The project’s aim and development during the project period

For the last decade, researchers have proclaimed television’s death. Despite this gloomy outlook, television seems to be prospering as never before, but it comes in new shapes and forms on the web. The tabloids Expressen and Aftonbladet now broadcast live web television to compete for audiences with the likes of broadcasting companies such as Swedish Television (SVT). To reinvent media by turning to web television has thus become an important strategy for both established broadcasters and print media. In order to relate to audiences in successful ways, both form and content need to be adapted to fit the web’s interactional and technological conditions. Our main objective has been to study how broadcasters and print media make use of web television to reinvent their respective medium and connect with audiences in ways that are adjusted to the web’s interactional conditions. Data from The Swedish General Election and the FIFA World Cup, both from 2014, have been included, as well as innovative web TV formats that have sprung up during the project period. As the sports genre has materialized as an especially prominent front-runner when it comes to format invention, several of the project’s studies have come to center around sports.

Short implementation description

During its first year (2014) SVT:s pioneering web TV format The Warm-Up was studied and subsequently published in an international journal. Empirical material from the general election was also collected. In 2015-16, the work concentrated on processing the data and on testing analyses in various international contexts (workshops, conferences, seminars, guest research visits abroad). 2016-17 were primarily dedicated to developing texts from conference papers as well as a complementary data collection in the form of interviews with media industry representatives about the so-called digital transformation. Apart from existing publications (see list below), there is one draft awaiting peer-review responses, and two additional drafts which will be submitted during the spring 2018.

The project’s three most important results and contributions to the international research front (and discussion)

1. Web TV journalism challenges the conditions for, and practices of, political interviewing

During the Swedish general election in 2014, the Swedish evening papers (tabloids) put a lot of resources into producing live streamed videos for their online news sites. These live webcasts often took place in alternative locations in comparison to regular political interviews, such as in lobbies after a regular TV election inquiry. This type of live post-interview setting constituted a somewhat new arena for the management of political visibility. The kinds of settings and situations in which interviews then took place were characterized by a certain “messiness,”  and the borders between when, how and by whom the politicians were interviewed became rather fuzzy. Many live cameras from previously non-TV-producing media companies captured the on-going activities, and unedited filming sometimes caught politicians in more or less awkward interactions. However, because of the live cameras, they more often than not stayed put and answered questions for risk of losing face if they walked out. This relative messiness even allowed for a prankster group called STHLM Panda to sneak into the lobby and pose as interviewers of all the party leaders without anyone noticing. On election day, however, their real mission was revealed, to poke the politicians in the face with their microphone. We argue that both politicians and press secreteraries underestimated the communicative challenges that arose as many new web TV producers came onto the scene and wanted to interact with politicians live on camera. It became harder to understand the borders between what constituted an interview as the conditions were altered and not yet properly “negotiated” between the participants in this particular context.

2. Web TV formats promote, and are adapted to, a new kind of producer-audience sociability

To construct communicative relationships with audiences has always been central to all broadcasting. This can be achieved by such simple means as a look-to-camera and a “good evening” from a newscaster. Through such activities, audiences feel both engaged as part of a collective “we,” and as if “I” am being personally addressed, if only in a quasi-interactional way. When we access web TV formats, it is often done through various screen devices; laptops, phones etc. The context of reception thus changes with the technologies we use, and with the affordances that come with these technologies. We can, if the set-up allows it, for instance communicate with producers via social media. Our studies show that participants involved in web TV productions change their ways of talking and interacting so as to become more spontaneous, playful, and personal with audiences. Even established broadcasters like SVT seems to strive for a non-institutional illusion on the web; it becomes “a place” where one can relate to audiences in a “buddy-like” manner, and talk and act in ways that would not be deemed appropriate on ordinary TV. Asymmetries are in some sense abolished, and the audience takes active part in creating a loving “we” together with producers. Sometimes this can create such an intense feeling of community that audiences can feel as if they lost a dear friend at the end of a certain TV show’s life.

3. Web TV and online developments continue to fundamentally change the ways in which audiences are addressed

The ways in which audiences are addressed have undergone quite radical changes from 2010-11 up until 2016. Producers have become more apt at adapting their communicative activities and tone to web audiences. At the beginning of the period, it was more common to discursively separate universes when interacting “on the web” as opposed to ordinary TV. It was important to acknowledge that the more leisurely mannerisms on the web were not deemed appropriate for broadcasting. Nowadays, the gap between web and broadcasting audience addresses are narrowing, as our media industry interviewees confirm. To understand what audiences want in the digital landscape is central to media producers. The attempts to find an appropriate online audience address in line with changed patterns of consuming media content is still very much a job in the making for the media companies, and not something to which they have found the ultimate answer.

New research questions generated through the project

As the project’s results have been presented internationally, it has become clear that Sweden is at the forefront of web TV developments, and the ways that producers have communicatively adapted to them have often been deemed innovative. Further international outlooks as other countries progress in the same or similar directions are therefore interesting to study further. The project has also, specifically, generated questions around so-called second screen practices from qualitative (communictive) perspectives which are not, other than in the odd study, covered in present research. Of course, the entire process that our interviewees label “the digital transformation,” and how it alters the relationship between audience and producers, both from a micro and a macro perspective, will continue to be on the research agenda for media researchers.

The project’s international dimensions

The project has had a strong international outreach. Papers have been presented at 10 international conferences (out of which 5 were peer-reviewed). The project group has been invited guest researchers and/or speakers at The University of Macau 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017;  School of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland, Australien 2016; Department of Journalism and Communication, Hebrew University 2016. The project has enabled 6 distinguished international guest speakers to come to the Media and Communications Dept. at Örebro University. These include Associate Professor Richard Fitzgerald, Department of Communication, University of Macau, Kina (2015); Professor Angela Smith, University of Sunderland, Storbritannien (2015); Senior lecturer Michael Higgins, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Storbritannien (2015); Dr. Jan Chovanec; Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic (2016); Professor Espen Ytreberg, Universitetet i Oslo, Norge (2016); och Associate Professor Zohar Kampf, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2016).

Dissemination of results outside the scientific community and collaborations

Two publications (Eriksson 2014 and Kroon 2014) were published in a global information journal targeted at a broad audience interested in advances in semiotic research. The project leader has presented results at HumLab, Umeå universitet (2014) and at JMG, Göteborgs universitet (2016). Some of the studies will be included in a methodology book directed at ground level students that will be published 2018/19. The media representatives interviewed for the project have been informed about the project and some of its results. Some of the participants in the formats we have analysed have read our published studies and provided positive feedback.