvel Studios, uses the concept of transmedia to shape media audience to watch Marvel films and consume other media in tandem to the films. Marvel films have shape media audiences through its “cinematic universe” through its television, flagship comic books, video games, etc. Additionally, Marvel Studios use “Easter eggs” and “Post credit scenes” to entice audience members to seek other media to understand the full story of Marvel plot lines as well as anticipate for future media.

Marvel Studios is a prime example of how contemporary media industries shape media audiences through transmedia storytelling. According to Ádám Richter, transmedia storying telling is a story unfolding “across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole” (2016). Within its own Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel successfully gets their audience to eagerly participate in consuming the films as well as associated media because Marvel has been able to create anticipation “for future films to the extent that each film not only is an event/text in itself, but serves as a promotional tool for future events/texts” (Beaty 322). The anticipation for getting the whole story through consuming Marvel media is created through theatrical conventions such as Easter eggs and Post credit scenes alluding to obscure references to other Marvel based media and teasing future plot points respectively.

Work Cited

Beaty, Bart. "Superhero Fan Service: Audience Strategies in the Contemporary Interlinked Hollywood Blockbuster." Information Society, vol. 32, no. 5, Oct-Dec2016, pp. 318-325. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/01972243.2016.1212616.

Dantzler, Jamoki Zakia. "How the Marvel Cinematic Universe Represents Our Quality World: An Integration of Reality Therapy/Choice Theory and Cinema Therapy." Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, vol. 10, no. 4, Oct. 2015, pp. 471-487. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/15401383.2014.994796.

Richter, Ádám. "The Marvel Cinematic Universe as a Transmedia Narrative." Americana: E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary, vol. 12, no. 1, 2016. EBSCOhost, lib-ezproxy.tamu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2017306637&site=eds-live.