#2020 torchwood general survey

[thatlastdanceofchances]

Torchwood fandom survey results - part 1

Thank you once again to everyone who didn’t get scared by that horrendous promotional photo-manipulation and participated in the Torchwood general survey last month. The survey ended with 155 participants! I wasn’t expecting so many, you all are amazing!

As you can imagine, that’s quite a lot of data to go through so I’m making at least two posts. This one is about who the people in the fandom are and the next one(s) will focus on canon and fandom.

All the demographics results are under a cut to save your dashboards!

Disclaimer 1: This is a survey promoted almost exclusively on tumblr and the results are therefore necessarily biased by the demographics of tumblr users.

The first question was Where are you from.

No surprise in the results given that this is a BBC show: the UK comfortably leads the poll. If I’m not mistaken, there are people from all 5 continents, which is nice!

The next question was What is your primary language. Once again, no surprise: English is dominating with 80% of the 155 votes.

Salut aux 6 autres personnes dont le français est la langue principale! :-)

Next, What is your age. This one surprised me a bit.

Given the content of the show (especially some of the Big Finish stuff *side-eyes Corpse Day and Hostile Environment*), I wasn’t expecting so many people under 18.

Also, given that the show is almost 15 years old, I wasn’t expecting the fandom to be more than 60% under 25. I think this can be explained by both the fact that tumblr fandom tends to be in that age bracket and the fact that, as you’ll see in the next set of results, the number of new Torchwood viewers increased significantly after 2018. As @capnjackharkness​ figured out, it’s when the show became available on a famous streaming service. And it apparently worked in bringing in a new audience that was too young during the original run.

The next two categories were about gender and sexuality.

Disclaimer 2: I am sorry if anyone was offended by the fact that their identity was not mentioned in the survey. I used lists provided by a teen health site and added the option to add your own identity. Still, I definitely understand the frustration of being ignored and you were right in calling me out on this and I’m truly sorry.

Disclaimer 3: You have no idea how much joy it brought me to see so many diversity in the results! Out of the 155 participants, there were 29 unique answers on gender and 44 unique answers on sexuality. That’s amazing news for our fandom. Unfortunately, this means I’m going to have to group the answers to be able to present something other than raw data. I hope that the choices I make do not hurt anyone. If it does, let me know and I’ll take down the following results and only link to the raw data. Also let me know if something should be phrased differently. English is not my native language and I may not be aware that certain terms/phrases have a negative connotation.

For both questions (gender and sexuality), 1% of the 155 participants declined to answer.

The first question was: What is your gender identity? You can pick multiple answers. The list is from a teen health website, feel free to add your own identity.

First of all, 8% used the available Questioning label (alone or with other labels). Given the ages of the participants as seen above, I’m impressed! You guys have your shit more together than I had at your age! :-D

In terms of use of binary genders:

69% selected Woman with or without any other label

7% selected Man with or without any other label

2% selected Cisgender without specifying man or woman

21% didn’t choose either Woman, Man or Cisgender.

Once again, I think the overwhelming majority of people being women is to be tempered by the fact that this is mainly a tumblr survey. But I think the fact that 21% are not represented by the binary genders show the diversity and I hope the tolerance of the Torchwood fandom.

If we look at the data a bit differently to see if and how the binary genders represent the community:

39% selected Cisgender with no other label that falls outside of the binary genders

3% selected Transgender with no other label that falls outside of the binary genders

30% selected either Man or Woman as their only label

25% selected labels that falls outside of binary genders (agender, demi-girl, genderfluid, gender neutral, genderqueer, non-binary)

2% selected Questioning as their only label.

Take that Greeks bearing gifts!

The second question was: What is your sexual orientation? You can pick multiple answers. The list is from a teen health website, feel free to add your own orientation.

Similar to the gender question, 9% used the available Questioning label (alone or with other labels). Again, I’m impressed.

21% selected the Queer label, when 77% didn’t.

As for the ace/aro spectrum, 29% selected labels that fall on that spectrum. This includes: aromantic, asexual, demisexual, grey-aromantic, grey-asexual.

As for who the participants are attracted to:

11% exclusively selected labels that imply attraction to the opposite gender only (heterosexual)

19% exclusively selected labels that imply attraction to the same gender only (homosexual, lesbian, gay)

43% selected labels that imply attraction to several genders (bisexual, pansexual)

26% didn’t select any label that gives an indication as to which gender(s) they are attracted to.

Yep, for the Torchwood fandom, that makes sense! :-D

That’s it for the demographics! Again, given the amount of data, this is an overview of the results. If you have any specific analysis you would like, feel free to ask!

See you in the coming days for results on when we discovered Doctor Who and Torchwood, which extended universe stories we’ve consumed and liked and how we live our best fandom life!

#torchwood #torchwood eu project #hubapalooza #2020 torchwood general survey #organised data is the new sexy #data visualisation is my passion

[thatlastdanceofchances]

Torchwood fandom survey results - part 2

It’s time for part 2 of the results! Last time, we looked into who the people in the fandom (that participated in the survey) were. Now let’s look into how they interact with canon!

As for part 1, all the graphs and data are under a cut.

Disclaimer: This is a survey promoted almost exclusively on tumblr and the results are therefore necessarily biased by the demographics of tumblr users.

As mentioned last time, all the data presented below is on 155 participants.

The first couple of questions were about finding out how Doctor Who and Torchwood relate within the community.

First, Which did you first discover? No surprise here, Doctor Who came first.

Though I wonder if this will change now that a lot of viewers are discovering the shows through streaming services.

As a result, it is not unexpected that the question Would you consider yourself? has 78% of people answering by both a Doctor Who and Torchwood fan.

As this survey was mostly promoted in the Torchwood fandom and most people discovered Doctor Who first, that makes sense.

Then, let’s look into when people discovered the shows. This question is because it seems to me that there have been a lot of new content creators in the Torchwood fandom lately. I was wondering if these were people I had not noticed before or new fans. More on this later.

First, let’s focus on Doctor Who: When did you get into Doctor Who?

5% of the people discovered Doctor Who before the new series. Then, from the start of the new series in 2005, it is a pretty steady rise.

It is interesting to note that Ten appeared in 2006, Eleven in 2010, Twelve in 2014 (when the number of new fans started to slow) and Thirteen appeared in 2018 (with a bump in number of new fans).

For When did you get into Torchwood?, the results surprised me.

There is an almost linear rise until 2018, which is remarkable as the last TV series aired in 2011. The only reason I can think of is that the new Doctor Who fans thought it worth it to investigate this little spin-off show that had ended years ago.

If you think of any other reason, let me know. For example, we saw in the last batch of results that a large majority of the participants were from the UK or the USA. Was Torchwood rerun regularly in these countries after 2011?

The second obvious thing is the steep rise from 2018 on. As explained last time, 2018 is when Torchwood became available on a widespread streaming service. That’s the most likely explanation.

Though I do wonder if people who just get into the show are more active in the fandom and more likely to participate in the survey. You know, a bit like a honeymoon phase. ;-)

Even if that is the case, going back to the purpose of this question, there is probably indeed a wave of new content creators in this fandom. Nice!

Anyway, this actually makes me feel better about almost half the participants being under 21. These are not people who watched a sex pollen episode when they were 5 years old and decided this was the best show ever! :-D

Okay, this is already getting long. Let’s see which TV series people watched and we’ll do the Torchwood extended universe stories in part 3 of the results along with the fan activities questions.

Once again, let’s look first at Doctor Who. Which Doctor Who series have you seen (part of or all)?

Up until Eleven, the series were watched by about 95% of the participants. After that, it keeps going down. I haven’t looked into the audience numbers for Doctor Who so I don’t know if it reflects general viewership.

Maybe there’s a Jack Harkness effect too (he’d love that!). Again, this is mostly a Torchwood survey. Maybe a lot of fans of Torchwood are more attached to Nine and Ten because they’re the incarnations that interacted with Jack.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Again, I’d like any interpretation you may have!

Finally for part 2, Which Torchwood series have you seen (part of or all)?

RIP Miracle Day… I won’t comment more than that because I’m pretty sure no one is surprised by these results.

That’s all for today! See you soon to learn which Torchwood extended universe stories we consumed and loved, which fandom spaces are used and which fandom activities are the most popular!

#torchwood #torchwood eu project #hubapalooza #2020 torchwood general survey #organised data is the new sexy #data visualisation is my passion

[thatlastdanceofchances]

Torchwood fandom survey results - part 3

Third and final part of the results! This time: Torchwood beyond the TV series. This means the books, the audio dramas, the fanfics, etc.

All the graphs and data are under a cut.

Disclaimer: This is a survey promoted almost exclusively on tumblr and the results are therefore necessarily biased by the demographics of tumblr users.

All the data presented below is on 155 participants.

Let’s start with the Torchwood extended universe and its different forms and ranges. For each range of the Torchwood extended universe, have you read/listened to it?

Four types of Torchwood stories are quite ahead of the others:

the BBC books, which ran concurrently to the TV series

the BBC audio dramas: the seven audio dramas released by the BBC concurrently to the TV series

the Big Finish monthly range: monthly audio dramas that started in 2015

the Big Finish single special releases, which so far include The Torchwood Archive, Outbreak and Believe.

It makes sense for the BBC stuff. It’s been around for a while and can be found for free (sometimes legally, sometimes not) online.

The monthly range is also quite easy to understand. They are cheaper than other releases and, if you want to focus one type of story or one particular character or the story all of fandom is talking about *coughs*Broken*coughs*, you can buy just the relevant stories.

Now the single special releases, I kind of wish I had separated the three because I wonder how the two are represented in the 46% that didn’t listen to at least one of those. I could make good cases for all three (and I’m gonna).

Believe is the first audio drama with the five original team members (kind of, sorry Suzie) so there was a lot of hype before release date. However, it got mixed reviews (at least in my corner of tumblr) and is quite expensive.

Outbreak has the same price and is post series 2. However, it is simply the best Big Finish story ever. Yes, it’s a fact. No, I’m not biased and I won’t take any criticism. :-D

The Torchwood Archive is cheaper and was an anniversary release. However, it is somewhat of an isolated story more focused on the history of the Torchwood Institute than on the characters.

¯\(ツ)/¯ I guess I’ll have to do another survey about these at one point.

At the other end of the scale, quite behind the others, are two Big Finish audio drama ranges:

The story continues: the official series 5 and 6 of Torchwood (Aliens Among Us and God Among Us)

The Sins of Captain John: a recent John Hart range.

That was to be expected. For The story continues, as we’ve seen with Miracle Day’s audience in the previous results, a lot of people were not keen on what happens to Torchwood after Children of Earth. On top of that, these are box-sets so more expensive.

As for The Sins of Captain John, again it’s a box-set so more expensive and it’s not focused on one of the “main characters” (sorry John).

On the ranges that fall in between these two extremes, I’d like to mention The Lives of Captain Jack. I thought it would do better as it’s about Jack and some of the stories focus on important milestones in his life (for example his falling out with the Time Agency or what happened after his first resurrection). I don’t know if it’s a price issue or the fact that people are more interested in stories within the Torchwood era than things in the distant past or future. If you haven’t listened to it and don’t intend to, I’d be curious to know as to why.

Now that we have the audience numbers, let’s see what the audience thought. The results only include the people who were familiar with the stories so they are on fewer than the usual 155 participants.

For each range of the Torchwood extended universe, would you recommend it to fellow fans?

Trailing far behind is the Torchwood Magazine stuff: the short stories and the comics. It makes sense to me: they’re not very consequential in terms of plot or character work and vary wildly in quality.

It is interesting that the two graphs (audience and review) kind of match in terms of variation between ranges. It confirms what I’ve observed in fandom. Word of mouth plays a big role in how people choose which stories to buy.

It is also interesting to see where they differ a bit. For example, Torchwood One, The Lives of Captain Jack and The Sins of Captain John, which have an average to low audience (far less listened to than the monthly range), get lots of love (almost as much “All of it” as the monthly range). If word of mouth is as crucial as it seems from the rest of the results, I wonder if it is an issue with interest or with price.

Okay, once again, this is getting long, let’s go over the fandom stuff quickly.

Which social media platforms/fandom spaces do you use to participate in Torchwood fan activities?

Tumblr and AO3 dominate that poll…then again, it’s a poll promoted on Tumblr so… I’m not on twitter but I do wonder if there is sizeable Torchwood fandom group there that just missed the poll. Mainly because I know some people in other fandoms who switched to twitter after the Tumblr ban a few years ago.

No other fandom space received more than one mention in the open field of the form.

Then, Which social media platforms/fandom spaces do you use to participate in Torchwood fan activities?

The big four are social media (including meta/analysis/headcanons), fanarts, fanfics and edits. I’m surprised cosplay is not higher but ¯\(ツ)/¯.

Finally, an open question: What other fandoms would you consider yourself part of?

There were 98 responses and 136 different fandoms cited. Here are the ones that got more than 10 mentions:

Marvel-related fandoms (26)

Harry Potter (24)

Star Trek (15)

Good Omens (15)

Merlin (13)

Tolkien-related fandoms (13)

BBC Sherlock (13)

Supernatural (11).

These are all big fandoms, with a bit of a bias towards the big British fandoms.

Once again, thank you to all who participated. It was fun and interesting! At least, to me. ;-)

#torchwood #torchwood eu project #hubapalooza #2020 torchwood general survey #organised data is the new sexy #data visualisation is my passion