The comparative investigation of New Zealand and Italian audiences of Game of Thrones and Mad Men addresses fans’ uptake of, and deviations from, a trans-media corporate strategy for the production and distribution of TV products. In doing so, this study explores the dynamics of consumers’ involvement with trans-media texts as the result of their level of media literacy and engagement that is peculiar to the minor national contexts under examination. This chapter performs a statistical investigation of the main trends— in terms of viewing modes and forms of engagement— that characterize viewers’ behaviors and habits.

The first phase of the data production consisted in the organization of online surveys directed at the followers of both shows in the two countries. For this reason, two surveys for each show (four in total) were created with the same questions written in Italian (for the Italian audience) and in English (for the New Zealand audience). The four surveys were implemented on the website SurveyMonkey (https:// www.surveymonkey.com/ home/ ) and were, afterward, distributed on different sites. Quantitative investigations seek to establish a sufficiently large number of cases selected in such a manner as to reproduce the features of the population of interest. In this sense, questionnaires are used to outline the representative sample by requesting responses on a defined set of topics and documenting them. Statistical analysis is then performed on the responses to extract the properties of the populations under investigation in a quantitative manner. The surveys were instrumental in acquiring a general sense of audiences’ behaviors and attitudes in watching and engaging with the selected TV programs and in providing a background of substantial information for the next phase of data production, the focus group sessions. In this regard, the questionnaires allowed me to investigate the different habits and perceptions espoused by participants by quantifying how often these occur and what correlations exist between them. In the chapters that follow, the qualitative analysis allows the exploration of the underlying reasons and motivations, in terms of emotional investment and negotiations of meanings, that emerged during conversational processes. These provide a key to learning and interpreting the deep dynamics of the quantitatively observed behaviors and attitudes through the freely evolving expression of feelings, preferences and interests.