An Information Theory Measure for Television Programming

Watt, James H.; Krull, Robert

doi:10.1177/009365027400100103

Cited by 41 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…The effectiveness of entropy measures for television programming in general has been established by Watt (1979) and others (see Watt and Krull, 1974;Watt and Welch, 1983;O'Connor, 1991). There has been no application of this tool to documents for children, especially for use in representations of those documents.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…It is essential to see that "information is a Dancing with entropy measurable quantity which characterizes the process of communication" (Moles, 1966, p. 196). Based on modifications to Shannon's statistical model of data transmission, the model established by Watt and Krull (1974) and elaborated by Watt (1979) to calculate useful entropy measures for each moving image document by using seven entropy formulae -one for each of seven types of "form attribute" common to moving image documents. The first six were developed after Watt examined 168 television programs from 58 series.…”

Section: Calculating Wattian Entropymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dancing with entropy: form attributes, children, and representation

Kearns

O'Connor²

2004

Journal of Documentation

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This study explores the use of the information theory entropy equation in representations of videos for children. The calculated rates of information in the videos are calibrated to the corresponding perceived rates of information as elicited from the 12 seven-to ten-year-old girls who were shown video documents. Entropy measures are calculated for several video elements: set time, set incidence, verbal time, verbal incidence, set constraint, nonverbal dependence, and character appearance. As hypothesized, mechanically calculated entropy measure (CEM) was found to be sufficiently similar to perceived entropy measure (PEM) made by children so that they can be used as useful and predictive elements of representations of children's videos. The relationships between the CEM and the PEM show that CEM could stand for PEM in order to enrich representations for video documents for this age group. Wilson (1968, p. 101) asserts that unless the indexer shares specific physiological and intellectual experiences with the user, the surrogate will likely be ineffective: Unless, then, indexing is done specifically for me, and on the basis of intimate knowledge of my interests and requirements, it is likely that I shall always have to engage in exploration, in searching, for the things that are most important to me.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Calculating Wattian Entropymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dancing with entropy: form attributes, children, and representation

Kearns

O'Connor²

2004

Journal of Documentation

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“…Watt and colleagues defined it as the frequency of verbal statements and background change, while the first author a decade later defined pacing as differences in the level of light on the screen over time (Watt et al, 1974). Cooper (2009) and colleagues interpreted pacing as a frequency of camera angle changes, while Lang and colleagues defined it as a number of transitions from one scene to another and they have quantified that number on three levels and (Lang et al, 1999).…”

Section: Literature Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Model of information density measuring in e-learning videos

Đokić¹,

Idlbek²,

Mandušić³

2017

PROSOC

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Educational video content authors must be careful that the content is adequate for the audience and the purpose especially on the term level. On the other hand authors must be careful that the content does not cause information overloading. Viewers can experience it if the videos have too much motions and movements. Information overload has become an increasingly popular area of study and a lot of authors indicated that information density of movies and videos have risen in the last few decades. High information density of videos and movies may cause information overloading and it has been proved by Lang et al in their theoretic model named Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing. This theoretic model suggests how to measure information density in videos and movies but this method is slow and just trained observers can do this job well. In this paper the new model for information density measuring in videos and movies is described and tested. This new model is based on special usage of background subtraction algorithms and in this paper multi-layer background subtraction algorithm based on color and texture is used. This algorithm is presented by authors Yao and Odobez on CVPR Visual Surveillance Workshop in 2007. Results of our model are compared with the trained observer's results and the same video clips that have been used by Lang et al are used for testing. It can be seen that there is a significant correlation between information densities measured by trained observers and our model. Our model can be used to determine some forms of information density in videos and movies and it can be used to indicate higher possibility of information overloading.

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“…A number of theories suggest that as children grow older, there is a developmental shift from reliance on perceptually salient aspects of the stimulus environment to an ability to search out information and to.process complex symbolic stimuli (6, 18,19).…”

Section: Form01mentioning

confidence: 99%

Communicating More than Content: Formal Features of Children's Television Programs

Huston

Wright

Wartella

et al. 1981

Journal of Communication

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Commercial children's pgrams' heauy reliance on perceptual "hype" assumes that the child Oiesoer's attention must be captured and held by constant action, change, noise, and oisual onslaught.Television is unique in its form rather than its content. The medium of television involves production techniques that provide specific visual and auditory means of representing content. We refer to these properties as the f m l features of television. Formal features can, in principle, be used to convey any content, although they may be correlated with particular types of content as a consequence of production conventions and decisions.Although the line between form and content is sometimes blurred, the two can be usefully distinguished conceptually. Forms of television are those attributes which can be described as applying to a wide range of program types, content themes, story plots, and narrative structures. For example, the presence or absence of dialogue is a form of television, but what is said is content. Similarly, by our definition, the amount of physical action or movement is a form that can characterize almost any program, but what is done (e.g., hitting, kissing, jumping) is content which is relevant to the message or story.Beginning with McLuhan (lo), a number of theorists have proposed that the unique forms of television lead people to experience and process information in

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An Information Theory Measure for Television Programming

Cited by 41 publications

References 3 publications

Dancing with entropy: form attributes, children, and representation

Dancing with entropy: form attributes, children, and representation

Model of information density measuring in e-learning videos

Communicating More than Content: Formal Features of Children's Television Programs

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