Exploring the motivations for live posting during entertainment television viewing

ABSTRACT

Rooted in the Uses and Gratification approach, this study investigated the motives of live posting, a media behavior that is fundamental to Social TV/second screening. Focus group interviews with 33 participants generated 19 motivational items that were original to live posting. Factor analysis based on college student samples (n = 259) revealed four classes of motivations: social connection, catharsis, engagement, and extending enjoyment. Of these, extending enjoyment significantly predicted the frequency of live posting in general. Although there were no gender differences across the identified motives, different patterns in predicting the frequency of live posting via specific platforms such as Twitter and instant message services were revealed. Results were discussed in light of their theoretical and practical implications.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ For the purpose of this project, live television refers to any first-run entertainment program; this includes the broadcast of real-time events (e.g., Monday Night Football games, the Academy Awards) and the first airing of episodes in a series (e.g., the latest episode of CSI Miami or Scandal).

² Granted, filtering out less involved live poster may result in motivational structure to be biased towards highly involved users. However, given that prior research on the motives of social TV use was extensively consulted during our qualitative data analysis, we believe that the factors identified with experienced users are adequate for our subsequent factorial analysis involving low-involved users.