Social TV : the future of television in the Internet Age

Abstract

Television's influence on culture and society has been widely acknowledged for many years. On the other hand, with the diffusion of the web and of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, used in concert with television, the TV experience has become much more interactive and it is now impossible not to acknowledge that television has also become a driving force for social interaction. Furthermore, the parallel diffusion of internet videos and user generated content, fostered by YouTube in particular, has provided the population with a different approach to media and television in particular: consumers have also become producers. This work analyzes how the different technological improvements have changed the definition of television. Special attention is given to how Facebook and Twitter have influenced some of TV's fundamental properties such as liveness, character-centric storylines and flow and to what the YouTube phenomena means for television. The thesis concludes with a forecast about television's future, which confirms the main argument of this thesis: television is increasingly social.