Facebook (A)Live? Are Live Social Broadcasts Really Broadcasts?

The era of live-broadcast is back but with two major changes. First, unlike traditional TV broadcasts, content is now streamed over the Internet enabling it to reach a wider audience. Second, due to various user-generated content platforms it has become possible for anyone to get involved, streaming their own content to the world. This emerging trend of going live usually happens via social platforms, where users perform live social broadcasts predominantly from their mobile devices, allowing their friends (and the general public) to engage with the stream in real-time. With the growing popularity of such platforms, the burden on the current Internet infrastructure is therefore expected to multiply. With this in mind, we explore one such prominent platform - Facebook Live. We gather 3TB of data, representing one month of global activity and explore the characteristics of live social broadcast. From this, we derive simple yet effective principles which can decrease the network burden. We then dissect global and hyper-local properties of the video while on-air, by capturing the geography of the broadcasters or the users who produce the video and the viewers or the users who interact with it. Finally, we study the social engagement while the video is live and distinguish the key aspects when the same video goes on-demand. A common theme throughout the paper is that, despite its name, many attributes of Facebook Live deviate from both the concepts of live and broadcast.Comment: Published at The Web Conference 2018 (WWW 2018). Please cite the WWW versio

Sentiment analysis: the case of twitch chat - Mining user feedback from livestream chats

Project Work presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementIn a world where users often share their thoughts and opinions through online communication channels, applications that can tap into these channels as to extract consumer feedback have become increasingly valuable. Traditional marketing research techniques such as interviews or surveys offer results that pale in comparison to sentiment analysis applications that can extract organic feedback from an extremely large selection, with very little resources and in real-time. This thesis focuses on proposing and developing one of these tools that targets livestreams, which have, over the years, seen a massive increase in popularity from both a user-base standpoint as well as brand involvement. We chose the livestreaming platform “Twitch” as the target of research and developed a sentiment analysis model, using rule-based approaches, capable of interpreting user chat messages and identifying whether those messages are negative, positive or neutral. Additionally, an application was developed to better view and analyze the results of the model. By segmenting our results by product reveal, we also exhibit how the application allows for the extraction of various insights about the public’s opinion of that product

Perceções do telespectador sobre o engagement nas redes sociais digitais de conteúdos desportivos : uma análise do programa televisivo Golf & Golfistas

O presente relatório de estágio pretende conjugar a experiência prática de quatro meses no departamento audiovisual da empresa CN Sports e o objetivo de investigar quais as motivações que influenciam o telespectador de um programa televisivo de conteúdos desportivos a envolver-se nas redes sociais digitais do mesmo, particularmente a análise ao programa televisivo Golf & Golfistas. Numa primeira fase foram selecionados trabalhos de cunho bibliográfico que resultaram no enquadramento teórico. A estratégia metodológica passou pela análise de conteúdo do Facebook e do Instagram da CN Sports, por uma entrevista exploratória ao responsável pelas redes sociais digitais em evidência e, entrevistas semiestruturadas a 9 telespectadores e seguidores das páginas de redes sociais digitais correspondentes ao programa televisivo. Estes últimos dados foram analisados através de uma análise temática. Os resultados identificam 17 motivações: relação próxima com o golfe, informação, conveniência, exposição congruente com o conteúdo, conteúdo, formato, frequência, horário, gamification, conexão interpessoal, aprendizagem, entretenimento, orgulho, humor, qualidade, integração e interação social, e, estima. Este estudo torna-se, teoricamente, importante pela escassez de estudos relativamente ao engagement em redes sociais digitais especificamente de golfe, e, num sentido prático dirigem-se a responsáveis por redes sociais digitais de um setor desportivo, a fim de ajudar a melhorar a perceção de quem procura alcançar este nicho, inclusive, a empresa em estudo.The present internship report aims to combine to practical experience of four months in the audiovisual department of the CN Sports company and its objective of investigating what motivates the viewer of a television program of sports content to engage in its digital social networks, particularly the analysis of a television program Golf & Golfistas. In the first phase, bibliographical works were selected which resulted in the theoretical framework. The methodological strategy involved content analysis of CN Sports’ Facebook and Instagram, an exploratory interview with the person responsible for the digital social networks in evidence and semi-structured interviews with nine viewers and followers of digital social networks pages corresponding to television program. The later data was analyzed true thematic analysis. The results identify 17 motivations: close relationship with golf, information, convenience, congruent exposure with a content, content, format, frequency, schedule, gamification, interpersonal connection, learning, entertainment, pride, humor, quality, integration and social interaction, esteem. The study becomes theoretically important due to the scarcity of studies regarding engagement digital social networks specifically for golf, and, in a practical sense, it is aimed to those responsible for digital social networks in sports sector, in order to help improve the perception of those who seek to reach this niche, including the company under study

Understanding the challenges of synchronous video-mediated teaching through the eyes of remote ELT practitioners

This research addresses the situated experiences of remote ELT practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic while teaching remotely via synchronous video on Microsoft Teams and Facebook Live. The challenges that remote teachers of English faced teaching synchronously during the COVID-19 pandemic have been researched mainly through a quantitative approach and usually presented as a list of incidents. Therefore, this qualitative study’s aim was to understand the challenges in synchronous video-mediated teaching through the eyes of remote ELT practitioners, including their responses to the challenges. The study focused on two organisational cases and their remote teachers working with videoconferencing and livestreaming: a pre-sessional course (using Microsoft Teams) and an online education charity (using Facebook Live). This thesis corresponds to an inductive multiple case study with an autoethnographic lens. The sources of data included methods such as semi-structured interviews, video-recall interviews, field notes, focus groups, and video recordings as sample artefacts of synchronous video-mediated sessions and staff meetings. The analysis of the data consisted of two sequential cycles: first, thematic analysis; and second, multimodal interaction analysis. The findings emphasised the similarities between RTs working with MS Teams and those using FBL. The overarching themes referred to pedagogical, technical, and interactional issues in which RTs felt they were struggling. The themes covered three main domains of RTs’ teaching via synchronous video: lesson delivery, scaffolding language learning, and teacher-student connectedness. The constituents of the domains signal the problematic facets of RTs’ actions in synchronous video-mediated teaching. For example, the components of lesson delivery include lesson planning and technical issues. The domain of scaffolding learning consists of monitoring and feedback, while teacher-student connectedness encompasses gaze, silence, and rapport building. The challenges that RTs experienced impacted their teaching presence as they perceived a loss of control on the conditions of their teaching and the digital environment of the sessions