Investigating polarisation in critic and audience review scores via analysis of extremes, medians, averages, and correlations

This research's goal examines the relationship between four critic and audience review score categories (Rotten Tomatoes critics, Rotten Tomatoes fans, IMDb, metacritic) across a sample of 225 films released from 2002 to 2016. Minima and maxima analysis initially suggested intermixing between critic and audience scores. However, similar averages and medians suggested that critic scores were closer to each other than to audience scores. Correlational analysis confirmed that while each of the score categories were correlated to each other, the correlations were significantly stronger between critical score categories than with between critical and user score categories, suggesting polarisation. These correlations were found to persist over the course of five trienniums. In addition, correlations between site scores and box office grosses all supported the notion of polarisation, with audience scores having similar correlation coefficients to each other than to the critic scores.