Using an experiment involving Twitter comments and a clip of the television show 30 Rock, researchers were looking to see if fake negative social media comments could hurt a person’s perception of a television show.
Professors Franklin Waddell of The Pennsylvania State University and Shyam Sundar of Stanford University created an experiment in which 196 participants were asked to watch a 10-minute clip of the show 30 Rock while fake positive and negative Twitter comments appeared at the beginning or at the end.
Afterward, the participants were asked if they agreed with the comments shown. The results of the study showed that the negative tweets lowered participants’ perception of the show, while the positive tweets had no effect.
Waddell and Sundar recommend that broadcasters “should be aware that negative comments regarding programming may be especially detrimental to viewers’ program evaluations, leading viewers both to perceive that others have evaluated the program negatively and to lower their own evaluation of the program in question.”
To read the full text of the study:
Waddell, T. F., & Sundar, S. S. (2017). #thisshowsucks! The Overpowering Influence of Negative Social Media Comments on Television Viewers. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 61(2), 393-409.
Using an experiment involving Twitter comments and a clip of the television show 30 Rock, researchers were looking to see if fake negative social media comments could hurt a person’s perception of a television show.
Professors Franklin Waddell of The Pennsylvania State University and Shyam Sundar of Stanford University created an experiment in which 196 participants were asked to watch a 10-minute clip of the show 30 Rock while fake positive and negative Twitter comments appeared at the beginning or at the end.
Afterward, the participants were asked if they agreed with the comments shown. The results of the study showed that the negative tweets lowered participants’ perception of the show, while the positive tweets had no effect.
Waddell and Sundar recommend that broadcasters “should be aware that negative comments regarding programming may be especially detrimental to viewers’ program evaluations, leading viewers both to perceive that others have evaluated the program negatively and to lower their own evaluation of the program in question.”
To read the full text of the study:
Waddell, T. F., & Sundar, S. S. (2017). #thisshowsucks! The Overpowering Influence of Negative Social Media Comments on Television Viewers. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 61(2), 393-409.
You might also like
Health TV programs leading to health-conscious viewers