A new term has become popular – chatterboxing, meaning watching a TV programme while talking to others about it online. A lot of people are doing it, mostly via Twitter
A lot of TV programmes now display their hashtag when they start as an invitation to tweet during the programme – and a lot of people do. It’s reported that some popular programmes have attracted 100s of thousands of tweets. We wanted to get a bit more insight into this phenomenon so we tracked the tweets of viewers watching one recent sporting event on a UK channel over 4 days. We collected all the tweets and then analysed them on a daily and hourly basis.
Our findings show that although the number of tweets, compared to the size of the audience, is not large they can have a significant impact. The numbers give an indication of the response of the audience to programme scheduling decisions and also point to how more effective use might be made of promoting the use of hashtags.
The report on the results so far is at davidr-blog.blogspot.co.uk/
