Second Screen Production

- creating rich media experiences

through synchronous interplay

between TV, web and social media

Kjetil Sandvik (University of Copenhagen)

Ditte Laursen (State and University Library, Denmark

Nordmedia 2013

The project

• 1 year project

• Funded by the research section under the Ministry of Culture

• Participants and partners:

• Ditte Laursen, senior researcher, Danish State and University Library

• Kjetil Sandvik (associated professor, University of Copenhagen, head of the Meaning Across Media project) – Niels Brügger, associate professor, Aesthetics and

Communication, Aarhus University

– Software developers at the State and University Library

– DigiHumLab

Project’s double scope

• Second Screen Production

• creating rich media experiences through

synchronous interplay between TV, web and social

media

• Methods of collecting Facebook data and

their effects on later analyses

• how methods of archiving data on social network

sites such as Facebook necessarily reflect limitations

(or selections) brought on by technical arrangements

and theoretical interests.

• How is the transition from live internet to television

and back again produced as a continuous

communication sequence

• How is this sequence transformed in the transit and

adapted to the two different media’s affordances

• How can we conceptualize the particular form of

cross media communication that arises

– when a product in one media is translated and incorporated

into another media, and

– when different media play different roles within a collective

media expression, together and in real-time

Research questions

Cross media communication

• It is about getting through to the user

• It is about giving the user a broader and richer

media experience

• It is about giving the user the possibility to get

engaged and to be involved and to participate in

the media experience on different levels and to

various degrees

Cross media productions

• Collaborative interplay between different media

• Each media playing its specific role and

delivering its part of the overall production

• Putting to play the specific strengths of each

media

• Creating rich media uses and experiences

Second screen

A specific kind of cross media production, ,

increasingly seen in new entertainment

programme formats, where theres a live

‘here-and-now’ interplay between internet

and television broadcasts.

Second screen

• Second screen may refer to an additional media (e.g. tablet or smartphone) that allows a television audience to interact with the content they are consuming, such as TV shows.

• The signifying feature in this kind of cross-media production is synchronicity and simultanaety:

• The user engage in watching live TV shows and in live chats, posting Facebook-updates, tweets and so on, thus engaging both with the TV show as it airs and with other users.

Synchronicity and simultaneity

• Synchronicity: the characteristic of the

second screen cross-mediatic setup in which

acts of communication are taking place in

parallel in realtime.

• Simultaneity: connected to the ways in

which the communication between the

production and its users takes place.

Viewers

Website

Social media:

FB, YouTube

Twitter

Mobile phone

TV-show

X factor No synchronous

interaction:

-no intended second

screen effect

Viewers

Website

Social media:

Facebook,

YouTube

Twitter

Second screen smartphone, tablet

TV-show

Voice

First screen: TV-set

Second Screen rich media experiences

• builds on augmentation of a specific media (the television set)

• by implementing other media platforms and media services into the communication structure,

• creating a realtime interplay between these media,

• thus allowing different modes of user engagement: communication as collaboration; communication as participation; communication as co-creation and

• positioning the TV viewer in a role as both user and producer.

In the production the use of second screen is supported:

the show is produced on TV and on the Internet simultaneously

Method of analysis

To map and analyze this conversational flow between parties present in the same mediated space-time continuum require simultaneous monitoring of

1) the live TV show showing the competing participants on stage, the coaches watching and commenting, and the back stage area with the participants before and after their performance,

2) the communication on the website(s) with postings of who is winning and who is losing, comments from the participants and the coaches,

3) the postings and ‘likes’ on the Facebook wall, and

4) the activity on the live-chat.

VO

ICE

TV 2

facebook livechat

facebook wall

v.tv2.dk

tv2.dk

Interplay between realtime internet and

live TV

Findings

• What we find is an increasing activity as the

show progresses, with growing numbers of

‘likes’ and comments as users’ favorites are

either voted out or progressing towards the top.

• These comments are not just on the posting by

the show’s producers and participants, but also

on other user comments, thus creating a huge

web of conversational threads displayed both

on Facebook and on the website.

Summing up

• What we can see from our data is that this

specific type of augmented TV shows with

its possibility for synchronous and

simultaneous communication between

production and users is that it creates a

moment (the time-span of the live

broadcast) of communal engagement across

media between dedicated users which is

quite unprecedented.