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A novel method to gauge audience engagement with televised election debates through instant, nuanced feedback elicitation
De Liddo A., Plüss B., Wilson P.  C&T 2017 (Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Communities and Technologies, Troyes, France, Jun 26-30, 2017)68-77.2017.Type:Proceedings
Date Reviewed: Aug 15 2017

Three UK researchers tested a 15-member student audience’s real-time reaction to a televised two-person political debate concerning whether or not the UK should be in the EU. They utilized a collective intelligence (CI) cycle. CI has three main steps: “community sensing, data aggregation and analytics, and visualizations and new knowledge generation.” Audience members were provided with three sets of six flashcards per set, divided into categories of information need, trust, and emotion. Anyone desiring to measure audience reactions during live events will be interested in the apparent simplicity and detailed information provided by this methodology.

Several common methods of obtaining audience information from bidirectional media channels, those providing information and allowing feedback, are polling, the squiggly line “worm” at the bottom of the screen, and Twitter. The researchers wanted to develop an “instant, nuanced, audience feedback method.” Their approach was inspired by the Leitner system of flashcards used in memorizing information.

Of special interest are the meanings written on the flashcards. Information need cards were colored blue and included cards stating the following: fact checking need, information need, personal engagement need, civil engagement need, trust need, and argument mapping need. Trust cards were yellow and stated: distrust the speaker, distrust the claim, emotional distrust, emotional trust, trust on the claim, and trust on the speaker. Red cards were used for emotion: happy, pleased, unenthusiastic, bored, disappointed, and angry.

Cameras recorded the sessions with the debate synchronized to card raising. Detailed profiles of each participant were collected. During the one-hour debate, the participants raised 1472 flashcards with 48 percent related to trust, 39 percent to information, and 13 percent addressing emotion. Detailed spider diagrams were created to determine the audience’s reaction to each debater. Individual audience members were compared to the group.

The researchers will scale up the project to larger audiences utilizing less intrusive and less conspicuous digital cards. Much promising research remains, including moving beyond the first two steps of the CI cycle. References are provided at the end of this ten-page paper. I found the informative report to be an easy and interesting read.

Reviewer:  Brad Reid Review #: CR145485 (1710-0679)
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