Tag: two-screens

• Which screen is actually the second?

  It’s evening. I’m not going out, but I don’t feel like reading, so I’m watching a movie on an unnamed streaming platform. When choosing, I prefer movies I’ve already seen. Why? So I don’t feel guilty about looking at my phone every now and then.

  A not insignificant number of viewers are reportedly thinking along similar lines to this scenario. They watch a film unfocused, or while doing something else. In another post I addressed casual viewing and today I want to look at the changing ways of viewing audiovisual content from the perspective of watching multiple screens simultaneously.

  There are several interesting studies on the topic in which researchers have looked at the viewing practice of watching multiple screens simultaneously.

  Holmes, Josephson, and Carney. 2012. Visual attention to television programs with a second-screen application. In Proceedings of the Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications (ETRA ’12). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 397–400.

  Brown, Evans, Jay, Glancy, Jones, and Harper. 2014. HCI over multiple screens. In CHI ’14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 665–674.

  Lohmüller, Eiermann, Zeitlhöfler, and Wolff. 2019. Attention Guidance in Second Screen Applications. In Proceedings of Mensch und Computer 2019 (MuC ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 179–187.

  

  All of the studies are impressive because they experimentally test how viewers behave. They use an eye-tracker (mobile or stationary) and think about setting to resemble a living room as much as possible and a laboratory as little as possible. In other words, they make sure that the experiment reflects the natural environment.

  The results are then very compelling and show that viewers are primarily watching TV and paying less attention to the tablet/phone (by a ratio of 2:1 to 5:1).

  The problem is that all these experiments are formulated from start to finish in such a way that it is clearly established which screen is “first” and which is “second”. Even the choice of what is played on the second screen is only complementary to what is played on the first screen. For all three studies, this approach is understandable. Their intent was to offer data to make multi-screen viewing consistent, which could then be used by media companies to develop applications. But if we are interested in the relationship between audiovisual and spectator behaviour, we necessarily feel that something has been left out. They left aside the fact that there is a competition for our attention in the media market.

  I don’t know anyone who would say they watched TikTok last night and occasionally glanced at what was happening on Netflix. That’s not how we talk about leisure time. Statistics, meanwhile, show that the average U.S. adult in 2024 watched Netflix for only 3.7 minutes longer per day than TikTok (62.1 vs 58.4 minutes). Is that enough of a difference to determine which screen is hierarchically first and second? I’d say no.

  

  It may well be that the attention paid to movies and TikTok is different when the division between first and second screen is abolished. And it’s also quite possible that some movies are less successful at attracting attention (though studies suggest that this is not the case).

  I would like to build on the three studies mentioned and think about how to implement experiments in a way that reflects the battle of the screens. To start with, users will need to break the hierarchy of the first and second screens and let them be free.

  February 24, 2025

  attention, movies, tiktok, two-screens

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• Will Talvin (2025) Casual Viewing: Why Netflix looks like that. n+1, issue 49.

  I read an article today that is closely related to an idea for an experiment I had. Adam Ganz pointed me to the text and some of the ideas from the article were mentioned by my colleague Šimon Kulík.

  The author of the article tries to argue that most of the movies on Netflix look like “garbage”, but that no one really cares because viewers only half-watch Netflix (have it running in the background) or don’t watch it at all.

  There are two passages in the article that I find noteworthy. First, a summary of observations on the style and narrative of movies on Netflix. It would certainly be worth examining these further and validating them through formal analysis.

  The other notable idea of the article – expressed only implicitly – is that Netflix is not where it is because of its work with data. That has only come with time. Netflix’s greatest asset is that it can exploit human nature and weaknesses. If in the beginning it was irresistible to rent a DVD without having to return it by the next day (or else one paid a fine), today it is convenient to play Netflix in the background while doing something else.

  But I don’t think this necessarily makes Netflix movies look like “garbage” as the article suggests. Certainly that’s one possibility, if we look at the matter from the filmmakers’ point of view. But what if we look at Netflix from the viewers’ point of view?

  In the past, I’ve repeatedly asked my students how they watch movies, and they’ve admitted to turning on Netflix while watching TikTok. (This two-screen viewing should be the subject of the experiment mentioned at the beginning of this blog.)

  From the perspective of the Casual Viewing article, the cinematic quality of movies on Netflix is deteriorating because viewers aren’t paying attention to them anyway. But then how is it possible that they pay attention to even more garbage on TikTok? (Personally, I wouldn’t say it’s garbage, but if we apply the same criteria to videos on TikTok as we do to Netflix, the conclusion is clear.) How is it possible that we are turning away from low-quality movies on streaming platforms to even lower-quality videos on social media? This kind of viewer behavior doesn’t make sense to me.

  A possible reason is that viewers choose to watch audiovisual content on two screens in parallel for other reasons. The reason may be our desire to absorb information easily, it may be different types of viewing (a background story on TV and a different type of information on a phone). Or there may be other reasons. But I would be careful about saying that Netflix may be deteriorating in quality just because no one is watching it. In fact, we may be witnessing Netflix and TikTok succeeding in exposing our weakness without us even realizing it.

  January 15, 2025

  movies, netflix, streaming, two-screens

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