Does the Box Still Have What It Takes?

8/6/2019 Does the Box Still Have What It Takes?

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Does the Box Still Have What it Takes?

Television Programmes and the Online Environment: a Case Study of

X-Factoron Screen, Twitter, andFacebook

By Mihaela Brebenel

Television has always been a sphere where discussion takes place and a conversation

generator beyond the box, in public places, in homes or at work. With the constant growing

of the influence the online environment has on our lives, and particularly, the increasing time

dedicated by individuals to social media, the question of television's role in generating

discussion needs to be re-evaluated. The aim of this essay is to analyse Britain's biggest

commercial television, ITV's practices in the online environment, used to establish a full-

circle of remediation for one of its most successful programmes, the X-Factor. The case

study focuses on X-Factor's simultaneous coverage on two of the most important social

media platforms, Twitter and Facebook and highlights the phatic nature of the

communication as key factor of success in the remediation of the television content.

Television as a generating platform for public discussion has been a subject of research

for media and communications theorists for an extended period of time and its role has been

looked both from optimistic and pessimistic viewpoints. As Sonia Livingstone and Peter

Lunt1 appreciate, television and a wider range of media-technology have become an

important part of our everyday life and, as this happens, we can witness television giving

"more space to public discussion, television itself enters into these debates, framing the

discussion, offering its own perspectives and opinions"2. Taking into account that this

argument was developed in 1994, the current state in media-technology evolution and online

involvement in our lives raise the question whether television has kept its ability to frame the

discussion or, on the contrary, has lost this ability to the more interactive, new media. At first

sight, when the new media emerged, they gained a centrality in the theorists' discussions and

research, as it was normal, given their novelty factor. More and more theorists even went so

far as to proclaim the death of newspapers and television under the reign of the new media.

However, one characteristic of television, stressed by Livingstone and Lunt has proven,

in my opinion, to be the trigger that helped build a bridge between television and new media.

That characteristic is, as the authors point out, that "in many ways, talk about television may

frame social relations- we negotiate our identities through talking about programme content

1 Sonia Livingstone and Peter Lunt, Talk on Television. Audience participation and public debate ( London:

Routledge, 1994) p.5.

2 Livingstone and Lunt, 1994, p.5.


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and may reject people who make different interpretations."3 Television has always had this

trait, the capacity to generate discussion in social spheres, on different levels, starting from

politics to sport, from entertainment programmes to news reels. Therefore, I believe that

television has lagged behind new media for a relatively long period of time because the new

media hadn't develeoped and grown the social networking platforms they have now. One of

television's main interests was to establish what parts and how much of the social

communication is the result of television viewing. Furthermore, one of the aspects which

posed the most dificulties was to establish if the conversations were "implicitly or explicitly

triggered by television viewing, for naturally occurring conversation is notoriously hard to

record (Heritage, 1991)"4 The rise of social media has offered television the perfect platform

where these aspects can be observed and measured, as the reactions of the viewers can be

witnessed instantly, during a TV programme airing time and afterwards. Moreover, theinstant feedback received can be evaluated and used in making changes to suit the audience's

requests and expectations. We can say that, by remediating the television content into social

media, television receives a hypodermic shot of feedback, a reversed phenomenon of how its

content was thought to act upon viewers that some media theories developed. What social

media offer to television is a platform where the everyday, instant forms of communication

are layed out, giving the opportuniy to analyse the complex and very dynamic process of

communication between speaker and hearer. As Goffman (1981) argues, the dyadic process

of communication between a speaker and a hearer needs to be reconceptualized as a

framework where the role of speaker is taken over by the hearer at times, giving the later a

social role, the role of active participant.5 Social media plaforms like TwitterandFacebook

create this framework, making the audiences active in an established sphere where television

can become the conversation starter and the speaker, while giving its hearers the opportunity

to evaluate and critise what they hear.

Since the continous rise of digital media, theorists have made a clear distinction between

the old and new, between the apparently obsolete TV box and the new, promising digital

media. However, as John Caldwell argues, these polar oppositions between old and new or

between "push" and "pull" media have left out an important aspect, that 'television had long

been making itself a "pull" medium (through interactivity), even as it merged and

conglomerated in an unequivocal bid to make the Internet a viable "push" medium through

the deployment of programming and advertising strategies.'6 Television has focused its

3 Livingstone and Lunt, 1994, p.6.4 Livingstone and Lunt, 1994, p.6.

5 Livingstone and Lunt, 1994, p.54

6 John Caldwell, Convergence Television: Aggregating Form and Repurposing Content in The Culture of


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efforts towards interactivity before the rise of the new media on a large scale, through

programme merchandise or shopping channels, to name just a few. The expansion of

television beyond broadcasting itself has been noted by different theorists, as "an entity that

transverses time, space, and multiple technologies and viewer practices, each year growing

larger yet."7

The goal of television was always to extend the talks and influence of its

programmes beyond the time and space of the viewing itself, to create a network of

connections to television outside the box. If we were just to take the word broadcasting and

rethink it as an agricultural metaphor for sowing of seeds, as Jostein Gripsrud proposes, then

we can reffer to the 'existence of a bucket of seeds that is, centralized resources of

information, knowledge, creative and technical competence, and the like that is to be

distributed as widely as possible in a certain "field" or territory.'8 Consequently, television

was bound to adapt and use the social media as a fruitful platform to plant its seeds on, as itactually proved to be. The socialization of TV has started, in my opinion, long before the

expansion of new media but it took some adjustments and preparation to discover which

were the most fertile grounds for sowing. Among them, social media networks have proven

to offer television a very high rate of feedback and involvement from the audience's part.

Moreover, among TV programmes, reality shows and talent shows seem to trigger an

impressive rate of interaction. In this essay I will argue that the reason behind this is the

phatic nature of the communication related to these types of shows.

Firstly, I will focus in the next part of my essay on this relatively new television format

which is the reality show. In the last years, the rise in popularity of reality shows has directed

theorists' interest in observing the phenomenon closely. At first sight, the advantages of such

a format are clearly set in the area of financial opportunities: the production costs are lower

than for a TV series, for example.

On the other hand, this format summarizes one of television's goals, to "make the

ordinary extraordinary and evoke ordinariness in such a way that people will see just how

extraordinary it is".9

In other words, bringing normal people to perform normal activities

(singing, dancing or simply small random tasks) at which they are skilled or not and

following their performance in a dramatised way in order to produce reactions form the

audience in supporting or criticizing their actions. This particular programme format has

Convergence in Television after TV. Essays on a medium in transition, (Durham and London: Duke University

Press, 2004), p.45.

7 Jonathan Gray, Television Entertainment(London and New York:Routledge, 2008), p.73.

8 Jostein Gripsrud,Broadcast Television: The Chances of its Survival in a Digital Age in The Culture of Convergencein Television after TV. Essays on a Medium in Transition (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004),

p.211.

9 Pierre Bourdieu, On Television and Journalism (London:Pluto Press, 1998), p.21.


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proven to be very successful across the globe and Ted Magder believes that there are four

main reasons behind this success:

"...the growing enthusiasm for prepackaged formats as a basis for program production;

the emergence of product placement, or brand integration, as a source of revenue to program

producers; the increasing tendency to use TV programs as the springboard for a multimedia

exploitation of the creative property; and the growing strength of European program

suppliers in the American (and international) television market."10

Amongst these reasons, the advertising revenues developed from product placement in

TV programmes play an important part, as every reality show has a main sponsor with an

incredible presence during the show but this is not the only part it plays, as this reason isclosely connected the third, the capacity of these shows to traverse the television medium

itself, being exploited into other media, where the sponsor and advertised products are as

visible as on the actual show. For example, the X-Factor's main sponsor is the mobile

company Talk Talk, present during the show and with a high range of TV commercials in the

show's breaks. In addition, if you acces theITV'sX-Factordedicated microsite, the sponsor's

presence is highly noticeable before each sequence of the show available online and with a

dedicated space for advertising.

On a global level, TV product placements constitute one of the major sources of revenue,

as they were, in 2006 "double those in filmed entertainment and more than 30 times higher

than those in other media such as video games and magazines."11 These figures show that

investment in advertising on these shows is profitable, meaning that audiences engage with

these shows, manifest interest in viewing them and expand the experience to other platforms,

such as merchandise tie-ins and platforms that allow a shared participation, a closer

connection to the protagonists and other viewers. In his analysis of the show American Idol,

Henry Jenkins believes that the now rising marketing strategy used to sell these shows

named by the theorist "affective economics", aims to "understand the emotional

underpinnings of consumer decision making as a driving force behind viewing and

purchasing decisions."12

Web 2.0 has offered television a means to hear its audience's

preferences, complaints and changes they would make on the shows, letting the producers

10 Ted Magder, Television 2.0. The Business of American Television in Transition in Reality TV. Remaking Television

Culture (New York and London: New York University Press, 2008, re-edited 2009), p. 149.

11 Madger, 2009, p.152. Source: PQ Media, Executive summary, Global Product Placement Forecast 2006(Stamford, CT:PQ Media, 2006)

12 Henry Jenkins,Buying into American Idolin Reality TV. Remaking Television Culture (New York and London:

New York University Press, 2008, re-edited 2009), p.345.


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know what moves them and what they find intriguing, leading to a reversal of roles. That is

what led Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze (2008) to believe that this convergence

phenomenon will create two new categories, of "produsers", respectively "prosumers".13

What was thought to be a revolusionising aspect of the new media in merging the lines

between what producers offer viewers and what the viewer's involvement can create through

user generated content has raised questions of value and legitimacy about this new content

arising. The audiences becoming not only bystanders in the production process, but active

creators initially led to a wave of enthusiasm regarding the new paradigm shift but soon

approached a more critical turn, discussing the quality of this consumer generated content

and its value. Focusing on these two aspects, Henry Jenkins, the author that brought forward

the term "convergence culture", sees the possitive and negative aspects of this shift, in that it

provides a balance between media institutions and the "produsers".

14

However, as VildeSchanke and Espen Ytreberg argue in their article, the audiences have always felt the need to

actively participate in discusssions around TV programmes and the fact that digital media are

now at hand works as a tool to express themselves. Conducting a series of 45 structured

interviews with Norwegian media executives in 2005, the authors discovered three main

reasons for the audiences' active involvement: "emotional engagement, socializing, and the

pursuit of technoloical novelty."15

It is not surprising to see why fan communities built

around certain television shows would be one of the first to react and use digital media to

express themselves actively. The emotional engagement with the show and its participants

reaches a very high degree in fan communities. Moreover, if we consider the affective

involment of supporting the favourite participant when a competition takes place, this reason

is enough to trigger activeness. Nonetheless, reality shows like X-Factor bring forward

another aspect highlighted above, the socializing aspect which, on platforms like Twitterand

Facebookis the main reason behind their existence. Using these platforms to emotionaly and

actively engage in discussions with other fans of the show and moreover, to do this as the

show is aired on television becomes a technological novelty that they are more than willing

to experience.

On the other hand, if we take into consideration that the target of these reality shows is

comprised mostly of young people, these are by definition early adopters of technology. In

13 Vilde Schanke and Espen Ytreberg, 'Working Notions of Active Audiences: Further Research on the Active

Participant in Convergent Media Industries', Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media

Technologies , Vol 15(4), 2009, pp. 383-390.14 Schanke and Ytreberg, 2009, p. 384.

15 Schanke and Ytreberg, 2009, p. 385. Motives resulted from the answers to the question "Have you formed an

opinion on the reasons why audiences use your facilities for participation?"


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addtion, as Henry Jenkins argues, "fans were early adopters of technology"16 themselves,

being the first to create online communities and chat rooms when social networking websites

didn't exist. Going beyond that, we can say that fan communities created their groups' virtual

spheres, having "defined their membership through affinities rather than localities"17,

socializing and engaging emotionaly in their common passion, before the rise of technology.

If they were willing to travel to fan conventions or wait for days for the post to deliver their

latest news from the fan community, nowadays, when the technology available has brought

to their fingertips the possibilty to engage actively in debates about the show in the same

time as they are watching it on television, it is no wonder that the fans have taken this

opportunity.

However, my argument is that this instant remediation of content leaves out an important

amount of the information that was carried out between the fans in discussions previous tothe rise of digital media, leaving it a phatic communication where the emotional engagement

reaches peaks like never before but on shorter periods of time and the socializing factor

becomes of greater importance. In my opinion, one of the main reasons behind this is the

"liveness" offered by the social networking websites, the instant exchange of small parts of

information. When he critically reflected upon television, Pierre Boudieu18 considered that

the speed imposed by television creates a imposition on thought as well, as thought and time,

in his opinion are in a close connection and one can not produce valuable thoughts under the

pressure of time. Social media websites demand even a greater speed of reaction from its

users, constantly refreshing of the webpage to see what news were posted, therefore

constantly refreshing and reseting your thoughts as you go through the process. If it is

generally true about fans that they are "motivated by a epistemaphilia not simply a pleasure

in knowing but a pleasure in exchanging knowledge."19

, then in the case of social

networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook the knowledge they share is reduced to

small parts that express mostly their emotions in a given moment in time, not knowledge or

insights as valuable shared content.

In contrast, the time spent interacting with the social media has considerably extended

beyond that spent discussing TV programmes in offline situations, the main difference being

that in face to face communication the lenght of the discussion was shorter but the exchange

of information higher, whilst in social networking, bits of conversation in which fans share

small amounts of information are continuing over extended periods of time. Television uses

16 Henry Jenkins,Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers. Exploring Participatory Culture (New York and London: New York

University Press, 2006), p. 138.17 Jenkins, 2006, p. 137.

18 Pierre Bourdieu, 1998.

19 Jenkins, 2006, p. 139.


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social networking platforms to invite audiences into these bits of conversation as it

previously did with text messages and phone ins. In some of the theorists' views, 'media are

becoming "personal"(Luders, 2007). Internet users may act out a considerable part of their

lives on networking sites."20 The personal aspect of the media is debatable, bringing

forward again the aspect of emotional engagement. In this view, there are enough reasons to

say that media has reached a point where, by content remediation and selection, as well as

instant feedback and interactivity, a fan, for example, can feel closer to the show and the

entire fan community he is now very openly part of. On the other hand, this shift has raised

questions on the ways media shape and modify the social relations individuals establish with

each other. Is the talk you have in the livingroom with friends or family about aspects of the

show you are a fan of the same as the array of posts on Facebookyou have with complete

strangers? Or does this new form of interaction and mediatization stimulate "thedevelopment of a soft individualism that depends on weak social ties?"

21 I believe that the

main difference between these online communities and the other forms of habitus the

individuals are part of is that the interest in the former is kept vivid only as long as

something is happening, as long as you are are there active, it dissipates quickly once you

have signed off and is regained as quickly once you access it again. But for the time you are

part of it, it has your attention and it triggers you activity. That is, in my opinion, one of the

main reasons the remediation of reality show content such as the X-Factorworks so well on

social networking platforms. It does not claim to form a fan-based community that will

outlast the moments when they need their fans active, that is when all the advertising is

brought to your attention and it is in the networks interest to keep its fans active while they

are most receptive to the messages. However, information about the show is updated on the

profile in-between peak moments, for the fans to check on whenever they please and

previous information is kept for refference, but the desire for immediacy is fullfilled during

the intense moments when the show aired on television.

Nevertheless, begining with the first studies on the Internet, researchers have long

focused on the development of virtual communities and the interactions among the

participating users, trying to explain the reasons behind the attraction people have to these

social networks. One of the most significant viewpoints has focused on explaning this

attraction as "an antidote to the sense of alienation and disenfranchisement seen as

20 Knut Lundby, Media Logic: Looking for Social Interaction in Mediatization. Concept, Changes, Consequences,(New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2009), p. 115.

21 Stig Hjarvard, Soft Individualism: Media and the Changing Social Characterin Mediatization. Concept, Changes,

Consequences, (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2009), p. 160.


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characteristics of modern, industrial, capitalist societies"22. This, of course can be true for

certain individuals and is part of an ideological paradigm set in a critical approach on the

society and individuals' ways to escape it. As Terry Flew summarizes, the studies in

cybercultures or online communities have started out with a wave of enthusiastic, optimistic

theories on the effects of these communities on induviduals, only to be followed by a wave

of criticism that arrose with the influence of computer games, identity and gender issues,

leading to a pessimistic view of the Internet and the virtual communities it is able to produce.

In turn, this second wave of criticism was followed by a revival of the possibilities of the

Internet that came into focus with the reinvented Web 2.0, social networking websites, user

generated content and the possibility of instant feedback. However, this period is now

shadowed by criticism regarding the phatic nature of these social networks. In this

development of stages, television was highly criticised during the rise of Web 2.0, alwayscompared to the new media, considered old and incapable of providing what the new media

could. Turning to remediation strategies, television now offers shows as topics for social

networking website, where its fan communities can enjoy phatic conversation. But is this

new wave of criticism affecting television just as it has made its way to the new media? In

the next part of my essay, I will focus on the case study ofITV's show the X-Factorand

analyse the data gathered from the monitoring ofTwitterandFacebookon the airtime of the

semifinal 2009 to try to answer the question above.

On the 12th of December 2009ITV2 aired the semifinal of its very popular show, the X-

Factor. For all the previous editions, the show's final was a competition between two

contestants chosen out of the four left in the semifinals. But in this particular case, ITV

decided to run two consecutive shows of the final, one on Saturday the 12th and another on

Sunday, the 13th

. The first show run was the competition between the three remaining

contestats in the talent show, Olly Murs, Stacey Solomon, and Joseph McElderry, three

aspiring musicians. They were all dispaying their talents for a prize consisting of a one

million pounds record deal that would springboard they career as musicians. Now reaching

the sixth series, theX-Factorhas become a very popular show among British audiences and

has expanded its reach to different types of media, making it an interesting case study for

remediation processes. Arguably one of the strong case points in remediation, this last series

of theX-Factorhas amazed media analysts on the level of engagement with social media the

show has managed to achieve. Nick Burcher23, a social media professional and blogger

published a cross-media analysis ofX-Factor's reach on social media networks, blogs and

22 Terry Flew,New Media. An Introduction, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 64.

23 Nick Burcher is currently head of Virtual Network Computing at VivaKi Nerve Center, a company part of Publicis

Groupe and a publisher on his blog www.nickburcher.com.


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search engines revealing that the impact ofITV's campaign for the sixth series of the show

sets out new ground on the so-called socialization of TV in new media. His research was

carried online on the 9th

of November 2009 and highlighted the show's impressive presence

onFacebook(an official page with, at that time 849,409 Fans), on blogs (almost three and a

half million blog posts referencing to X-Factoras Google Blog Search Results reports), on

Youtube (with X-Factor's dedicated channel having more than eighty thousand subscribers

and over six million channel views), and Twitter, where the X-Factor attained most of the

popular topics during and after a show is aired.24

Fig. 1. Google Blog Search results forX Factorsince 1st July 2009

Fig.2. X Factordominating Twittertrending topics

Nick Bucher's research offered the insights for a more systematic approach regarding the

TV show's impact on social media and the content it produces on the social networking

websites, which lead to the case study I conducted on the night of the semifinal. The aim of

the study was to monitor the activity on two of the major social networking platforms,

TwitterandFacebook, as the show was aired on television. With the impressive results of the

the show's presence on these two platforms, one assumption that I made was that the night of

the show will offer a higher degree of involvement from the audience than normal. I chose to

monitor only the official X-Factor accounts on these two websites and the user activity

related to them, as the task to monitor allX-Factorrelated activity proved to overcome my

possibilities of research.Facebook alone produces over 500 page results forX-Factor,

24 http://www.nickburcher.com/2009/11/x-factor-ultimate-in-socialised-tv.html


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starting withX-Factor's official page which on the 9th of January had reached 892,117 fans,

to official pages of the contestants and hundreds of other pages created by users. In the case

ofTwitter, the overall influence of the show on the social network was somewhat easier to

evaluate as, on the website's homepage these a list of trending topics which constantly

shifted while the show was running. My case study contains the monitoring of these trends

alongside the posts on the official X-Factoraccount.

The aim of this study was, on one side, to prove that remediation of the television

programme's content in real time fullfilled the fans' desire for immediacy of discussion

around the show, and on the other hand, to prove that this type of communication has a very

strong phatic characteristic, both of what is transmitted (the official information the show

publishes on these two websites) and what the fans produce as response to this information

(be it in the form of comments, clicks on buttons or microblog entries).TheX-Factor's Twitteraccount started updating information about the show just after it

began airing (7.30 pm) and conversation on the platform sprung almost immediatly making a

first change into the trending topics (7.56 pm-X Factortakes the fifth place in the trending

topics list). The changes in the list continued as the show went on, more updates were posted

as competitors gave their performances. Hence, by 8.05 pm Olly occupied the fifth place in

the list, followed byX-Factorand Stacey. The shifts in places continued and were visible by

the minute and, as the contestants gave their second performances accompanied by famous

guest musicians such as George Michael, Robbie Williams and Michael Buble, the keyword

trend put Olly as the first topic of discussion on the platform (8.37 pm).

Fig. 3. Popular topics on Twitteron 12th December 2009

He kept his position until the end of the show, with fluctuating places between Stacey

(second and third place) and theX-Factorwhich by 8.53 pm had exited completely the topic

list, leading to the conclusion that discussions then revolved solely on the contestants and


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their performances. It is interesting to note that the third contestant, Joseph was never

present in the Twitter topic list. The chart below shows the places occupied by each of the

three keywords in time.

Fig. 4. Places in trending topics list on Twitterhomepage

On Facebook, the desire for immediacy of the show's fans could be fullfilled as the X-

Factorpage started posting updates at 7.31 pm. This platform gives its users the opportunity

to comment on the posts or click a "Like" button. This button requires the minimum of effort

from the user's part but references directly to an emotional engagement they establish with

the content of the post, and in an extensive degree, it creates a socializing effect when shared

with others. The name and profile picture of the users who liked a certain post is displayed

upon a click, so a user can see who are the others that shared that emotional engagement.

TheX-Factorposts received tremendous amount of engagement compared to usual posts

on Facebookand this, just in a matter of minutes. Refreshing the page would reveal the

doubling or sometimes tripleing in size of the number of "Likes" and comments, reaching up

to over one thousand for some of the posts. For example, the 7.32 pm post "The show has

begun" received a staggering 1145 "Likes" and 445 comments, while other posts like the

8.41 pm "Which duet knocked you out?" reached 182 "Likes" and 751 comments in only

three minutes only to sum up 269 "Likes" and 1262 comments after other three minutes. The

chart below shows the evolution in time of the fans' reactions to some the posts.


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Fig. 5. Evolution of someFacebookposts in time during the airing of the show.

Some of the posts, both onFacebookand Twittercontained photos taken on the show, a

low-quality type of photographs that acted as exclusive material and verified the immediacy

of the online "transmission" of information, the type of material that fans would consider

valuable just because it offered them the feeling of witnessing the events as they unfold,

another reason to add up to their desire for immediacy fullfilled by the remediation of the

shows' content on online social networking platforms.

As it can clearly be observed from the above data, the ways in which ITV has managed

to bring the liveness of the televised show to the digital media, offering in addition a real-time feedback platform for a community of fans can determine the conclusion that, as

Bourdieu argued, the immediacy fullfilment comes, in digital media, as in television itself, to

evoking "ordinariness in such a way that people will see just how extraordinary it is."25

Moreover, this remediation has allowed television to find a way through which it can answer

a question set forward by media theorists a long time ago: how can we monitor naturally

occuring conversation that is triggered by television, given the fact that this is a hard goal to

undertake? Not only that, but by remediating a programme's content on social networking

platforms, this is now possible, but also the conversation can be directed into obtaining

feedback from the audiences as the posts in the table above prove it.

Another aspect of this case study was to analyse the content exchanged in these posts in

real-time, as the television show was aired. My argument is that this exchange of content has

a strong phatic chracteristic, as it is a "communicative gesture that does not inform or

exchange any meaningful information or facts about the world. Its purpose is a social one, to

express sociability and maintain connections and bonds."26 This phatic aspect can be applied

25 Bourdieu, 1998, p. 21.

26 Vincent Miller, 'New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture', Convergence no. 14, 2008, pp. 393-394.


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to the social media at large, as some critical theories imply, but it is clearly visible in the case

of theX-Factor's communication on the two platforms, as some of the posts reveal: "Stacey

and Michael!!!" (Facebook post at 8.30 pm), "Olly in action!!!" (Facebook post at 8.54 pm)

or "Simon backstage... " (Twitter post at 8.43 pm), "Olly!!!" (Twitter post at 8.53 pm). The

phatic aspect of the communication is present on the side of the fans' communication, as

well. Even to engaging, interogative posts, the comments are very short and highly

deficitarious of information, such as "Ami Newsome:brill" (comment to the 7.46 pm

Facebook post "Stacey!!! How did she do?!? ") or "Eddie Bridge: betta get hair dryer out"

(comment to 9.20 pm Facebook post "Phone lines are frozen!!!").

However, it is exactly this lack of information that made it possible for the remediation

of the programme's content to be highly successful, given the fact that, as Vincent Miller

argues, this type of exchange is not meaningless because it implies "the recognition,intimacy and sociability in which a strong sense of community is founded."27 This is

precisely what made the fan community engage so strongly in the discussion about the show

on the social networking platforms and above all, brings back Pierre Bourdieu's argument

about the connection between time and thought on television. If this reversed connection is

true about television, we can strongly argue that the instant reaction audiences have on social

media platforms can only be the first thing that comes to their minds, but their are

immediatly uttering it, participating in the discussion, creating a strong sense of community

with other fans and thus becoming more loyal to the programme, transforming it from a

television show they enjoy watching in front of the box, to a lovemark they engage with on

social networks. Despite all this, there is another question that can still be raised: can only

the remediation of entertaining, reality show-type programmes be obtained so successfully in

social media or can other, more socially-centered matters reach this level of involvement

from the audiences?

27 Miller, 2008, p. 395.


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Fig. 6. Complete monitoring of theFacebookposts during the airtime of the show.


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Fig. 7. Complete monitoring of the Twitter posts during the airtime of the show.


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References

Bourdieu, Pierre - On Television and Journalism (London:Pluto Press, 1998)

Caldwell, John - Convergence Television: Aggregating Form and Repurposing Content in

The Culture of Convergence in Television after TV. Essays on a medium in transition,(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004)

Flew, Terry -New Media. An Introduction, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)

Gray, Jonathan - Television Entertainment(London and New York:Routledge, 2008)

Gripsrud, Jostein - Broadcast Television: The Chances of its Survival in a Digital Age in The

Culture of Convergence in Television after TV. Essays on a Medium in Transition (Durham

and London: Duke University Press, 2004)

Hjarvard, Stig - Soft Individualism: Media and the Changing Social Character in

Mediatization. Concept, Changes, Consequences, (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2009)

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17/17

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http://www.nickburcher.com/2009/11/x-factor-ultimate-in-socialised-tv.html

Documents

Does the Box Still Have What It Takes?