The Laboratory for Comparative Social Research announces the next  regular seminar , which will be held in Saint-Petersburg (Sedova st., 55-2, room 303) on January 21 at 18-00 p.m.  Violetta Korsunova (LCSR, Research Assistant) and Olesya Volchenko (LCSR, Research Assistant) will deliver a report “Emancipative Values and Film Industry: Naked Facts from IMDb”.

This project is devoted to the analysis of film industry as a social phenomenon. A number of papers explore culture production. The major part of the studies concerning the meanings and symbols of artwork are conducted in qualitative perspective (Finney; 1993, Baker, 2010). They focus on biographies of the authors and their private lives as the base for creating certain cultural products (Chalmers, 1978; Zolberg, 1990; Hauser, 2011). Some studies examine economic issues of cultural production (Ravid, 1999; De Vany, Walls, 2002). Another branch of film industry research uses case-study as main strategy and aimed at describing internal patterns of a particular movie (Denzin, 1988; Chopra-Gant, 2005). However, the link between visual cultural production and people's values is quite unexplored and seems a promising junction of cultural studies and macro-sociology. 

The empirical basis of our study is the Internet Movie Database (abbreviated as IMDb) along with the data from World Values Survey and European Values Study. We juxtapose the level of sexual emancipation in a society to the nudity appearance in films. Using regression analysis we examine the relationship between the level of emancipative values index and the share of movies containing different types of nudity. Several social, political and demographic characteristics are used to control the results.

Everyone interested is invited!

Working language is English.

Guests from St. Petersburg are free to enter the building.

Videoconference with Moscow office of the LCSR (room 511, 22, Myasnitskaya st.) will be provided. Guests are free to enter to the 5th floor from 17:45 till 18:15. For questions: +7-495-772-95-90 extension number 12244.