Gripped by movies: From story-world to artifact absorption

That movies are a great source of entertainment seems to be common sense. But how exactly movies manage to get large audiences absorbed, or what is their gripping tool is still a mystery. Research makes use of different concepts pointing to narrative absorption, but it is not clear how they differ from each other. Moreover, these concepts seem to overlap to a large extent. The present dissertation aims to come up with a clear taxonomy of absorbing experiential states in film, and to identify their textual determinants.
This dissertation starts with the assumption that there must be two main forms of narrative absorption in film: 1) story-world and 2) artifact absorption. Story-world absorption involves the feeling of being transported into the story of the film, and feeling with/for the characters; artifact absorption covers being absorbed with understanding film devices from outside the story, like an observer in an art exhibition. While forms of story-world absorption have already been found to strongly correlate with enjoyment and entertainment, artifact absorption is expected to be related to aesthetic appreciation.
The dissertation empirically identifies textual determinants of story-world absorption in film, brings light over a vaguely known absorbing experience that is artifact absorption, and introduces the first instrument to measure aesthetic appreciation of film.