Literature Review in Film and Television Studies
Film and Television Studies · Department of Audiovisual Production
A guided ten-step path from a review question to a critical, synthesised literature review: search strategy, screening, a literature review matrix, critical appraisal, themes, evidenced research gaps, structure, writing support and an editable final report.
Work through the ten steps. Each step explains what is needed and why, gives an example from film or television research, and checks your entries for consistency. Your progress is saved on this device only.
A search strategy combines concepts (joined with AND), synonyms for each concept (joined with OR), limits and suitable databases. Enter your concepts in Step 2 of the Builder; the strings below update as you type.
Database syntax changes over time. Test each string in the database, record the date and the number of results, and keep a copy for your methods section. Arabic databases and catalogues differ widely in how they handle Boolean operators.
Record every study you assess in the same structure. Columns marked Reported hold what the study states; columns marked Yours hold your own interpretation, so the two never blur.
The practice studies are drawn from published film and television audience research (see References). Check every detail against the original article before you use it.
Lines connect each included study to its theories and concepts, the themes you assigned in Step 6 and its methodology. Hover over or focus a study to highlight its links.
Appraisal asks how far a study’s design and conduct support its conclusions. The checklists below adapt the questions of established appraisal tools to film and television research, including a version for textual and audiovisual analysis, where experimental notions of validity do not apply.
Synthesis brings studies together to show what they establish jointly, where they agree, where they conflict and why. Themes are defined in Step 6 of the Builder; the matrices below update from your entries.
A gap is an argument from evidence, not an observation that a topic seems new. Each gap you record in Step 7 is linked to studies in your matrix and labelled by how well it is supported.
Gap-spotting is not the only way to justify a study. Questioning the assumptions of existing research (problematization) can lead to more significant questions (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011; Sandberg & Alvesson, 2011).
A literature review is an argument built from sources, not a list of summaries. Move from describing each study to interpreting, evaluating and synthesising them.
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Two clearly separated kinds of example: hypothetical teaching examples written for this tool, and a published review whose procedure is summarised from the article itself (see References).
The attached reference file — literature review tutorials and film, television and audience research articles — is the foundation of this tool. It is supplemented with established literature on review types, searching, appraisal, synthesis and research gaps. Items marked “Details to be completed” still need full publication details.
Journal quartile rankings (Q1/Q2) and indexing are not stated here because SJR and JCR classifications change every year; check a journal’s current status at scimagojr.com or in Journal Citation Reports. No Arabic-language source on literature review methods could be verified to the standard of the other references, so none is listed; the Arabic terminology follows common usage in Arabic research methods teaching. The tutorial videos in the attached file are practical guidance, not peer-reviewed research.
This platform helps researchers and postgraduate students in the Cinema and Television track of the Department of Audio-Visual Production to plan, conduct, organise, critically evaluate, synthesise and write a literature review that leads to an evidenced research gap.
All search strings, consistency checks, gap labels, draft text and suggested scores come from transparent, rule-based JavaScript — word lists, option metadata and editable templates that can be read in the source files. The tool does not use artificial intelligence, does not search databases, does not verify references and does not create sources: every study in your matrix is one you entered.
Your project is saved in this browser’s local storage only, so that you can return to it later. Nothing is sent to a server. You can export, import or delete your data at any time.