Social television and user interaction

Abstract

At first glance, the notion of social interactive television seems to be a tautology. Television watching has always been a social activity. People watch television together in their living rooms, and outside their homes they talk about last night's football match; and even call each other to recommend an interesting program. Unfortunately, until recently, research on social interactive television has been scarce. One limiting factor for the development of innovative services for the home is the interactive technology behind user interaction, which was limited to the remote control. Fortunately, a number of studies concentrate on extending interactive methods, for example by using contextual information. This article reviews the state of the art in these two directions: the social aspects of television and user interaction. We conclude with a research agenda for further research, which might transform current interactive television services into shared experiences.

Sharing Experiences over Video: Watching Video Programs together at a Distance

“…In recent years, many researchers have built systems that embed a communication channel into the TV console (i.e. SocialTV or iTV) [7,9,24,26]. While much of the research has focused on building systems that share audio or text messaging while remotely watching TV together, some research has focused on the social interaction in these settings [11,12,15,23].…”

“…Prior work has focused on textual [7,9,11,24,26] or audio [12,15] modalities. The use of VMC in this application is largely an unexplored design space.…”

“…We wanted to explore how adding watching videos together to VMC can use video to naturally sustain sharing activities together. This approach contrasts with adding communication to enable social TV watching over distance, which has been extensively explored in prior work [7,9,24,26]. We use watching video together not only as a remote shared experience to design for, but as a specific activity to learn more about remote shared experiences in general.…”

Contemporary meanings and experiences of television in the digital age

“…Television, leisure and generations share a polysemic condition /today: establishing with certainty where they start and where they end is problematic, while the meanings that subjects can derive from the constitutive nuclei of facts and events are always diverse, multiple and complex (Cesar et al 2008;Cuenca Amigo and Landabidea Urresti 2010;Irani et al 2010). …”

Ranking de innovación periodística 2014 en España. Selección y análisis de 25 iniciativas

“…However, the impact of new technologies on viewing has radically changed how audiences respond to TV programs. Since the 90's, the permeation of the internet and other new digital communication technologies has provoked deep changes in the so-called legacy media, including transformations in television consumption and production patterns (Owen, 1999;Cesar;Jensen, 2008;Hamaguchi et al, 2012;Noguera et al, 2014). In this new context, where television converges with the internet, new challenges must be addressed not only by the industry but also by researchers.…”