Patterns of Social Media Conversations Using Second Screens

In this research, we analyze the pattern of conversation resulting from second screen interactions. Second screen refers to the phenomenon of people simultaneously engaged with more than one computer technologies. Specifically, we examine people’s social media conversations while watching TV shows, both live and previously recorded. In our work, we analyze the user’s social media conversation postings concerning three TV show, categorize the postings into five different classifications, and investigate the predominant categories for both live and previously recorded broadcasts of the TV shows. Our objective is to discern the conversation patterns within different aspects of the second screen conversations. The classifications are 1) questions, 2) response, 3) referral, 4) broadcast and 5) retweet. The user interactions in form of tweets are collected using Twitter as the second screen. We collect more than 418,000 tweets for three different TV programs. Using One Way Analysis of Variance, we examine the five tweet categories collected during live broadcast of the program and when the show is not aired. Findings imply that viewers post mainly personal opinion during live broadcasts, but they engage more in directing/redirecting information or recommendations with URLs when the show is not live. There are many implications for those interested in understanding social conversation around mass media in the emerging second screen environment.