Cross-Language Dynamics and the Royal Opera House: Live Cinema Relays and Social Media Use

The Royal Opera House relays live opera and ballet performances to over 40 countries across the globe, with subtitles provided in up to 8 languages. For each of its live cinema relays the Royal Opera House creates a unique Twitter hashtag, and uses social media to encourage audiences to interact with each other and with its opera and ballet companies.

Members of the Cross-Language Dynamics project are studying Twitter responses which used the official hashtag during the 2017-2018 Cinema Season, in addition to other audience responses and comments posted on the Royal Opera House’s website. We are particularly interested in multilingual responses and differences between the countries in which screenings take place. Our findings will be shared with the Royal Opera House, in order to support their own efforts to engage with different language communities and audiences across the globe.

All social media and website content will be anonymised in any publications we produce and share. If you have any questions or queries about our research, please contact naomi.wells@sas.ac.uk

Research team

Marty Steer (Digital Humanities Technical Lead, School of Advanced Study) 

Naomi Wells (Postdoctoral Research Associate, IMLR, School of Advanced Study, University of London)

Jane Winters (Chair in Digital Humanities, School of Advanced Study, University of London)