Abstract

Social media services, and Twitter in particular, are changing the way in which many people consume traditional broadcast media. Real-time backchannel conversations are now common-place as audiences simultaneously watch TV whilst using Twitter to broadcast their own thoughts, sentiments, opinions and emotions related to what they are watching. This individual behavior, when aggregated, results in a new social experience comprising of mass, real-time, coconsumption of TV services that has, thus far, been neither recognized nor investigated by the HCI
community nor the broadcast industry. This paper describes a work-in-progress which aims to understand
user behaviour in this burgeoning area and provides some preliminary analysis of viewers’ Twitter activity
surrounding the popular UK TV show, The X Factor.