Peng Zhuang, Hani Salwah Yaakup, Chin Mooi San, Siti Aishah binti Hj Mohammad Razi

A Grounded Theory Study of Audience Emotional Experience in Chinese Web-based Craftsmanship Documentaries

Introduction

A grounded theory study of audience emotional experience in chinese web-based craftsmanship documentaries. Explore audience emotions in Chinese web-based craftsmanship documentaries. Discover how empathy, pride, and concern foster cultural identity, enriching debates on media, culture, and identity.

Abstract

Amid globalization and modernization, maintaining national identity and folk culture has become a pressing issue. While web-based craftsmanship documentaries are rapidly emerging in the digital media environment, their role in shaping cultural identity remains underexplored. Using a procedural grounded theory approach, this study investigates nine viewers through semi-structured interviews, adopting theoretical sampling and constant comparison. Findings reveal five main emotional responses—empathy, enjoyment, pride, concern, and dissatisfaction—forming a progressive mechanism of emotion–cognition and reflection–cultural identity. These emotions not only reflect viewers’ complex perceptions of craftsmen and their skills but also resonate with personal memories and cultural experiences, fostering re-identification with tradition and reconstruction of cultural belonging. The study highlights documentaries as cultural learning devices that trigger emotions and activate memory to promote cultural identity reconstruction, enriching debates on media, culture, and identity. This framework extends cinematic emotion research by integrating cultural identity into the process of emotional generation and cognitive processing, offering a renewed perspective on digital documentary audiences.

Review

This study, "A Grounded Theory Study of Audience Emotional Experience in Chinese Web-based Craftsmanship Documentaries," addresses a timely and significant issue concerning the role of digital media in preserving national identity and folk culture amidst globalizing influences. Employing a rigorous procedural grounded theory approach with nine viewers, the research successfully unpacks the complex emotional landscape of audiences engaging with these specific documentaries. The abstract highlights the identification of five key emotional responses—empathy, enjoyment, pride, concern, and dissatisfaction—and proposes a compelling progressive mechanism linking emotion, cognition, reflection, and cultural identity. This foundational work immediately signals a valuable contribution to understanding the nuanced interplay between media consumption and cultural belonging. A key strength of this study lies in its methodological choice, utilizing grounded theory to inductively build a framework from audience experiences, which is particularly appropriate for exploring an underexplored phenomenon. The identified emotional responses are highly insightful, moving beyond simple engagement to reveal a sophisticated process of cultural re-identification and reconstruction of belonging. The proposed mechanism of emotion–cognition and reflection–cultural identity offers a theoretical advancement, extending existing cinematic emotion research by explicitly integrating the concept of cultural identity. By framing these documentaries as 'cultural learning devices' that activate memory and trigger profound emotional responses, the study not only enriches academic debates on media, culture, and identity but also provides practical implications for cultural preservation efforts in the digital age. While the abstract presents a robust and insightful analysis, it also opens avenues for future exploration. Given the qualitative nature and the specific cultural context, further research could build upon this framework by exploring variations in emotional responses across different demographic groups within China, or by comparing findings with audiences of similar documentaries in other cultural contexts to test the generalizability and cultural specificity of the identified mechanisms. Additionally, while the study details the "what" of emotional responses and the "how" of the progressive mechanism, future work might delve deeper into the specific narrative or aesthetic elements within these documentaries that most effectively elicit these powerful emotional and identity-forming processes. This would further refine our understanding of how creators can leverage digital media for cultural identity reinforcement.

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