Keynote speech 1: The transformed nature of viewership

Abstract

There is a change happening with viewers. The nearly ubiquitous use of mobile devices combined with easy access to social media platforms is causing a unique social interaction with broadcast media and other events that alters the nature of being a viewer. Once a passive role, viewers are now participants around an event, engaging in information sharing, consumption, and dissemination in real time with an event. This technology affordance for online conversation about an event is referred to as the second screen phenomenon, although there may be multiple (i.e., more than two) screens involved. The resulting online conversation from second screen interaction about an event is referred to as the social soundtrack. The social soundtrack is an interesting conversational form of information sharing, information interaction, and information diffusion. This keynote will discuss the constructs and empirical measures of social soundtrack and second screen research, along with application of these constructs and measures in current investigations involving millions of posts on multiple social media platforms. Research concerning social soundtrack and second screen is important in identifying the influence and affordances that technology has on social media conversations from an information sharing. Empirical research results also provide insights on social communication in relationship to the cultural impact of broadcast events, the social interaction in cross technology usage for second screens, and the changing role of being a viewer.