Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed From Something Blue: Experiments on Dual Viewing TV and Twitter

The use of second screens to dual-view television and social media is exponentially increasing. As a result, television producers are increasingly augmenting television content with social media comments from viewers, which may serve as a type of real-time public opinion indicator. The current research effort utilizes two experimental studies to explore the effects of this new media production practice on viewer's attitudes and opinions. In these studies, a Twitter feed was integrated in to entertainment (Study 1) and political (Study 2) television broadcasts and manipulated to convey either positive or negative opinions of the content. Participants' opinions were found to conform to the majority opinion presented in the manipulated Twitter feed in nearly all of the analyses. Implications for dual viewing and second screen use are discussed in light of findings.