The Twenty-First Century Television: Interactive, Participatory and Social
The process of digitalization has detached television content from the television screen with a tendency of media convergence. In the twenty-first century social mobile media and the Internet with the help of different mobile devices have gained more and
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Introduction
Media synergy is on the increase, with media companies releasing their media content across different delivery channels. Nowadays, popular TV programs are multi- and cross-media projects that are not restricted to the television (Simmons, 2009; Tuomi, 2010; Ytreberg, 2009). Television viewing has fragmented to several platforms and the use of web elicits new uses of TV and audience behaviors. Audiences are now combining different mediums and content in order to gather a coherent media experience. This means a lot changes also in the fields of TV and audience research. The focus of the research is no longer on the mass consumption; on the contrary, it has shifted to study audience as individuals. It raises the question whether it is a matter of convergence after all or do these new consumption models rather lead to divergence? (Fig. 1). This article will cover approximately 10 years of recent Finnish TV history, 2000–2012. It sets up to answer how does media convergence and the use of second screens affect the TV watching experience (what extra features does it offer) and what is the standpoint on audience convergence/divergence? Interactivity, participation and sociality are features that characterize today’s TV. At first the TV watching experience is analyzed through interactive elements and the focus is on the SMS-based iTV-entertainment. The second analysis elaborates on the features of Web 2.0 and the dimensions it brought to the TV watching experience concentrating on the participatory online features (basically on different websites, blogs, discussion forums and such) that became more common around the years 2008–2010. The third concentrates purely on social media (e.g., Facebook and Twitter), it’s features and what this has brought to the TV watching. P. Tuomi (*) Tampere University of Technology, Pohjoisranta 11 A, PO Box 300, 28101 Pori, Finland e-mail: [email protected] # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 A. Lugmayr, C. Dal Zotto (eds.), Media Convergence Handbook - Vol. 1, Media Business and Innovation, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-54484-2_14
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Fig. 1 The main eras of twenty-first century television
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Literature State of the Art
Television has enlightened people for decades. That warm heart of the living room has both brought families together and given possibilities to consume entertainment individually. It has been seen as a complex medium, at the same time collective and disjunctive (Heinonen, 2008). Television is overall a very versatile broadcast medium (Na¨ra¨nen, 2006, 29). TV means different things to different people and there are several ways how to consume it, especially nowadays. Information- and communication technology differs from other equipment at home by their ability to connect the people and the outside world—either interactively or passively (Silverstone & Hirsch, 1994, 15). Nowadays television is constantly being developed with new technical and social features that are widely acknowledged and the idea of being interactive comes through a convergenc
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