Understanding Engagement and Willingness to Speak Up in Social-Television: A Full-Season, Cross-Genre Analysis of TV Audience Participation on Twitter

International Journal of Communication Systems, 10(0), 21, 2016

7 Pages Posted: 29 May 2015 Last revised: 13 Jun 2016

See all articles by Fabio Giglietto

Fabio Giglietto

University of Urbino Carlo Bo

Giovanni Boccia Artieri

University of Urbino

Laura Gemini

University of Urbino

Mario Orefice

Università di Urbino

Date Written: May 27, 2015

Abstract

The practice of watching TV while using a secondary device is becoming a widespread social phenomenon. At the same time, a growing amount of studies, focus on users’ communicative behaviors while consuming specific TV programs or genres. Despite a diffuse scholarly interest on this issue, few studies compare different forms of online audience participation generated around different TV genres. This paper presents a full-season comparative study of live tweeting practices generated around a political talk show and a talent show. We focused on the following research questions: RQ1. What triggers active audience engagement in the two formats? RQ2. Do people tend to delegate or cover up the expression of opinion when the show deals with politics rather than entertainment? To answer these questions, from August 30 2012 to June 30 2013, we collected all tweets containing either the official hashtag of the political talk show Servizio Pubblico or the sixth Italian edition of X-Factor for a total amount of about 1 million tweets. For each episode (37), we identified peaks of Twitter engagement and observed the corresponding TV scene. We found that surprise and suspense play a different role in enacting online audience engagement. Further content analysis on a sample of eight peaks (13,189 coded tweets) confirmed the substantial difference in the way opinions are expressed when commenting on politics and entertainment.

Keywords: social television, twitter analysys, audience studies

Suggested Citation

Giglietto, Fabio and Boccia Artieri, Giovanni and Gemini, Laura and Orefice, Mario, Understanding Engagement and Willingness to Speak Up in Social-Television: A Full-Season, Cross-Genre Analysis of TV Audience Participation on Twitter (May 27, 2015). International Journal of Communication Systems, 10(0), 21, 2016, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2611083 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2611083

Fabio Giglietto

University of Urbino Carlo Bo ( email )

Via Saffi 15
Urbino, Pesaro-Urbino 61029
Italy
+390722305726 (Phone)
+390722305727 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.uniurb.it

Giovanni Boccia Artieri (Contact Author)

University of Urbino ( email )

Via Saffi 2
Urbino, Pesaro-Urbino 61029
Italy

Laura Gemini

University of Urbino ( email )

Via Saffi 2
Urbino, Pesaro-Urbino 61029
Italy

HOME PAGE: http://www.uniurb.it

Mario Orefice

Università di Urbino ( email )

Via Saffi 2
Urbino, Pesaro-Urbino 61029
Italy

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