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Documentaries on a Mission: How Nonprofits are Making Movies for Public Engagement

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How should we measure the “social impact” of a documentary film? In this essay I review several ways to conceptualize and evaluate “impact,” drawing on previous research in communication, sociology, and political science, as well as these case studies.

The problem of “selectivity bias.” Any documentary, regardless of budget size and distribution, runs up against the problem of audience selectivity. In a fragmented media system with a diversity of content choices, those citizens lacking a preference for public affairs media find it very easy to avoid documentary content altogether. Moreover, those few citizens with a strong interest in political or social issues can take advantage of an abundance of media choices to tailor their viewing habits to their pre-existing political views.1 As a result, both “preference” and “ideological” gaps characterize the audience for any film.

Even so-called blockbuster documentaries fall victim to the forces of selectivity. For example, following the 2004 presidential election, a Pew survey indicated that 31 percent of American adults reported that in the last year they had seen a political documentary related to the campaign or the candidates.2 Much of this audience is attributable to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. However, other films also generated wider attention during the campaign season, including George Butler’s Going Up River, and Michael Shoob and Joseph Mealey’s Bush’s Brain. Though nearly a third of adult Americans constitutes a sizable audience for any media programming, the Pew survey results indicate that the combined viewership for these documentaries skewed heavily liberal and Democratic, was more likely to live in electorally “blue” versus “red” counties of the country, was younger, and was much more likely to be already politically active.

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AWDF.0654

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AWDF.0654

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Washington, DC : Center for Social Media., 2007

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English

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