Abstract
This chapter outlines a conceptual framework for studying socially shared television viewing. Focusing on how users watch television together, this chapter considers common social arrangements, motives, selection decisions, as well as users’ interactions during co-viewing. Examining the effects of these preconditions and processes on viewers’ enjoyment, results of a field study of groups of friends watching an episode of a popular German crime show are presented. Against this background, commonalities and differences between co-viewing and Social TV are discussed.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Anderson, D. R., Lorch, E. P., Smith, R., Bradford, R., & Levin, S. R. (1981). Effects of peer presence on preschool children’s television-viewing behavior. Developmental Psychology, 17, 446–453.
Anderson, P. R., Guerrero, L. K., & Jones, S. M. (2006). Nonverbal behavior in intimate interactions and intimate relationships. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 259–277). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Auverset, L. A., & Billings, A. C. (2016). Relationships between Social TV and enjoyment: A content analysis of The Walking Dead’s story sync experience. Social Media + Society, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305116662170
Banjo, O. O., Appiah, O., Wang, Z., Brown, C., & Walther, W. O. (2015). Co-viewing effects of ethnic-oriented programming: An examination of in-group bias and racial comedy exposure. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 92, 662–680. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699015581804
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong. Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529.
Bollen, K. A., & Hoyle, R. H. (1990). Perceived cohesion. A conceptual and empirical examination. Social Forces, 69, 479–504.
Buschow, C., Schneider, B., & Ueberheide, S. (2014). Tweeting television: Exploring communication activities on Twitter while watching TV. Communications, 39, 129–149. https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2014-0009
Busemann, K., & Tippelt, F. (2014). Second Screen: Parallelnutzung von Fernsehen und Internet [Second Screen: Parallel use of television and internet]. Media Perspektiven, 7-8, 408–416.
Cingel, D. P., Sumter, S. R., & van de Leur, J. (2017). The role of social context during television viewing on children’s moral judgments about social exclusion and stigmatization of others. Media Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2017.1378111
Cohen, E., & Lancaster, A. L. (2014). Individual differences in in-person and social media television coviewing: The role of emotional contagion, need to belong, and coviewing orientation. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, 17, 512–518. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2013.0484
Dion, K. L. (2000). Group cohesion: From "field of forces" to multidimensional construct. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research and Practice, 4, 7–26. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2699.4.1.7
Früh, W., & Wünsch, C. (2009). Empathie und Medienempathie. Ein empirischer Konstrukt- und Methodenvergleich [Empathy and media empathy. An empirical comparison of constructs and methods]. Publizistik, 54, 191–215.
Früh, W., Wünsch, C., & Klopp, P. (2004). TDU-Unterhaltungsindex. Ein Instrument zur empirischen Ermittlung von Unterhaltungserleben [TDU enjoyment index. An instrument to measure enjoyment]. Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft, 52, 515–544.
Gardner, W. L., Pickett, C. L., & Brewer, M. B. (2000). Social exclusion and selective memory. How the need to belong influences memory for social events. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 486–496. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167200266007
Gehrau, V., Döveling, K., Sommer, D., & Dunlop, S. (2014). Antagonistic and synergetic impacts of conversation on nonpersuasive media effects. Communication Research, 41, 578–602. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650212445480
GfK Crossmedia Link Deutschland. (2016). Parallelnutzung von TV und Internet [Parallel use of tv and internet]. Retrieved from https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/de-de/marketingkan%C3%A4le/youtube/zunehmende-parallelnutzung-von-tv-online/
Global Web Index. (2017). Insight Report Q1 Digital vs. traditional media consumption. Analyzing time devoted to online and traditional forms of media at a global level, as well as by age and across countries. Retrieved from https://www.globalwebindex.com/reports/traditional-vs-digital-media-consumption
Götz, M., & Holler, A. (2009). „Da lacht man einfach besser“. Sehen Kinder lieber allein oder gemeinsam mit der Familie fern? [“You have a good laugh”. Do children prefer to watch television alone or together with their family?]. Televizion, 22, 19–22.
Gscheidle, C., Mohr, I., & Niederauer-Kopf, K. (2011). Fernsehnutzung “außer Haus”. Ergebnisse aus dem AGF/GfK-Panel zur Gästenutzung [Television use ‘outside home‘. Results from the AGF/GfK panel on guests’ television use]. Media Perspektiven, 4, 195–203.
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional contagion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hatfield, E., & Rapson, R. L. (2004). Emotional Contagion. Religious and ethnic hatreds and global terrorism. In L. Z. Tiedens & C. W. Leach (Eds.), The social life of emotions (pp. 130–143). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hepp, A. (1998). Fernsehaneignung und Alltagsgespräche. Fernsehnutzung aus der Perspektive der Cultural Studies [Television appropriation and daily talks. Television use from an cultural studies’ perspective]. Opladen, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Hofmann, O. (2009). Die Hits der Familien. Was sehen Familien gemeinsam [Family hits. What families watch together]. Televizion, 22, 16–19.
Holly, W., Püschel, U., & Bergmann, J., (Eds.). (2001). Der sprechende Zuschauer. Wie wir uns Fernsehen kommunikativ aneignen [The talking viewer. How we communicatively appropriate television]. Wiesbaden, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Horky, T. (2009). Sozialpsychologische Effekte bei der Rezeption von Mediensport in der Gruppe [Social psychological effects during the reception of mediated sport in groups]. In H. Schramm & M. Marr (Eds.), Die Sozialpsychologie des Sports in den Medien [Social psychology of sports in media] (pp. 176–198). Köln, Germany: Herbert von Halem.
Ji, Q., & Zhao, D. (2015). Tweeting live shows. A content analysis of live-tweets from three entertainment programs. Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Social Media & Society, 13. https://doi.org/10.1145/2789187.2789195
Kelle, U., & Kluge, S. (2010). Vom Einzelfall zum Typus. Fallvergleich und Fallkontrastierung in der qualitativen Sozialforschung [From individual case to type. Comparing and contrasting cases in qualitative social science]. 2., überarbeitete Auflage. Wiesbaden, Germany: VS.
Kessler, B., & Gerhard, H. (2017). Die Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft 2014 als zielgruppenübergreifendes (Fernseh-)Ereignis [The Soccer World Cup 2014 as an audience spanning (television) event]. In H. Ihle, M. Meyen, J. Mittag, & J.-U. Nieland (Eds.), Globales Mega-Event und nationaler Konfliktherd. Die Fußball-WM 2014 in Medien und Politik [Global mega event and national hot spot. The Soccer World Cup 2014 in media and politics] (pp. 185–211). Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer.
Kessler, B., & Kupferschmitt, T. (2012). Fernsehen in Gemeinschaft. Analysen zu Konstellationen der Fernsehnutzung (Television in community. Analyses of television use arrangements). Media Perspektiven, 12, 623–634.
Kiefer, M. L. (1999). Hörfunk- und Fernsehnutzung (Radio and television use). In J. Wilke (Eds.), Mediengeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Media history of the Federal Republic of Germany) (pp. 426–446). Bonn, Germany: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung.
Klemm, M. (2000). Zuschauerkommunikation. Formen und Funktionen der alltäglichen kommunikativen Fernsehaneignung (Audience communication. Forms and functions of daily communicative television appropriation). Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang.
Koch, T., Schäfer-Hock, C., & Zillich, A. F. (2016). Conflict, coordination, compromise? The potential of game theory to explain the choice of viewing in shared domestic television use. Communications – The European Journal of Communication Research, 41, 445–464.
Konig, R. P., Kraaykamp, G., & Westerik, H. (2008). Partners’ influence on each other’s television exposure: Dominance or symmetry? Communications, 33, 371–384. https://doi.org/10.1515/COMM.2008.024
Krämer, N. C., Winter, S., Benninghoff, B., & Gallus, C. (2015). How “social” is Social TV? The influence of social motives and expected outcomes on the usage of Social TV applications. Computers in Human Behavior, 51, 255–262. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.05.005
Lee, M. S., Heeter, C., & LaRose, R. (2010). A modern Cinderella story. A comparison of viewer responses to interactive vs linear narrative in solitary and co-viewing settings. New Media & Society, 12, 779–795. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809348771
Lochrie, M., & Coulton, P. (2012). Sharing the viewing experience through second screen. In Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) European conference on interactive television and video (pp. 199–202). New York: ACM.
Lull, J. (1980). The social uses of television. Human Communication Research, 6, 197–209.
Manstead, A. S. R., & Fischer, A. H. (2001). Social appraisal. The social world as object of and influence on appraisal processes. In K. R. Scherer (Ed.), Appraisal processes in emotion. Theory, methods, research (pp. 221–232). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
McGrath, J. E., & Kravitz, D. A. (1982). Group research. Annual Review of Psychology, 33, 195–230.
Mora, J.-D., Ho, J., & Krider, R. (2011). Television co-viewing in Mexico. An assessment on people meter data. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 55, 448–469. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2011.620905
Morley, D. (1986). Family Television: Cultural power and domestic leisure. London: Comedia.
Neumann, R., & Strack, F. (2000). Mood contagion. The automatic transfer of mood between persons. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 211–223. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.2.211
Nevo, O., Nevo, B., & Derech-Zehavi, A. (1993). The development of the tendency to gossip questionnaire: Construct and concurrent validation for a sample of Israeli college students. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 53, 973–981.
Oehlberg, L., Ducheneaut, N., Thornton, J. D., Moore, R. J., & Nickell, E. (2006). Social TV: Designing for distributed, sociable television viewing. In Proceedings of the 10th European conference on interactive TV and video (pp. 251–259). Berlin, Germany: ACM.
Ofcom. (2017). Children and parents: Media use and attitudes report. Retrieved on May, 22, 2018. Available at: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/108182/children-parents-media-use-attitudes-2017.pdf
Parkinson, B., Fischer, A. H., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2005). Emotion in social relations. In Cultural, group, and interpersonal processes. New York: Psychology Press.
Peters, M. S., Fitch, M., Huston, A. C., Wright, J. C., & Eakins, D. J. (1991). Television and families. What do young children watch with their parents? Child Development, 62, 1409–1423.
Prentice, D. A., Miller, D. T., & Lightdale, J. R. (1994). Asymmetries in attachments to groups and to their members: Distinguishing between common-identity and common-bond groups. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 484–493.
Püschel, U. (1993). ‘du musst gucken nicht so viel reden‘. Verbale Aktivitäten bei der Fernsehrezeption [‚You have to watch, not to talk so much‘. Verbal activities during television reception]. In W. Holly, & U. Püschel (Eds.), Medienrezeption als Aneignung. Methoden und Perspektiven qualitativer Medienforschung (Media reception as appropriation. Methods and perspectives from qualitative media studies) (pp. 115–135). Opladen, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Raghunathan, R., & Corfman, K. (2006). Is happiness shared doubled and sadness shared halved? Social influence on enjoyment of hedonic experiences. Journal of Marketing Research, 18, 386–394. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.43.3.386
Ramanathan, S., & McGill, A. L. (2007). Consuming with others: Social influences on moment-to-moment and retrospective evaluations of an experience. Journal of Consumer Research, 34, 506–524. https://doi.org/10.1086/520074
Raney, A. A. (2006). Why we watch and enjoy mediated sports. In A. A. Raney & J. Bryant (Eds.), Handbook of sports and media (pp. 313–329). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Raney, A. A., & Ji, Q. (2017). Entertaining each other? Modeling the socially shared television viewing experience. Human Communication Research, 43, 424–435. https://doi.org/10.1111/hcre.12121
Schirra, S., Sun, H., & Bentley, F. (2014). Together alone: Motivations for live-tweeting a television series. In Proceedings of the 2014 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (pp. 2441–2450). New York: ACM.
Schramm, H., & Klimmt, C. (2003). „Nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel“. Die Rezeption der Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft 2002 im Fernsehen: Eine Panel-Studie zur Entwicklung von Rezeptionsmotiven im Turnierverlauf [„After the game is before the game“. Television reception of the World Cup 2002: A panel study on the development of reception motives during the course of the tournament]. Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft, 51, 55–81.
Skouteris, H., & Kelly, L. (2006). Repeated-viewing and co-viewing of an animated video. An examination of factors that impact on young children’s comprehension of video content. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 31(3), 22–30.
Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis). (2017). Statistisches Jahrbuch 2017. Deutschland und Internationales [Statistical yearbook 2017. Germany and International]. Roggentin, Germany.
Vettehen, P. H., Konig, R. P., Westerik, H., & Beentjes, H. (2012). Explaining television choices: The influence of parents and partners. Poetics, 40, 565–585. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2012.09.002
Walker, J. R., & Bellamy, R. V. (2001). Remote control devices and family viewing. In J. Bryant & J. A. Bryant (Eds.), Television and the American family (pp. 75–89). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Weber, M., & Quiring, O. (2017). Is it really that funny? Laughter, emotional contagion, and heuristic processing during shared media use. Media Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2017.1302342
Webster, J. G., & Wakshlag, J. J. (1982). The impact of group viewing on patterns of television program choice. Journal of Broadcasting, 26, 445–455. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838158209364012
Wenner, L. A., & Gantz, W. (1989). The audience experience with sports on television. In L. A. Wenner (Ed.), Media, sports, & society (pp. 241–269). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Wilson, B. J., & Weiss, A. J. (1993). The effects of sibling coviewing on preschoolers’ reactions to a suspenseful movie scene. Communication Research, 20, 214–248.
Winter, S., Krämer, N. C., Benninghoff, B., & Gallus, C. (2018). Shared entertainment, shared opinions: The influence of Social TV comments on the evaluation of talent shows. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 62, 21–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2017.1402903
Wohn, Y., & Na, E.-K. (2011). Tweeting about TV: Sharing television viewing experiences via social media message streams. First Monday, 16, 3–7. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v16i3.3368
Zillich, A. F. (2013). Fernsehen als Event. Unterhaltungserleben bei der Fernsehrezeption in der Gruppe [Television as event. Enjoyment while watching television in groups]. Köln, Germany: Herbert von Halem.
Zillich, A. F. (2014). Watching television with others. The influence of interpersonal communication on entertainment. Communications – The European Journal of Communication Research, 39, 169–192. https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2014-0011
Zillmann, D., Weaver, J. B., Mundorf, N., & Aust, C. F. (1986). Effects of an opposite-gender companion’s affect to horror on distress, delight, and attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 586–594.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Zillich, A.F. (2020). Socially Shared Television Viewing: Preconditions, Processes and Effects of Co-viewing and Social TV. In: Krämer, B., Frey, F. (eds) How We Use the Media . Transforming Communications – Studies in Cross-Media Research. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41313-2_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41313-2_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-41312-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-41313-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)