Modeling Social Television Analytics and Twitter-Enabled Audience Engagement – A study of Cross-Platform Television Audience in Nigeria

Abstract

The shift to multi-platform television means that an understanding of the social interactions of television audience and measurement of audience engagement across all television viewing platforms are necessary to understand the behavioural pattern of television audience. The study is an attempt to bridge the scholarship gap of social television analytics and industry practice of understanding television audience by proposing an analytical model to audience research of digital television. As a result, the study asks what are the relationships between television audience experience and audience engagement of social media-enabled communication by television services? To understand the relationship between television viewership trends of the selected demography and social interactions of television audience on social media, we used correlation and regressions models to examine the relationship between television audience ratings and twitter data of audience engagement. The results of the correlation analysis are indicative of an entangled relationship between the audience ratings and social interactions of television audience on Twitter. Also, the regression analysis implies that a change in the value of audience ratings may not necessarily affect social interactions of television audience or the pattern of content consumption on social media.