By Unanimous Decision? A Second Look at Consensus in the Film Industry

Abstract This paper analyzes the verdicts of various film organizations that annually present awards to motion pictures and investigates whether they award/nominate the same movies in a given year. This research disputes previous findings which reported a high level of agreement between those juries, by the means of reliability analysis and the Cronbach's Alpha composite. Arguments were raised for why these earlier findings were flawed and why the use of Cronbach's Alpha is problematic. Different aspects of consensus are discussed after which a new measure (߀) is introduced. This is followed by a detailed comparison between particular juries with regard to the percentage share of their decisions that award the most successful (chosen by multiple other juries as well) and the least successful (uniquely awarded) films. This measure shows how often a singular jury decides in line with the others and how much does it stray from the consensus. The paper also broadens the theoretical discussions about the reasons for (not) expecting a consensus to arise between various expert juries. It argues that by adopting a cultural economic perspective we become aware of various reasons, most importantly competition between the award events and the juries tend towards a lower level of consensus.

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