Out of Interactive TV

Out of Interactive TV Lars Holmgaard Christensen PhD-Student VR Media Lab & Dept. of Communication University of Aalborg Email: [email protected]...
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Out of Interactive TV Lars Holmgaard Christensen PhD-Student VR Media Lab & Dept. of Communication University of Aalborg Email: [email protected] Phone: (+ 45) 96 35 80 91

Abstract Interactive TV in Denmark has not yet become fully or even moderately part of the everyday lives of viewers in front of the screen. Then again, besides from exhaustive use of mobile telephones as part of cross media formats, there hasn't been much indigenous content to 'orchestrate' or instigate a change in viewing habits. So forth the Danish situation is a case of so far so bad, however politically interactive digital television is still being advocated and the industry are also looking for new but perhaps mostly profitable ways to introduce digital added value to their formats, thus the long awaited and radical change to television seems very much to be in the making. In an attempt to show how Danish viewers eventually will appreciate new formats and services this paper explores playability and sociability aspects of interactive TV. The data for this paper is drawn from a research project, within the Centre for Interactive Digital Media at Aalborg University, which was carried out to support and enhance the development of new interactive formats for a Danish audience. Different groups of people were invited into a provisional 'living-room laboratory' to discuss their existing media habits but mainly to focus in on their reception of interactive formats already launched abroad, primarily in the UK. Samples of set-top-box enabled formats were then used as 'mock ups' to probe into the attitudes among Danish viewers towards changes to an otherwise familiar situation in front of the TV-set. The findings are primarily concerned with the fact that interactive TV leads a double life as both an object of conflict and harmony. Although the paper touches only on a few aspects of the extensive empirical data, it clearly shows that it becomes less an issue whether interactive content and services are contextual or non-contextual, but instead a matter of being in compliance with the enhancement of social entertainment and in a certain sense ludic aspects of television consumption.

Keywords: Media Ethnography, iTV formats, Sociability, Playability, Television Consumption

Introduction: The diffusion of iTV / The confusion of TV The aim of this paper is generally to contribute to research into the interactive television audience but in particular to understand how a Danish audience eventually came to recognize the value (and worthlessness) of new interactive television formats launched primarily in the UK. The aim of the original research was to support and enhance further developments into new and indigenous formats, yet this paper will be limited to an exploration of playability and sociability aspects of interactive TV.

As an introduction to the overall field of my recent studies, I want initially to employ five characteristics that according to the theory of the diffusion of innovations by Everett M. Rogers [Roger 2003] have an impact on how well viewers adopt a new technology or for that matter a new 'software'. In the present paper this concerns initial background information on the roll out of the set-top box and its accompanying new interactive television formats in a Danish television market.

The first characteristic is the idea of 'Relative Advantage', which more or less deals with the extent to which the new is perceived as an advantage, an improvement from the 'old'. In this respect digital television has mostly been about 'more' television and not a new kind of television, that is viewers have achieved better picture quality and more channels to choose from. So, in relation to personal satisfaction and convenience, digital television might have a relative advantage, however viewers are not getting innovatively new and interactive television experiences. The second characteristic is 'Compatibility' or the extent to which the technology will fit in with existing values and user experiences. In this area the set-top-box as a piece of hardware fit in perfect with the VCR, the PlayStation and other entertainment consoles. Also, for most satellite and cable customers, where the settop-box is a necessary requirement for receiving any channels, the boxes are typically thought of as a familiar decoding device, and thus function to keep the promise of more television and not necessarily the promise of a radical new technology that will change their experience of television as they know it. Thus the radical change seems to be found in the 'software' aspects of the set-top box, and interactive formats are facing some difficulty in this area. Viewers very much have to alter their rituals and habits when interactively engaging in a television experience. Rogers' third characteristic is 'Complexity', which is concerned with usability issues and whether the technology or the application is hard to use or understand. Tele-text could be said to have introduced an interactive mode of television use, so most viewers are familiar with some sort of navigation in different layers of the television text. Also, one of the key learnings thus far in the iTV-industry has been to keep applications simple and reduced in complexity [Mercer 2003]. The fourth characteristic is 'Trialability' and it refers to the possibility to learn from the new technology, that it is adopted because it involves a sort of experimental learning process. This is a characteristic that appeals to a more expressive style of use, where the Set-topbox in itself becomes the object of experiments for 'boys with toys'. The fifth and final characteristic is 'Observability' or the sign and identity value of a technology and in this case the enhanced television content. The easier it is for interactive television viewers to convert their

set-top-box purchase and interactive TVexperience into discussions with colleagues and friends or convert their engagement in a specific interactive television format into recognition and sociability, the more likely viewers are to acquire the new digital technology. In continuation of the theory of diffusion of innovations, and the 'social communicability' of an innovation, Weber and Evans [2002] have shown how the media construct the meaning of digital television differently in particular countries. By comparing the UK with Australia and the US, they find that especially Rupert Murdochs cross media ownership in the U.K. (The Times, BskyB) persistently has delivered ready-made discourses on digital television, but moreover that the cross media synergy has helped to secure the apparent success of iTV in the UK. Thus they conclude that the rate of adoption is reducible to discursive constructions and issues of media ownership. On the Danish scene such ready-made 'orchestration' of television consumers has been inadequate and it is merely symptomatic when the leading cable operator, TDC, announces on its website that: "I-TV can mean Interactive TV, involving tv, interesting tv, informative tv. It is all up to you. The main point is that I-TV covers a range of services and creative initiatives." [TDC, 2003]

Ground Zero for the Danish Audience: Below a New Media Sky Vivi Theodoropoulou (2002), a media studies scholar at LSE, has carried out research into the adoption of the set-top box by bSKYbsubscribers. She has explored the early interactive audience of digital television in the UK, and in her findings she shows that these first generation digital viewers are less interested in what she calls 'non-contextual' services, or what we might refer to as applications on TV that enhances everyday life activities, such as banking, email-writing and so on. To British viewers contextual services, namely 'more television' and services related to the enhancement of the 'traditional' television experience, are instead preferred features. Nevertheless, the UK has generally speaking been fairly successful in introducing digital interactive television. A few years ago the Danish public service channel, DR, launched Denmark's first interactive digital television show, ROFL, an infotainment format on consumer issues primarily aimed at 10 to 14 year olds, a format that initially indicated a

step in an equal successful direction. Also, the techno-utopian discourse at that time had us believe that everything we knew about television would change. However it seems that utopia has changed into dystopia, because since the glory days of ROFL in 2001, new formats and services are few and far between, and although ROFL was a huge success in production terms it was broadcast for only a 6month trial period. The main reason why DR gave up the show was that it was too expensive to produce and that the total number of settop-boxes in Danish households was staggering low [Mortensen 2002]. The show therefore would not do well in the 'interactive' ratings game, and it became harder to justify the production of such an expensive show only to be seen by less than a handful of teenagers. Furthermore, Canal Digital, TDC and Viasat, who are the key commercial operators in the Danish market for Satellite and Cable television, have all withdrawn applications and all worry about failing revenues, due to the slow adoption rate of set-top-boxes in Denmark [Christensen 2003]. Broadcast stations are on the whole very cautious to venture into new and expensive experiments, thus they spent most of their efforts on cashing in on SMS/TV, which together with other cross media formats have proved to be a short-term business model that generates instant revenues and a good chance to actually make money on interactive TV. These cross-media formats do however reveal a high potential for the 'truly' interactive formats. In view of that, the Danish public service broadcasters are still advancing plans to launch terrestrial digital TV and interactive services, but as implied in the latest of a long line of government decisions on digital television (Mortensen 2003), it will happen unhurriedly. So, just as other countries have experienced a great deal of industry hype and market-driven enthusiasm towards new digital television technology, the Danish situation on interactive digital television seems largely to be viewed as financially risky business, in the sense that uncertainties about revenues are cropping up, and consequently delaying the launch of innovative and ground-breaking interactive television formats. Evidently, television in Denmark will go digital at some point in time, but besides the few trial projects that are in progress (Bjørner 2003) it is not inaccurate to state that in general, Danish broadcasters and operators, as regards to innovative interactive television formats enabled by set-top-boxes,

have currently nothing to offer Danish viewers and they seem to be more or less out of interactive TV. Consequently, without any real content to support the use of set-top-boxes, the promise of an enhanced television experience has been far from credible as to think that Danish viewers will readily adopt the set-topbox, which still seems more mystical than mythical. Yet, no one really knows what will come out of interactive TV.

Premature Ethnography? A Sort of Homecoming In an attempt to examine how Danish viewers eventually will appreciate new formats and services we decided in our approach to combine traditional qualitative research in 'natural settings' (Drotner 1993, Morley 1992, Rasmussen 2002, Rasmussen & Raudoskoski 2003) with more usability-oriented research typically set in computer labs where function and design typically are the main areas of research (Norman, Nielsen etc). As part of the research more than 20 samples of set-top-box enabled applications and interactive television formats, launched primarily in the UK, were collected and grouped as social, individual, and narrative interactive formatsi. Subsequently these samples were used as 'mock ups' to probe into the attitudes among Danish viewers towards changes to an otherwise familiar situation in front of the TVset. The intention of the research was to carry out a type of media ethnography that would assist the development of formats and services in the Danish television market, thus our research design was not to do a comparative study between Danish and UK viewers, since the Danish scene has nothing to compare with yet and since there would be nothing to observe since set-top boxes at present time are merely decoding devices. As an alternative approach to traditional ethnography and with our particular development and design oriented aim in mind, we set up a provisional living-room laboratoryii and invited four groupsiii (ranging from 3 to 5 persons per group) into the new home-like setting at the HELP+ Laboratoryiv, to share their views and interpretations of a television reality not too far from home, in both senses of the word. In setting up a living-room laboratory we tried to create the image of a natural setting in contrast to a traditional research laboratory. This image of a stereotypical household scene was merely meant to set a background for the actual research objective, to probe into how a

Danish audience would see themselves combining existing consumption patterns with new interactive uses. The experimental ethnographic approach thus should not be seen as a substitute for traditional observation and ethnographic interviewing in actual homes. Instead the living-room laboratory was a joint project between researcher and the invited focus groups to construct an understanding of how interactive formats could be incorporated and developed. Traditional ethnography with its emphasis on prolonged stays in natural settings would therefore be more useful, when interactive services, applications and formats become part of everyday television life for Danish viewers, thus the aim of such a research would be an understanding of how media consumption has changed in the home [Mackay 2002]. Therefore, instead of a comparative study, our research was to explore the response to formats from the UK unknown to the Danish viewers in the focus groups. The UK samples therefore merely served to introduce 'real' formats instead of card-board drawings or amateur prototypes, that otherwise would have been a way to instigate discussions. Preliminary to using the samples to build up a focused group discussionv, more general questions about the participants' media use were asked. Those answers were then rearticulated back into the discussion, since the formats shown and the questions asked were intended to focus on how such formats would change the everyday consumption of television rather than the actual reception of the television text. Further accounts of our applied method of research and the practical aspects of our use of the provisional living room are thoroughly explained elsewhere [Kofoed 2003, Christensen & Rasmussen 2003, Rasmussen 2003]. For the rest of this paper, I will instead pursue a few sociability/social aspects in relation to what the four groups of Danish viewers eventually got out of interactive TV.

Enhancing a familiar experience: What's in it for the audience? Adding Interactivity to a familiar television experience seems on the one hand to be viewed as a 'disruptive application' on the screen similar to the way that the traditional analogue television itself was comprehended as an 'unruly guest', when it first started its entry into domestic settings. Interactivity is for some people equal to an individual activity, and therefore the sociability and social harmony

associated with watching television seems to be in jeopardy. As, Jens, a father in his early 30's, claims in one of our focus groups: "[iTV] is lacking aspects of social gathering. What is left in the home for a family to gather round for?" [Jens: Group 2, 60:20] However, Interactive TV is on the other hand seen just as much as a support for the politics of domestic life and moreover it provides a new challenge for household members in their ongoing discussions and negotiations of power and intra-familiar relations. A Danish mother of two, who lives with her Turkish husband, says that they watch only a few TV-shows together, but otherwise pursue programmes that they prefer individually and she states "We disagree on almost everything…However, since my husband is Turkish, we have invested in a set-top-box so that he can pick up channels that he likes very much, but are impossible for me to understand. So, that's the reason for our dispute, but that is also why we have chosen to have two televisions" [Lone: Group 2, 16:42]. The Set-topbox seems both to enhance the ethnic as well as the TV-cultural divide between the couple, but by having a multiple channel, and a multiple television home, it also allows them to pursue individual interests and consequently reduce an otherwise continuous dispute. Nonetheless television becomes less important as a locus for family get-togethers.

ITV as a sociable team-building experience When speaking of what will bring a family or a group of friends together in front of the television, an obvious format, such as Quizshows, seems to catch everyone's attention. However, in relation to "Who Wants to be a Millionaire", the idea that instead of having people on the show, it would be people with set-top-boxes who would compete against each other, was not very appealing. The drama and excitement in these programmes is to see if people screw up or make a fool of themselves [Keld, Group 1 36:37] and as twenty something Christine proclaims "I think you want to keep that, but I also think it would be fun to gather round and try to guess the right answer"[Christine: Group 1, 37:43]. The people on the show thus seem to function as a buffer for eventual screw-ups that might occur when wrong answers are cried out in the living room, and the people on the show are needed to fall back on and identify with, when the viewer at home gets answers wrong and consequently are 'evicted' from the show.

In response to another kind of quiz show, BBC's Life of Mammals interactivevi, Carsten, a father in his early 30's points out the advantages of interactive television as a social activity in the home: "It would be great as a family activity…also, when you have a teenage son and a little girl…Television gets added value in contrast to when you just sit around reduced to watching in a state of stupidity, where you only receive…[interactivity] suddenly creates dialogue...There is a dialogue in the sense that you can type in your answers, and see how you did as a family" [Carsten: Group 2, 77:47]. However Carsten goes on to note that "if you have limited time to type in answers during a show, it will become very stressful and…and we might start biting each others heads off; hush, concentrate, we have to put in our answers and so on..." [Carsten: Group 2, 79:44]. Although very excited by task solving quizzes in general, Carsten dismisses 'Life of the Mammals". It is simply too dominant and intrusive, since the show becomes a test of individual skills rather than being a sort of conundrum that will bring the family together in solving it. Also, the activity needed for the interactive participation is very task-oriented and by itself could be understood as a very male-dominated activity [Morley 1986] where the competitive aspects mostly have a negative influence on the family as a group. However, when it comes to task-solving and interactive quiz-participation as a family activity in general, an aspect similar to showing your grade book to your parents prevails. Hans, a father in his early 40's, proudly speaks of his sons 'special skills': "Take my thirteen year old son, he practically knows everything…He is incredible clever…and he is very good at those sort of things…He just loves Danish quiz-shows and programmes where you have to get the answers right. That is really his game, he is crazy about that, and doesn't understand that the rest of us don't know the answers" [Hans: Group 3, 1:17:15]

Harmony, conflict, and innovation Firstly, interactivity seems to be a brilliant and helpful instrument in bringing up children and an activity that insists on 'family teambuilding', thus it enhances sociability. However, if these activities are put under time constraints and become too persistent and invasive, they come to pose a threat to an otherwise harmonious atmosphere. However, when children get a chance to 'show off' what they know, it evokes parental pride and praise towards the children instead of stirring up disagreements.

Hence, Interactive TV can be said to lead a double life as both an object of harmony, in the sense that interactive content can set the ground for a family activity, thus bringing them together, but also of conflict, since "the more you can choose, the more you can disagree on" [Jens: Group 2, 78:30]. However participation on-TV also makes iTV a tool for social organisation and learning and a way to assist showing off skills that might be hard to display in other spheres of life without presenting oneself as a bigheaded 'know-it-all'. Television gives permission to impress and brag, but also to taunt and tease, and interactive presence through storing and displaying answers on the screen, allows for even more insistent proof of these high skills and misdemeanours.

In trivial pursuit of an iTV-success: The accidental Hero In continuation of the Mammals Interactive documentary quiz-show, and the fact that it is associated with a kind of examination that creates an educational atmosphere, Jens thinks that the idea would work well for unemployed people or housewives, who want to and should learn something during the day, but not as prime time entertainment [Jens: Group 1, 75:52]. Christian, a university student in his early 20's has difficulties in pointing out what is wrong with the format, but eventually says "I think there is a very big difference from playing Trivial Pursuit and then being interrogated" [Christian: Group 4, 27:50]. He goes on to point out that for quiz games to work socially, a degree of randomness must prevail. "In sports for instance the random element makes it unpredictable compared to having to figure out a key answer." [Christian: Group 4]. Michael, another student in the same group adds: "you can always look up a key answer on the Internet on a nearby computer" [Michael: Group 4] and Christian continues: "yes, something like that, but with sports it can always go either way" [Christian: Group 4, 25:00-26:00]. The key learning seems to be that the chance to obtain social recognition in a peer group should be equal between participants, thus the show should not be based too heavily on for instance academic skills that are brought into the game, but instead on how fortunate you are in the game, and how skilful you are in playing the game rather than a proof of intellectual superiority. Therefore also rather tedious and old-fashioned games seem to be able to play a role for groups who enjoy playing for recognition, and also since it is a recognition based on primarily good lucks, mocking the

looser and claiming ones eminence in the eyes of the others, does not threaten the sociability of playing.

Playfulness as Social Communication In relation to the use of games as added value in interactive advertisements, the group of university men could quite easily see how such a format could be a success if it became a craze that would convert easily into social interaction with peers; that is the game in the interactive advertisement should have a high 'communicability' and more or less be a reference point for some sort of fan community. Christian imagines "there would be this game in an advertisement that would be totally popular…then it would be like, yes! Did you see the advertisement yesterday? I scored 800". [Christian: Group 4, 34:50] Of course for these games to work on a sociable and community level they require an interactive 'critical mass', or at least more than a handful of gamers, before it can be turned into a cult article or convince viewers to stay tuned for unexpected 'advertainment' experiences. Besides, for this group of university students a ludic aspect seem to govern their relations to objects, culture and leisure in generalvii [Baudrillard 1998], and as such becomes more or less the dominant tone of their daily habitus in the group [Bourdieu 1995]. The 'social communicability' of interactive television consumption seems therefore to have a cultural and relational identity value that ties in with ludic aspects that goes beyond involvement in just playing a particular game.

The simple things in life are free In a response to a format launched by MTV, where it was possible to put stickersviii on the television screen to cover over but also change the 'aesthetics' of favourite and less favourite rock videos, the same group, saw it as a fun way of producing added value to a rock video, that otherwise would only be like a living wallpaper to them. However, it was not in having fun with and playing around with the rockvideo, that they found excitement, since especially the thought of producing one's 'own' rock video was the general motive for interactive participation. One of the participants explains that if the set-top-box "was able to remember the interactive production for whenever the same video would reappear… I would, then, find it very amusing, when I sit around with some of the guys" [Christian: Group 4, 30:50]". Thus the rock-video change from

merely being an 'environmental resource' [Lull 1990:36], a noisy companion, and instead activates a relational use, in the sense that the stored interactive layer evidently will instigate a response from visiting friends to the 'rockvideo-morphosis' developed for the particular ludic style of communication that also seems to reside within the peer-group in question. New Media Ethnographer, Nancy Baym has done extensive research on how television viewers use online newsgroups as a way of adding personal value to their television experience. Although her focus is on popular daytime soaps, she concludes that, "popular narratives often fail to satisfy, fans must struggle with them…because the texts continue to fascinate, fans cannot dismiss them…but rather must try to find ways to salvage them for their interests” [Baym, 2000:106] When introducing interactivity to a given programme, practitioners perhaps need to take into consideration that one motive for interactive participation is a fanatic interest in a given media artifice, for instance a particular popular television show. To be of interactive interest it seems therefore that the digital added value must offer some kind of salvation rather than becoming a competing format. This actually ties in with the reaction to "who wants to be a millionaire" since the people on the show is needed not only to function as a buffer if one gets the answers wrong, but also that the narrative of "who wants to be a millionaire" is to see the face work of contestants when they put money on the line and perhaps leave the studio as a millionaire or are unfortunate enough to make a fool of themselves. If you change this format and make people with settop-boxes the sole contestants, then you take out the abovementioned narrative and suddenly the watcher becomes the watched, which probably would trigger hostility rather than playful sociability. In conclusion, interactive added value for television insist on a particular social investment from the viewers in the sense that it connotes something that 'comes extra' to the TV or a given treasured media product. Therefore thel selling of iTV and its applications as added value can be viewed similar to Baudrillards notion of the language of advertising, since the social function of interactive television more or less ties itself in with the same extra-economic perspective as the ideology of the gift, which is a "denial of the economic rationality of commodity exchange under

the auspices of a general exemption from payment" [Baudrillard 1998:164].

Closure When probing into the attitudes of Danish viewers towards interactive television, it is clearly difficult to use foreign produced formats for conventional reception analysis, since television production and use predominantly is based on shared knowledge and common sense within a given society. Therefore many of the British formats called for a different set of expectations than those usually required by a Danish audience. However as a contribution to a media ethnographic inquiry, the selected formats have worked very well to instigate and structure the discussions, so that expectations, attitudes and ideas about interactive TV was talked about with regards to an actual TV reality. Nevertheless, the findings in this paper have primarily been concerned with the fact that interactive TV leads a double life as both an object of conflict and harmony, and accordingly I have pursued issues of sociability in both a structural and relational sense. Although I have only touched on a few aspects of our empirical work, I sense that it becomes less the issue whether content and services are contextual or non-contextual, and to a larger extent a matter of being in compliance with the enhancement of entertainment and in a certain sense ludic aspects of television consumption, where making meaning from any given television text, and pursuing salvation from invigorating content, in itself is seen as a playful pleasure. Accordingly, Interactive Television is not about Internet related applications, database logic but about an entertainment platform that has not yet been realized as an interactive entertainment platform with a strong history of ideological broadcasting principles. I have pointed out that whether applications are non-contextual or contextual they might all work on TV, since television consumption should primarily be seen as a social activity with educational, social communicable as well as congregating potential. Interactive media use should not be seen only as an individual phenomenon and it is indeed possible for interactive technology to work on a social level. However, the point is that the PC is already a task-related and highly entertaining digital platform, but with a database logic that eventually empowers the user with control

over the reception and production of content. To work socially the function of interactivity must have other goals than to create changes in communication distribution patterns. And this is the advantage for television as a medium since it is far more recognized for its narrative and sequential logic. So instead of supporting those scholars who describe interactive television as a contradiction in terms, interactivity thus needs to be understood as affordances in situations where television as a medium is already highly appreciated and have extensive social use values. To catch the attention of experienced television viewers we need to understand existing social use values, as a leading way to develop new interactive enhancements to a celebrated entertainment platform. Hence, instead of searching for an interactive killer application that will work on TV from the perspective of an innovative multimedia practitioner, who eventually wants to change TV, it might be more feasible to view interactive applications as situational affordances or as a 'salvation' for skilled television viewers, who by now are highly engaged in television for its cornucopia of addictive entertainment formats and programming and less for its capability to function and combine technological possibilities already available elsewhere in the household.

References Baudrillard, Jean (1998) The Consumer Society – Myths and Structures, SAGE Baym, Nancy (2000) Tune in, Log on, SAGE Bourdieu, Pierre (1995) Distinktionen – En sociologisk kritik af dømmekraften, Det Lille Forlag Bjørner, Thomas (2003): "Participatory research of TV2North-Digital," working paper, Aalborg University Christensen, Lars Holmgaard (2003) "Markedet for interaktive digitale løsninger knyttet til Tv", Working Paper, InDiMedia, Aalborg University Christensen, Lars Holmgaard & Rasmussen, Tove (2003) "Fremtidens Interaktive TvForbrugere – interim report on a focus group survey carried out in relation to a draft project for BID-TV, InDiMedia, Aalborg University

Drotner, Kirsten (1993) "Medieetnografiske problemstillinger – en oversigt", MedieKultur nr. 21, SMID Jensen, Jens F. et. al. (1999) Interactive Television, Aalborg University Press Kofoed, Peter (2003) BID-TV: Empirisk Studier, Metodik og Faciliteter, Working Paper, InDiMedia, Aalborg University Lull, James (1990) Inside Family viewing, Comedia Mackay, Hugh (2002) New Connections, Familiar Settings: Issues in the Ethnographic Study of Media Consumers in Domestic Space, Oral presentation Virtual Methods Seminar, Brunel University Mercer, David (2003) STRATEGIC ANALYTICS, Oral Presentation, MILIA, March 2003 Morley, D. (1986) Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure. London: Comedia. Morley, David (1992): Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies, Routledge Mortensen, Frands (2002) "Markedet for digitalt TV i Danmark", Working Paper, SMID seminar, Gl. Vrå Mortensen, Frands (2003) Media Politics and Digitalisation, Oral Presentation, Modinet Conference on Media Convergence, Mediated Communication, and the transformation of the Public Sphere, October 2003 Rasmussen, Tove Arendt & Raudaskoski, Pirkko (2003): “Cross media and (inter)active medie use. A situated perspective” in Broadcasting and Convergence: New Articulations of the Public Service Remit, Nordicom, ed. Gregory Lowe & Taisto Hujanen Rasmussen, Tove Arendt (2003) “Interactive Television – social use or individual control?” Paper to be presented at the 2nd European Conference on interactive television: Enhancing the Experience, Brighton 31 March – 2 April 2004 Rasmussen, Tove Arendt (2002): ”Television and internet use in the home: patterns of use” in Digital television and the consumer perspective, Report from the seminar “Digital television as a consumer platform”, Torshavn september 2002 Rogers, Everett M.(2003) Diffusion of Innovations, 5th edition. New York, NY: Free Press.

Theodoropoulou, Vivi (2002) ‘The rise or the fall of interactivity? Digital Television and the ‘first generation’ of the digital audience in the UK, RIPE@2002 Conference, Finland Weber, Ian & Evans, Vanessa (2002) "Constructing the meaning of digital television in Britain, the United States and Australia" in new media & society Vol. 4(4), SAGE Publications, London

Notes: iTaken

from www.broadbandbananas.com. The segmentation into social, individual and narrative formats was inspired by a report on iTV published by NetPoll in 2001 (Hands on iTV)

ii Telenor's research department has set up a 'Future House', which is a 'living laboratory'. The Norwegian Consumer Research Institute, SIFO, has for instance used this laboratory to pursue questions of 'moral economy' in relation to the use of betting applications that Norsk Tippning plan to launch.

The participants in the groups are not representative of Danish viewers in general, but can more or less be categorized as a mixture between innovators/early adopters/early majorities (Rogers: 2003), based on their knowledge of and patterns of regular use of interactive media technology, primarily the use of personal computers, but also based on the fact that they did not all quite accept the risks of the ideal typical 'venturesome' innovator, hence some of them would to a large extent only rely on technologies already adopted by friends and family. However the four groups consisted of of young people in their early 20's "Group 1", who did not know each other and who had not yet started a family. One group of university students who already knew each other, also people in their early-mid 20's "Group 4". A group of participants in their early 30's, "Group 2" who all represented families with children and who knew each other in advance, Neighbours. And finally a group of participants in their late 30's, who did not know each but still represented families with children, "Group 3".

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ivThe

Centre for Interactive Digital Media, InDiMedia, Aalborg University/VR Media Lab

The focused group interviews emphasize the social construction of meaning, where the statements and explanations given by the participants on the one hand constitute a particular social reality or social frame, and as such cannot be taken as a 'true' reflection of the ordinary life of the participants. On the other hand, the participants are rooted in a particular biographical situation, that are brought into the interview situation, and as such the disorganized experiences of their everyday lives

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become an essential source, that is made use of in the participants' efforts to bring the incoherent parts of their everyday lives as well as the confusion surrounding the interview situation into coherence. Therefore, the participants' narration of themselves in the interview situation, "because of the quasinarrative character of ordinary life, may be both a receptive and a creative activity"(Paul Kerby 1991:45). viBBC's

"Life of Mammals" is a series by David Attenborough, who reveal why mammals are the most successful animals on the planet. Once in the interactive service David Attenborough takes viewers behind the scenes for a 10 minute looped interactive session where they can direct the action and test their 'mammalian skills'! Viewers respond to Attenborough's challenges, which result in direct feedback from the wildlife expert and prompt the next video sequence the viewer sees. Viewers press the relevant number on their remote control to enter their responses.

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It is the ludic which is becoming the dominant tone of our daily habitus, to the extent that everything – objects, goods, relationships, services – is becoming gadgetry or gimmickry” [Baudrillard 1998:114]

MTV's interactive application runs on MTV Hits a digital only version of MTV that only shows videos and who has its primary reach in the UK. The application is being heavily promoted on air and uses a discreet call to action in-vision which invites the viewer to interact. Once the service has launched, viewers can see news/gossip, enter a quiz draw (50 pence per entry) or stick simple bitmap "stickers" at 8 pre-determined locations on screen. It remains to be seen however, how compelling the sticker feature will be in the longer term, however there are typically 3,000 quiz entries per day (Broadbandbananas / MTV 2002)

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