Big Data and Digital Methods
Nothing groundbreaking had been shared with me this lecture. Of course a machine, based on actions, reads data and from it predictions are made (Siegel, 2013, p. 2). I suppose I was never fully aware to the exact extent. I knew that if I ‘liked’ a certain page on Facebook, companies would be able to target their products to me specifically. What I was not aware of was that this applied to just about every single action that I made concerning a social media device.
What struck me to be the most interesting though is Twitter, and how the use of Twitter can be used to identify not only what episodes of TV shows gain the most interest, but at what specific event and by which specific characters. As a fan of HBO’s Game of Thrones, I decided to investigate further into how the show’s Twitter audience can predict the level of interest for the show and its characters.
This is particularly interesting when the idea arises that producers, without directly interacting with the audiences, obtain a decent understanding of what the audience wants. Over the past week, there had been quite a bit of online discussion after David Benioff, one of the shows leading producers made the comment to Entertainment Weekly, "… we were going to stop looking at stuff online because you can go into the rabbit hole and get lost in this world of online Thrones commentary if you're not careful..." (Hibberd, 2014). Following this comment, Internet users escalated into an argument about how the show runners could ever begin to properly meet the expectations of viewers if they were going to close their eyes and ears to avid show watchers (Grayson, 2014).
Though I trusted the producers, as they had not let me down thus far, I did have some fears that they would turn into the next George Lucas of Television. However I, and it appears many others have underestimated the use of Twitter as a means of collecting data. Just by looking at the data obtained from twitter conversations, the producers have the audiences in the palm of their hand. They are well aware of which scenes attract the most interest and which characters to keep, or kill off, due to their popularity.
This begs the question though; can data analytics really replace that of human conversation and interaction? Would it be better, if David Benioff had had that argument over an online discussion board with DragonQueen42? Rather than simply relying on twitter generated data. In my opinion, no. What one passionate audience member and online user says does not in any way reflect the masses of people who watch this successful show, predictive analytics may be far from perfect but it is the best method for giving at least the majority of audiences what they want.
Bennett, Shea. 2014. “How Big Was The Game Of Thrones Season 4 Premier On Twitter And Facebook?” accessed May 11, 2014. http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/game-of-thrones-twitter-facebook_b56311
Grayson, Nathan. 2014. “Game of Thrones' Producers Aren't Listening To You, And That's A Problem”. Accessed May 10, 2014. http://tmi.kotaku.com/game-of-thrones-producers-arent-listening-to-you-and-t-1573170009
Hibberd, James. 2014. “Why 'Game of Thrones' producers ignore the Internet: 'It completely confounds the normal creative process'. Accessed May 10, 2014. http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/05/04/game-of-thrones-ignore-internet/
Siegel, Eric. 2013. Predictive Analytics: the power to predict who will click, buy, lie or die. New Jersey: Wiley
