#megandudley

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New Media, Big Data and Telemetrics

As the internet evolves, so does the way we interact and consume various forms of media. In today’s society, we are more inclined to participate in a television show forum through the use of Twitter and hashtags. This change has not been unnoticed with major television show producers taking huge advantages of the successful engagement. This phenomenon is knows at the ‘Second Screen’ and is seen to be revitalizing the way television is consumed in the new digital world (Segura, 2014). This phenomenon has only really come to the forefront of media technologies after the rise of smart phones with internet capability. This is because of the ease of publishing through these devices.   

Many people often underestimate the power of Twitter. It could be said that Twitter can be seen as the new television remote with a study by Neilson revealing a correlation between and increase in tweets and a growth of audiences for that particular television show (Segura, 2014). Director of Media Partnerships of Twitter, Danny Keen, says that television is alive and thriving because of Twitter. This allows many programs, as we will see below, to harness the popularity of social media for further engage their success.

One show that has been particularly successful on Twitter is American ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars. Many episodes of Pretty Little Liars has been extremely successful with the Twittersphere with the show holding top prize for the most-tweeted season premiere on television (Deadline, 2014). This reached almost 1.3 million tweets by over 700,00 contributors. However, by using the hashtag #WorldWarA they were able to further build anticipation and excitement for the upcoming finale (Myers, 2013).

Further, they implemented a different hashtag to be used during the show airing. This hashtag, #PLLReaction, gave fans a call to action to immediately post their reaction face to the twist in the story line (Myers, 2013). This prompted a huge rise in the amount of contribution the hashtag was receiving and also allowed the hashtag to ‘trend’ on Twitter.

(main character, Lucy Hale, posting her #PLLReaction)

However, Pretty Little Liars is only one example of a successful social media campaign and is only the base of what can be seen in the future. We can see that Twitter and television play an important role in each other’s existence. The use of the two platforms conjunctively can completely change the way television and twitter is consumed.

Deadline. (2014). “Pretty Little Liars Winter Debut Most Tweeted Season Premiere in History” Accessed 11 May 2014. http://www.deadline.com/2014/01/pretty-little-liars-winter-debut-most-tweeted-season-premiere-in-tv-history/

Liz Myers. (2013. “Pretty Little Tweeters; How the finale beat the records” Accessed 11 May 2014. https://blog.twitter.com/2013/pretty-little-tweeters-how-the-finale-beat-the-records

Paz Segura. (2014). “TV and Twitter: A winning formula for marketers” Accessed 11 May 2014. http://www.socialbro.com/blog/tv-twitter-successful-combination

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Week 10 Blog Post

It’s quite impossible to grasp how many people are reached when someone posts, tweets, blogs or shares information on social media. We often underestimate the power of social media however it has been proven instrumental in the concept of spreading political messages. Social media is a revolutionized sharing tool for the political world as it has the power to reach an unprecedented and virtually unknown volumes of people rather than more traditional forms of media such as television and print.

Malcolm Gladwell in his article, Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted (2010), states that social media sites such as Facebook can only been seen as a form of increasing participation, as it lowers the actual motivation needed to complete the political movement.  The second variable between traditional and new media that Gladwell states is that the hierarchy of operation is different. He draws the difference between a ‘real-life’ political hierarchy and a social media hierarchy by saying that in social media there is no single central authority that is in charge of making decisions which means that decisions are made by a consensus which provides a very loose understanding of what is happening in the movement. To summarize, the main point made in Gladwell’s articles was that social media platforms are critical for networking in today’s society however, to have a successful political movement, there needs to be ‘real world’ action.

An interesting case of the use of social media in political movements is the 2009 anti-government protest in Iran. Neda Agha-Soltan, a protester, was filmed being shot dead outside the protests. This video then went viral with links being posted on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, then made news headlines around the world. The most interesting facet of this case is the hysteria surrounding the use of Twitter in Iran. Later it was shown that the Twitter interactions and hype was being formed by Western countries and not Iran itself. The social media site then became more for the purpose of reporting about the protest. (Safranek, 2012) However, this event has not forced changed and would not be considered a successful political movement on social media.

Overall, whilst social media can be seen as a phenomenon that will revolutionize the political landscape, it is important to remember that social media can only been seen as a way of engaging the public to participate in real world interaction. The use of social media alone cannot, and will never (according to Gladwell), be the solution to raising more social media created political movements.

Gladwell, M. (2010). Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted. The New Yorker. Retrieved 4 May 2014, from http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

Safranek, R. (2012). The Emerging Role of Social Media in Political and Regime Change. ProQuest Discovery Guides. Retrieved 4 May 2014.

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