Chinese Film Spectatorship In The Streaming Era: Viewing Behavior, Technology, And Censorship

Technology, viewing environment and censorship have the capacity to shape and influence audience behaviour throughout a film screening. This is evident not only in immersive cinematic environments, but also more prominent in highly flexible streaming media viewing environments. This empirical research examines the behavioural patterns of Chinese film spectators in streaming media usage. It also considers the impact of COVID-19 on China’s film industry. The data collection for this study combined questionnaire survey and participant observation, which include 2,016 questionnaires, 6 groups of bullet screen data from 3 films on both Tencent Video and iQIYI, and participant observation data from 16 spectators. A mixed analysis method was adopted, combining both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Based on interpretivism, this study incorporates natural language processing (NLP) technology into film-viewing behaviour research. It focuses on the processing and understanding of textual language when exploring behavioral classification, causes and correlations. Findings indicates that, Chinese government film censorship have restricted the development of streaming media and film industry. Chinese streaming platforms strive to develop functionality and portability, such as bullet screen and multi-device synchronisation, but still need to standardise the film consumption management system. Moreover, new cinema formats and streaming platforms are exploring integration to support the sustainable development of China’s film industry. From the perspective of film spectators, audience demographic characteristics and living environment shape their streaming media viewing behaviour patterns. Multitasking behaviours and active control of viewing represent the main characteristics of the streaming viewing model of Chinese film spectators. Accordingly, Hall’s encoding/decoding and the uses and gratifications theory (UGT) play a crucial role in addressing research questions. Overall, this research provides both theoretical and empirical insights into streaming media development and film spectator behaviour studies. It also contributes to broader disciplines of media and audience research both within China and internationally.