Die Filmgesellschaft (English shop)

Die Entwicklung einer kommunikationssoziologischen Austauschtheorie am Beispiel interdependenter Kommunikationen zwischen Akteuren im Filmsystem

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How will the film industry develop up to the year 2015? On which media will films be consumed? And what effects do these consumption trends have on the way film content is produced and distributed? The Karlsruhe sociologist Oliver Langewitz of the Universität Karlsruhe (TH) pursues these questions in his doctoral thesis “Die Filmgesellschaft”.

In the first part of the book, he sets out the structures of the German economic system within his theoretical framework and offers an accessible outline of human communication structures. The main focus here lies on the exchange of value between actors, which is particularly significant in the film industry. Following the development of this theoretical framework, the author applies these insights empirically to the German film industry.

A so-called triangulation of different empirical instruments is employed, i.e. the author approaches the subject by means of several surveys and compares the results with one another. At the beginning of his studies he surveyed consumers throughout Germany about their reception behaviour with regard to films. Building on this, he examined a production network, from which the reader can clearly discern how the production structures of film productions are organised.

In order to consolidate these findings, recognised experts of the German film system, managing directors of film funding institutions, production companies, film scholars and others were interviewed. They were asked to comment on individual film-related topics and also to assess possible development trends, in order to provide an outlook on how the German film industry will change up to the year 2015. In addition to his own empirical research, the author draws on secondary analyses that round off the empirical picture of the film system.

The book offers comprehensive insights into the structure of the German film system, and the empirical part in particular should be of interest to non-sociologists as well. The linguistic style is, however, highly demanding, and readers unaccustomed to sociological texts will need a little time to familiarise themselves with the sociological vocabulary.