THE DARK KNIGHT RISES I
Abstract
This case study takes an in-depth look into the The Dark Knight Rises social media campaign . It analyses the way in which Warner Brothers Entertainment marketed the movie through various social media outlets , Twitter in particular , and looks at the way this social media campaign created a sense of community and elicited excitement and anticipation for the films release . The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness and growth of the campaign and assess its success . Through research , Jono Bacon ’ s buzz cycle was examined in regards to the campaign and the stages it went through from creation to implementation .
In order to evaluate this social media campaign and its significance in creating and sustaining fan communities , a discourse analysis was conducted where multiple hashtags were looked at regarding the campaign and themes were extracted to analyze the fans ’ responses to the film . In order to properly assess the campaign , the Aurora , Colorado theater shooting on the films opening night and the reactions and effect that this event had on the film and campaign ’ s success were examined alongside the campaign structure . As a result , themes that were discovered included anticipation , opinions and excitement , among others . Even with the tragedy of the theater shooting , due to Warner Bros ’ campaign , the press generated by the shooting and the sense of community that it created , the shooting had minimal effect on the overall success of the campaign and the revenue made by the movie .
Through this case study , the two main theories examined were Elihu Katz ’ s Uses and Gratifications theory and the public relations drip-drip-drip technique . By looking at these two techniques , insights into the campaign ’ s overall creation and strategy were gained and it was concluded that this viral social media campaign was successful in creating and sustaining the films fan community , even in the wake of tragedy .
The Researchers
Alexa was an excellent notetaker because she extracted ideas from the group discussion and organized them practically . She conducted extensive background research on the timeline of events , one of the hashtags and also co-wrote the literature review and organized the final report with Ariel . Alexa also contributed to the final writings of the results , where she linked the theories and the collected Twitter information . She also wrote the conclusion and future research component of the final paper . Also , Alexa contributed to the editing process throughout the assignment .
Ariel co-wrote the literature review and organized the final report with Alexa . She identified and applied theories in the project , edited all of the in-text citations , the literature review and the final report . She also created the bibliography for the literature review and final report , and constructed a database to keep track of citations and events on the timeline . Ariel created the infographic , the title page , biographies with images and the appendix . Ariel co-wrote the revised research questions and methods with Nikita .