Politics at Home

Abstract

The use of peripheral devices or second screens to access social media and other content is now a common activity during televised political debates. Based on a study conducted during the 2015 UK General Election debates, this paper explores attitudes and practices around such usage. Through the use of home observations and semistructured interviews of 18 participants, we focus on the motivations that the participants had for using second screens, capturing both fulfilled and unfulfilled needs. Based on the results, we suggest future directions for research that may further support online political discourse and we identify the potential need to rethink the implied hierarchy of the phrase second screens.

Understanding How People Use Twitter During Election Debates

“…Research suggests that debate viewers often use their second screens to gauge the public's opinions (Gorkovenko and Taylor, 2016). The diversity of behaviours we observed indicate that viewers can be exposed to a wide range of political views that may be absent from their other social networks.…”

“…Thus, the provocative tweets visible online may be deterring some users from contributing during debates. Since more politically engaged individuals tend to have a curated experience on Twitter due to the pre-formed network of users they follow (Gorkovenko and Taylor, 2016), the provocative behaviour seen in the data may be a greater concen for less politically engaged viewers. These users may instead be drawn to Twitter due to the abundance of humour.…”

“…The public's reaction is visible on a wide range of social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and even Instagram (Mahoney et al, 2016;Shamma et al, 2009). Citizens use these opportunities to gauge the public's opinion, share their own opinion and enrich the experience of watching the debate (Gorkovenko and Taylor, 2016). This behaviour is called second screening.…”

Audience and Expert Perspectives on Second Screen Engagement with Political Debates

“…We are particularly interested in how these issues are manifested around televised political debates, where viewers utilise their personal devices or second screens to gauge the opinions of the public, share their own views, or as a form of entertainment [20]. Within this work we adopt a broad definition of second screens as devices used alongside television for activities that are both related and unrelated to the broadcast [7,11,14,18,39].…”

“…Political debates are a key point in election campaigns, where social media activity is particularly high. Previous research has explored how Twitter is being used in this context [2,7,21], what motivates viewers to use their devices [20], and the effect of social media on opinion formation during debates [33,34]. What remains is to identify directions for the development of appropriate second screen tools that cater to viewers' needs and address the current issues with political discourse online more broadly.…”