Martin Barker & Clarissa Smith 
Watching Game of Thrones 
How audiences engage with dark television

Game of Thrones was an international sensation, and has been looked at from many different angles. But to date there has been little research into its audiences: who they were, how they engaged with and responded to it. This book presents the findings of a major international research project that garnered more than 10, 000 responses to an innovative ‘qualiquantitative’ questionnaire. Among its findings are: a new way of understanding the place and role of favourite characters in audiences’ responses; new insights into the role of fantasy in encouraging thinking about our own world; and an account of two combined emotions – relish and anguish – which structure audiences’ reactions to controversial elements in the series.

Table of Content

1 The remarkable phenomenon that is
Game of Thrones 2 Generating a ‘richly structured combination of data and discourses’ 3 Distinguishing different kinds of audience 4 Favourite characters, favourite survivors 5 The significance of favourite character choices 6 Winter is coming… 7 Conflicts and controversies 8 Making predictions for an unpredictable world Postscript: ‘If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention’ Index

About the author

Martin Barker is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at Aberystwyth University and Visiting Professor at UWE Bristol Clarissa Smith is Professor in the Department of Arts at Northumbria University Feona Attwood is an editor of the journals
Sexualities and
Porn Studies