Young audiences’ emotional experience on smartphone film: an application of dual-coding theory

Purpose – This study aims to determine whether smartphones create the best communication fit with a young audience. Design/methodology/approach – To validate the hypotheses, a task-based laboratory study was conducted. And smartphone film and television (TV) film were provided in the laboratory. Young respondents were recruited in the classroom and brief introduction and film were broadcasted. After watching the film, levels of respondent’s emotional experience was measured via questionnaire. Findings – The results indicate that when the text of the film matches the young audience’s schema, the young audience uses, mainly, imagery coding to interpret the text and achieve an emotional experience. Conversely, when the text and schema do not match, the young audience uses both proposition coding and imagery coding. Practical implications – Based on the results found in this study, companies should use different texts to match the different schema of young audiences to ensure that audiences can process coding and enjoy emotional experiences when using smartphone. Originality/value – Dual-coding theory is applied to determine which coding system the audience use to interpret the new-media text, such as smartphone films.