Socialising around media. Improving the second screen experience through semantic analysis, context awareness and dynamic communities

SAM is a social media platform that enhances the experience of watching video content in a conventional living room setting, with a service that lets the viewer use a second screen (such as a smart phone) to interact with content, context and communities related to the main video content. This article describes three key functionalities used in the SAM platform in order to create an advanced interactive and social second screen experience for users: semantic analysis, context awareness and dynamic communities. Both dataset-based and end user evaluations of system functionalities are reported in order to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of the components directly involved and the platform as a whole

Many-screen viewing: collaborative consumption of television media across multiple devices

The landscape of television is changing. Modern Internet enabled sets are now capable computing devices offering new forms of connectivity and interaction to viewers. One development enabled by this transition is the distribution of auxiliary content to a portable computing device, such as a mobile phone or tablet, working in concert with the television. These configurations are enabled by second screen applications that provide relevant content in synchronisation with the programme on a nearby television set. This thesis extends the notion of second screen to arrangements that incorporate multiple mobile devices working with the television, utilised by collocated groups of participants. Herein these arrangements are referred to as ‘many-screen’ television. Two many-screen applications were developed for the augmentation of sports programming in preparation of this thesis; the Olympic Companion and MarathOn Multiscreen Applications. Both of these applications were informed by background literature on second screen television and wider issues in HCI multiscreen research. In addition, the design of both applications was inspired by the needs of traditional and online broadcasters, through an internship with BBC Research and Development and involvement in a YouTube sponsored project. Both the applications were evaluated by collocated groups of users in formative user studies. These studies centred on how users share and organise what to watch, incorporate activity within the traditionally passive television viewing experience and the integration of user-generated video content in a many-screen system. The primary contribution of this thesis is a series of industry validated guidelines for the design of many-screen applications. The guidelines highlight issues around user awareness devices, content and other user’s actions, the balance between communal and private viewing and the appropriation of user-generated content in many-screen watching

Many-screen viewing: collaborative consumption of television media across multiple devices

The landscape of television is changing. Modern Internet enabled sets are now capable computing devices offering new forms of connectivity and interaction to viewers. One development enabled by this transition is the distribution of auxiliary content to a portable computing device, such as a mobile phone or tablet, working in concert with the television. These configurations are enabled by second screen applications that provide relevant content in synchronisation with the programme on a nearby television set. This thesis extends the notion of second screen to arrangements that incorporate multiple mobile devices working with the television, utilised by collocated groups of participants. Herein these arrangements are referred to as ‘many-screen’ television. Two many-screen applications were developed for the augmentation of sports programming in preparation of this thesis; the Olympic Companion and MarathOn Multiscreen Applications. Both of these applications were informed by background literature on second screen television and wider issues in HCI multiscreen research. In addition, the design of both applications was inspired by the needs of traditional and online broadcasters, through an internship with BBC Research and Development and involvement in a YouTube sponsored project. Both the applications were evaluated by collocated groups of users in formative user studies. These studies centred on how users share and organise what to watch, incorporate activity within the traditionally passive television viewing experience and the integration of user-generated video content in a many-screen system. The primary contribution of this thesis is a series of industry validated guidelines for the design of many-screen applications. The guidelines highlight issues around user awareness devices, content and other user’s actions, the balance between communal and private viewing and the appropriation of user-generated content in many-screen watching

Big data and social media: A scientometrics analysis

The purpose of this research is to investigate the status and the evolution of the scientific studies for the effect of social networks on big data and usage of big data for modeling the social net-works users’ behavior. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the studies associated with big data in social media. The study uses Scopus database as a primary search engine and covers 2000 of highly cited articles over the period 2012-2019. The records are statistically analyzed and categorized in terms of different criteria. The findings show that researches have grown exponentially since 2014 and the trend has continued at relatively stable rates. Based on the survey, decision support systems is the keyword which has carried the highest densities followed by heuristics methods. Among the most cited articles, papers published by researchers in United States have received the highest citations (7548), followed by United Kingdom (588) and China with 543 citations. Thematic analysis shows that the subject nearly maintained an important and well-developed research field and for better results we can merge our research with “big data analytics” and “twitter” that are important topics in this field but not developed well

Temporal representations in human computer interaction: Designing for the lived experience of time

Temporal representations in Human Computer Interaction: is a portfolio of peer reviewed papers and media artworks representing several years of investigation, experimental making, and study into the perceptions and representation of time in digital media and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). The lived experience of time is fundamental to our understanding of the world and the work investigates the complex and contradictory nature of time and the powerful effect temporal representations have on health, well-being and perception.The investigation, methodology and outputs are based in the traditions of interdisciplinary electronic arts, technology research and digital culture. Practice-led, research through design techniques, are used as a means to explore alternative framings of temporal processes. I discuss the importance of temporal experience as a concern for contextual design and consider the models and lived experiences of time and how system-centric representations alter our perceptions of time.The papers and works (discussed in chapters 4, 5 and 6 and included in full in appendix a) cover three broad areas:Analysis and discussion of practice and language in HCI related to time;Experimental designs for temporal objects and media artworks;Finally through critical artefacts, media art and publications I discuss a new perspective on temporality in design and representation and present a framework for re-assessing how we include time in interaction design.The framework is designed to be used as a tool to support understanding of the temporality of users, or situations of use, and to assist in translating and re-framing insights into practical outputs for improved design of interactive systems. It contrasts system-centric with user-centric temporal representation, and contributes a new design methodology that is aimed at improving contextual design processes. By increasing awareness of temporal context, and the multi-dimensional nature of user’s temporality, designers can better understand user context when creating truly user centred interactive experiences

Netflix nations: the geography of digital distribution

How streaming services and internet distribution have transformed global television culture. Television, once a broadcast medium, now also travels through our telephone lines, fiber optic cables, and wireless networks. It is delivered to viewers via apps, screens large and small, and media players of all kinds. In this unfamiliar environment, new global giants of television distribution are emerging-including Netflix, the world's largest subscription video-on-demand service. Combining media industry analysis with cultural theory, Ramon Lobato explores the political and policy tensions at the heart of the digital distribution revolution, tracing their longer history through our evolving understanding of media globalization. Netflix Nations considers the ways that subscription video-on-demand services, but most of all Netflix, have irrevocably changed the circulation of media content. It tells the story of how a global video portal interacts with national audiences, markets, and institutions, and what this means for how we understand global media in the internet age. Netflix Nations addresses a fundamental tension in the digital media landscape - the clash between the internet's capacity for global distribution and the territorial nature of media trade, taste, and regulation. The book also explores the failures and frictions of video-on-demand as experienced by audiences. The actual experience of using video platforms is full of subtle reminders of market boundaries and exclusions: platforms are geo-blocked for out-of-region users ("this video is not available in your region"); catalogs shrink and expand from country to country; prices appear in different currencies; and subtitles and captions are not available in local languages. These conditions offer rich insight for understanding the actual geographies of digital media distribution. Contrary to popular belief, the story of Netflix is not just an American one. From Argentina to Australia, Netflix's ascension from a Silicon Valley start-up to an international television service has transformed media consumption on a global scale. Netflix Nations will help readers make sense of a complex, ever-shifting streaming media environment

The gesturing screen : art and screen agency within postmedia assemblages

This thesis investigates screens as key elements in postmedia assemblages where multiple technical devices and media platforms function relationally to activate new capacities. I characterize the agency of screens as a gesturality that re-arranges and sustains medial relations with and between other components. The gestures of screens reformulate mediality, but also shift experiences and open elements to novel formations and affects. In each re- organisation of the postmedial assemblage, the function and relations of screens are not pre-defined but emerge in process. I develop this dynamic conception of screens and assemblages to account for their diverse manifestations in postmedia. Here I employ an agential realist framework found in the work of Karen Barad and draw on the concept of gestures set out by Giorgio Agamben. This research contributes to a new understanding of postmediality in conjunction with a new conception of the agency of screens. The thesis focuses on mainly digital screen-oriented artworks, repositioning these as heralding or firmly engaging with the postmedial condition. By challenging an understanding of screens that limits them to mere casings for images, this thesis expands the scope and role of screens in postmedia art practices stretching as far back as three decades. It argues that such art works and practices foreground the gesturality of screens and offers in-depth studies of works by Shilpa Gupta, Ulrike Gabriel, Natalie Bookchin, Blast Theory, Ragnar Kjartansson, Sandra Mujinga and Sondra Perry. Such works highlight how screens come to be relationally enacted in postmedia and how that enactment occurs through their performance of medial gestures. I identify two kinds of gestures of postmedia screens that support and connect the technical, aesthetic and in some cases political components of an assemblage. I turn to the multiplicity of frames both on-screen and distributed across screens observed by theorists of media such as Lev Manovich and Anne Friedberg. But the postmedial frame is consistently accompanied by what is out-of-frame – scrolling, swiping and ‘pinching’ continually calls on the out-of-frame to be moved on-screen. The out-of-frame is a postmedial screen gesture, then, that maintains an ongoing relation to the ‘inside’ of the frame, supporting and conditioning it. The multiple temporalities of postmedia assemblages – such as that of images, participants and software – allow an ‘out-of-frame’ to endure beyond the framed image. The second gesture is observed in the pervasiveness of chroma screens — blue and green screens used for compositing other images in postproduction. I suggest that this now ubiquitous technique suspends images from screens. Through a relational analysis of colour, and focusing on Perry’s work, I draw upon ways in which the blankness of chroma screens can be made to gesture a different enactment of race – ‘blackness’ as productive difference. Such gesture in postmedia entails the circulation and transference of social and cultural setting. These two gestures of screens highlight multiple dimensions of the relations of postmedial screens beyond that of framed images, offering us ways to be attentive to enactments of screens as they continue to gather relevance in our expanded visual setting. As screens multiply, this research suggests alternate ways of conceiving the aesthetics and experience of screens’ persistent medial configurations