Television viewers were once called couch potatoes. Many are becoming more active while watching now, judging by the findings in a new report that illustrates the explosive growth in people who watch TV while connected to social media on smartphones and tablets.
The Nielsen company said that one in three people using Twitter in June sent messages at some point about the content of television shows, an increase of 27 percent from only five months earlier. And that was before the Olympics, which was probably the first big event to illustrate the extent of second screen usage.
“Twitter has become the second screen experience for television,” said Deirdre Bannon, vice president of social media at Nielsen.
Social networking is becoming so pervasive that the study found nearly a third of people aged 18-to-24 reported using the sites while in the bathroom.
An estimated 41 percent of tablet owners and 38 percent of smartphone owners used their device while also watching television at least once a day, Nielsen said.
That percentage hasn’t changed much; in fact, 40 percent of smartphone owners reported daily dual screen usage a year earlier, Nielsen said. The difference is that far more people own these devices and they are using them for a longer period of time. The company estimated that Americans spent a total of 157.5 billion minutes on mobile devices in July 2012, nearly doubling the 81.8 billion the same month a year earlier.
“There are big and interesting implications,” Bannon said. “I think both television networks and advertisers are onto it.”
The social media can provide networks with real-time feedback on what they are doing. The performance of moderators at presidential debates this fall was watched more closely than perhaps ever before, because people were instantly taking on Twitter to provide their own critiques.
It also makes for some conflicting information: Twitter buzzed with complaints last summer about NBC’s policy of airing many Olympics events from London on tape delay, yet ratings for the prime-time Olympics telecast soared past expectations.
The increase in people watching television and commenting about it online would seem to run counter to another big trend this fall: more people recording programs and watching them at a later hour. Those contrary trends both increase the value of live event programming like awards shows or sporting events.
The Nielsen study also found that 35 percent of people who used tablets while watching TV looked up information online about the program they were watching. A quarter of tablet owners said they researched coupons or deals for products they saw advertised on television
As rapid as the use of social media while on television is growing in the United States, it already lags behind other countries. Nielsen said that 63 percent of people in the Middle East or Africa report using social media while on TV, and 52 percent of people in Latin America.
Faith In The Power of Holy Horror To Connect With Moviegoers–From “The Exorcist” To “Heretic”
In the new horror movie, "Heretic," Hugh Grant plays a diabolical religious skeptic who traps two scared missionaries in his house and tries to violently shake their faith.
What starts more as a religious studies lecture slowly morphs into a gory escape room for the two door-knocking members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, underscoring just how well-suited religion can be for terrifying and entertaining thrill-seeking moviegoers.
"I think it is a fascinating religion-related horror as it raises questions about the institution of religion, the patriarchy of religion," said Stacey Abbott, a film professor at Northumbria University in Newcastle, England, whose research interests include horror, vampires and zombies.
"But it also questions the nature of faith and confronts the audience with a debate about choice, faith and free will."
Horror has had a decades-long attraction to religion, Christianity especially in the U.S., with the 1970s "The Exorcist" and "The Omen" being prime examples. Beyond the jump scares, the supernatural elements of horror and its sublime nature pair easily with belief and spirituality — and religion's exploration of big existential questions, Abbott said. Horror is subversive. Real-life taboo topics and cultural anxieties are fair game.
"It is a rich canvas for social critique and it can also be a space to reassert traditional values," Abbott said in an email.
Death, demons and other tough topics religion and horror address
Religions and horror tackle similar questions about what it means to be human — how people relate to one another and the world, said Brandon Grafius, a Biblical studies professor at Ecumenical Theological Seminary in Detroit and an expert on... Read More