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. […]
Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in binary any more
As social networks grow up, they grow acne and facial hair. But they also start to mature, and to become more complicated. Analysts that are unaware of those changes risk missing out on some of the subtleties. danah boyd’s ‘None of this is real’ describes what Garde-Hansen calls “the binary logic of computer culture” expressed […]
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.
A typology for data in TV
Here’s a typology for the different types of data in TV. 1. What types of data are available for TV? 2. Examples: 3. How can these data types be used by producers / broadcasters?
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 […]
How to understand Facebook
Joanne Garde-Hansen again: Facebook is a database of users for users; each user’s page is a database of their life. I disagree. Facebook does have a huge database, but it’s how it uses that data that is important. Its real strength is using context to create meaning. Check this out. A user (in this case, my […]
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 […]
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 […]
#DoctorWho and The Norwegian Texters
Espen Ytreberg reports an interview with a Norwegian TV viewer who was describing the experience of sending an SMS and seeing it appear on the TV. Interviewee: It’s great fun… You get that return message, ’Your message will be screened within so and so long’, right? That’s a real kick, you have to try it too. […]
Snapchat: Off The Record
Contrary to much research, and despite lots of clever product design, digital life curation is not quite so all-consuming. Snapchat – which enables users to exchange picture messages that self-delete within a few seconds of receipt – just raised a $60m funding round at a valuation of $800m, and is now carrying almost 200m daily […]