Research: Is Twitter Transforming How we Watch TV? [infographic]

As devices get smaller and more sophisticated, users have increasingly taken to social networking sites while they look at other screens … and for best part of the past century our favourite screen has been the television.

So to investigate this ‘dual-screening’ effect, we conducted some research into if, how and when users were tweeting while they watched their favourite TV shows, and teamed up with My Clever Agency to make the data come to life with an infographic.

Twitter had already found that during peak TV shows, almost 40% of all tweeting is related to TV and that 60% of Twitter users tweet while watching TV at some point or other.

We looked at 50 of the top UK and US TV shows over the course of 2012 and found that:

• Viewers are 12 times more likely to tweet about a TV show during days it is on air than on days when it is not broadcast

• Tweeters are much more negative about TV shows (to the tune of 8%) as they are being aired, but are more positive (by 3%) after the show ends

• Dual screeners are most likely to tweet from bed, followed by the sofa and the office

• Less than half (43%) of TV shows include the official hashtag in the broadcast

• Most TV shows embrace hashtags on Twitter however, with 83% including an official hashtag in their tweets

• Almost half (48%) of the official TV show Twitter accounts seldom engaged with fans at all, not responding with any @mentions or to any queries

• However, 78% of official accounts did engage in retweeting of fan tweets, and 61% tweeted during the broadcast of their shows

• TV adverts for brands that included a hashtag cultivated online conversation, with 44% of tweets about the commercial then using the hashtag, compared to just 16% for brands that did not include it in their advert

• The three shows making the most of dual screening were The Voice, The Great British Bake-Off and The Biggest Loser

Check out the infographic to see the rest of the stats we haven’t mentioned: