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How we use Twitter while watching TV

How we use Twitter while watching TV

How we use Twitter while watching TV
11 January 2013

Remember the glory days when you could just watch TV without feeling the need to let the rest of the world, well around 200 people, know your every little thought about whatever it was that you were watching?

Well those days are long gone. So get used to it.

To further examine the increasingly interlinked relationship between what we watch and what we tweet, those data-worshiping bods at Twitter have gone and made a report called TV Book. They studied how we're tweeting during different types of shows and you can read some of their findings below.

If you want to know more then you can see the whole report here.

Dramas

While Twitter is always abuzz with conspiracy talk whenever a new episode of Homeland is shown, this graph shows that people tend to tweet a large amount at the beginning and end but they usually remain focused on the show inbetween.

Entertainment

Reality shows, such as Made In Chelsea, tend to appeal to an audience who tweet more often than most while watching. So 1 in 4 viewers will be on Twitter throughout the show. It's also, predictably, female-skewed.

Current Affairs

Interestingly, Panorama has a long, steady stream of engagement that continues long after the show finished.

Films

The tweet patterns for films tend to be fairly similar. So in this example, conversation peaked during the most easily quotable scene in Taken ("I will find you and I will kill you" etc). What's especially interesting is that on a second showing of the film, the structure remained almost exactly the same, as shown below.

X Factor Final

During the most recent series, there were more mentions of James Arthur than any other contestant, giving an early indicator that he would eventually win the show. For example, during the final there were 387k mentions of James yet only 86k for Jahmene.