Interactive applications are often evaluated by scholars according to just how interactive they are. Applications are positioned on a scale: it is seen to be better when there are more opportunities for the audience to interact, and better still when those interactions have more power to change the media product with which the interactions are occurring. […]
The 99%
That’s the proportion who don’t engage, don’t interact. So the scholarship on interactivity (including mine) is all very well. But everything we make that’s interactive has to work for them too.
Slides: Programmes as Platforms: How to Understand IP in Interactive TV
Slides from a talk I did for Bournemouth University’s Media School last weekend. This talk is based on a paper I co-wrote with Dr Kris Erickson of Glasgow University. We first presented it at the European Media Management Association conference in June. Questions welcome (use the Contact page). Enjoy! Programmes as Platforms: How to understand […]
The Biggest Problem In TV: Split Attention (slides)
Two talks in a week! Went to Loughborough University yesterday to give a talk to 1st year undergrads + MA students about companion apps for TV shows. Lots of (hopefully) handy frameworks + examples in there. Someone on Twitter picked this one out earlier: Here’s the full deck. Questions welcome. T The Biggest Problem In […]
A typology for interactivity in TV
Academics have offered a wide range of definitions of interactivity (Kiousis 2002). I prefer to follow the lead of Cover (2006, p.140) in defining interactivity as occurring when Content is affected, resequenced, altered, customized or renarrated in the interactive process of audiencehood. So an interactive show is defined as one in which the audience directly […]
Programmes as platforms
This post proposes a new approach to understanding how interactivity changes traditional models of TV production. It can be summarised simply: programmes as platforms. A platform is a space into which consumers are invited, where their contributions are solicited and facilitated, and in which collaborative creations can be undertaken for the mutual benefit of the platform […]
How to segment a TV audience
Forty years ago, Gary Alan Fine created the idea of frame analysis to describe tabletop gaming. Frame analysis looks at how engrossed a participant is in the game: 1. The primary frame of the real world, the reference point for all activities 2. The game context, with its rules and structures 3. The fictional world […]
Interactive overload
More interactivity does not = more enjoyment. Somehow the two have been conflated over the past few years, as if every TV viewer, radio listener, newspaper reader and games player had been barely able to contain their enthusiasm to ‘interact’ in some way with the content they were consuming – and as if, thanks to […]