TV Series Audiences in Croatia: Comparison of Cultural Proximity to Turkey, Cultural Engagement and Genre Preferences of Viewers and Non-viewers of Turkish Telenovelas

Abstract

In the early 21st century, TV series audiences in Croatia started fragmenting, and Turkish telenovelas began dominating terrestrial television. The research aimed to compare viewers and non-viewers of Turkish telenovelas in terms of value-based cultural proximity to Turkey, their cultural capital characteristics related to cultural engagement and foreign language knowledge, and their television taste. At the same time, for the first time on a Croatian adult sample, the research classified television fiction and entertainment genres into three genre styles (lowbrow, middlebrow, and highbrow genres) and established connections between the viewers' cultural capital and preferences for these styles. The research was conducted using the snowball method via Facebook. There were 1185 participants divided into two groups: viewers (316) and non-viewers of Turkish telenovelas (869). The results indicate that viewers of Turkish telenovelas express a pronounced cultural proximity to Turkey and a weaker cultural engagement and knowledge of foreign languages than non-viewers. Their spectrum of genre preferences is narrow, mostly gravitating towards lowbrow genres, especially domestic telenovelas. Non-viewers of Turkish telenovelas do not express a pronounced cultural proximity to Turkey. They are more culturally engaged and know foreign languages better than viewers of Turkish telenovelas. They accept middlebrow and highbrow genres while ignoring lowbrow ones. Regarding the cultural stratification related to television tastes, the largest, statistically significant positive correlations were found between cultural engagement, knowledge of foreign languages and education on the one hand and highbrow genres and then middlebrow genres on the other. The correlations were negative for lowbrow genres.