Information Sharing by Viewers Via Second Screens for In-Real-Life Events

The use of second screen devices with social media facilitates conversational interaction concerning broadcast media events, creating what we refer to as the social soundtrack. In this research, we evaluate the change of the Super Bowl XLIX social soundtrack across three social media platforms on the topical categories of commercials, music, and game at three game phases (Pre, During, and Post). We perform statistical analysis on more than 3M, 800K, and 50K posts from Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, respectively. Findings show that the volume of posts in the During phase is fewer compared to Pre and Post phases; however, the hourly mean in the During phase is considerably higher than it is in the other two phases. We identify the predominant phase and category of interaction across all three social media sites. We also determine the significance of change in absolute scale across the Super Bowl categories (commercials, music, game) and in both absolute and relative scales across Super Bowl phases (Pre, During, Post) for the three social network platforms (Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram). Results show that significant phase-category relationships exist for all three social networks. The results identify the During phase as the predominant one for all three categories on all social media sites with respect to the absolute volume of conversations in a continuous scale. From the relative volume perspective, the During phase is highest for the music category for most social networks. For the commercials and game categories, however, the Post phase is higher than the During phase for Twitter and Instagram, respectively. Regarding category identification, the game category is the highest for Twitter and Instagram but not for Tumblr, which has dominant peaks for music and/or commercials in all three phases. It is apparent that different social media platforms offer various phase and category affordances. These results are important in identifying the influence that second screen technology has on information sharing across different social media platforms and indicates that the viewer role is transitioning from passive to more active.