Screen Encounters with Britain: What do young Danes make of Britain and its digital screen culture? 

Have you ever watched Peaky Blinders, Sex Education or Geordie Shores. Are you a fan of Sidemen, Gordon Ramsay, Jeremy Clarkson or Keeping up Appearances?  Do you love British humour or do you find British reality shows and detective series distinctly unappealing. If you want to know more about how other young Danes aged 16-34 know about, find and access UK screen content and why they seek it out, this interactive lecture by Jeanette Steemers and Matt Hilborn from King’s College London will give you insights into how British programmes influence perceptions of the UK and whether these screen encounters impact attitudes towards the UK – even after Brexit. If you are interested in the changing screen consumption habits of young people, we will introduce you to how we used our survey, how we selected respondents for digital diaries and give you snapshots of what we asked interview respondents and how they responded. As part of the presentation, we will ask students to undertake a short exercise from the digital diaries.

Screen Encounters with Britain is an academic research project based at King’s College London and funded by the UK’s Arts & Humanities Research Council, led by Professor Jeanette Steemers, Professor Andrea Esser and Dr Matt Hilborn. Denmark was the first case study market covered by this research project, and fieldwork was carried out between August 2022 and January 2023. As confirmed in a wide-ranging survey (423 respondents) and 22 interviews, US film and TV are by far the most consumed, followed by Danish and British productions.

Three future case studies will cover Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy, revealing whether Denmark’s strong orientation towards Anglo-American productions is shared by young people in other parts of Europe.

Professor Jeanette Steemers , Professor of Culture, Media & Creative Industries at King’s College London is a leading researcher in the field of media industry studies and media policy studies. 
Dr Matt Hilborn is Research Associate in Culture, Media, and Creative Industries on the project.

Matt and Jeanette are based in the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities, King’s College London.