What can biometric data add to the analysis of audience response? Quite a lot if you ask Lene Heiselberg, who just earned her title as PhD from Aalborg University, Department of Communication and Psychology. By combining self-reporting methods with skin conductance measurements, she is able to reveal and capture the unconscious emotional reactions of the audience during TV transmissions and combine those measurements with the audience’s reflections afterwards. This gives an interesting insight to the emotional responses to TV series that are often difficult for an audience to articulate.

Heiselberg is employed as senior researcher at the Danish Broadcast Corporation. Through her academic work Heiselberg aims to open up the field of psychophysiological measurements in audience studies toward a broader field.

Although ‘A Suitcase of Methods’ is focusing on performing arts, e.g. live art, we are always keen to get inspiration and methodological knowledge from other fields of research. Now the next step is to find out how the methods proposed by Heiselberg can be translated into our field.

The dissertation is in Danish, but the summary is written in English: Seerevaluering af emotionelle oplevelser i fiktionsserier