Viewing Behavior Research Articles

Paper] Still Images of High Spatial Resolution Enable Short TV Viewing Distances

Preferred viewing distance (PVD), which is the viewing distance favored in the home viewing environment, is important for overall TV broadcasting system assessments to guarantee the image quality of TV programs. Previous studies have suggested that image size and resolution have little effect on the PVD. However, in future TV systems such as ultra-high-definition TVs (UHDTVs), which are expected to have a wide field of view (FOV) and high spatial resolution, program production methods may change depending on the specific values of these parameters, and viewer behaviors may change accordingly. Here we used a program consisting of still images to show that viewer behavior differs between two spatial resolutions. This result suggests that the conditions in previous studies discouraged viewers from finding an optimized PVD for each scene because there was little need and insufficient time to move spontaneously.

Visual Peoplemeter: A Vision-based Television Audience Measurement System

Visual peoplemeter is a vision-based measurement system that objectively evaluates the attentive behavior for TV audience rating, thus offering solution to some of drawbacks of current manual logging peoplemeters. In this paper, some limitations of current audience measurement system are reviewed and a novel vision-based system aiming at passive metering of viewers is prototyped. The system uses camera mounted on a television as a sensing modality and applies advanced computer vision algorithms to detect and track a person, and to recognize attentional states. Feasibility of the system is evaluated on a secondary dataset. The results show that the proposed system can analyze viewer's attentive behavior, therefore enabling passive estimates of relevant audience measurement categories.

The Effects of Mediated Exposure to Ethnic-Political Violence on Middle East Youth's Subsequent Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms and Aggressive Behavior.

This study introduces the concept of chronic (i.e., repeated and cumulative) mediated exposure to political violence and investigates its effects on aggressive behavior and post-traumatic stress (PTS) symptoms in young viewers. Embracing the risk-matrix approach, these effects are studied alongside other childhood risk factors that influence maladjustment. A longitudinal study was conducted on a sample of youth who experience the Israeli-Palestinian conflict firsthand (N = 1,207). As hypothesized, higher levels of chronic mediated exposure were longitudinally related to higher levels of PTS symptoms and aggression at peers independently of exposure to violence in other contexts. In the case of aggressive behavior, structural equation analysis (SEM) analyses suggest that, while it is likely there are causal effects in both directions, the bigger effect is probably for exposure to violence stimulating aggression than for aggression stimulating exposure to violence. Both the longitudinal effects on aggression and PTS symptoms were especially strong among youth who demonstrated initially higher levels of the same type of maladjustment. These results support the conceptualization of the relation between media violence and behaviors as "reciprocally determined" or "downward spirals" and highlight the contribution of the risk-matrix approach to the analysis of childhood maladjustment.

Video Stream Quality Impacts Viewer Behavior: Inferring Causality Using Quasi-Experimental Designs

The distribution of videos over the Internet is drastically transforming how media is consumed and monetized. Content providers, such as media outlets and video subscription services, would like to ensure that their videos do not fail, start up quickly, and play without interruptions. In return for their investment in video stream quality, content providers expect less viewer abandonment, more viewer engagement, and a greater fraction of repeat viewers, resulting in greater revenues. The key question for a content provider or a content delivery network (CDN) is whether and to what extent changes in video quality can cause changes in viewer behavior. Our work is the first to establish a causal relationship between video quality and viewer behavior, taking a step beyond purely correlational studies. To establish causality, we use Quasi-Experimental Designs, a novel technique adapted from the medical and social sciences. We study the impact of video stream quality on viewer behavior in a scientific data-driven manner by using extensive traces from Akamai's streaming network that include 23 million views from 6.7 million unique viewers. We show that viewers start to abandon a video if it takes more than 2 s to start up, with each incremental delay of 1 s resulting in a 5.8% increase in the abandonment rate. Furthermore, we show that a moderate amount of interruptions can decrease the average play time of a viewer by a significant amount. A viewer who experiences a rebuffer delay equal to 1% of the video duration plays 5% less of the video in comparison to a similar viewer who experienced no rebuffering. Finally, we show that a viewer who experienced failure is 2.32% less likely to revisit the same site within a week than a similar viewer who did not experience a failure.

The Effects of Outcome Uncertainties, Patriotism, and Asian Regionalism in the World Baseball Classic

This article investigates the effects of patriotism and Asian regionalism on game attendance and television viewers by using World Baseball Classic match data. The micro data of TV ratings provides comprehensive insights into the behavior of TV viewers. The results imply that attendance and TV viewers are affected by patriotism and Asian regionalism. Patriotism and regionalism have a significant positive effect on TV ratings. Although total points scored and game uncertainty are not significantly related to attendance and TV ratings in the game-level analysis, total points scored are significantly positively related to TV ratings in the inning-level analysis. Coefficients of inning-level uncertainty are partially negatively related to Videoland Sport's TV rating. The evidence weakly supports the hypothesis of game uncertainty.

An Episode-by-Episode Examination: What Drives Television-Viewer Behavior

<h3>ABSTRACT</h3> Today, digital television enables consumers to record and watch live television via an array of hand-held devices. To help increase the effectiveness of programming and advertising in this digital age, the authors studied the attitudes and behavior of viewers during the course of a series. The findings revealed Audience Satisfaction as a dynamic construct that is predicted by Expectations, Program Performance, and, to a very limited extent, Connectedness over time. The implications suggest that television producers, directors, and advertisers could reap added value by adjusting content on the basis of between season and within season program market research and consequential insight.

Viewing direction measurements on flat and curved flexible E‐paper displays

AbstractThe viewing direction characterization of reflective displays is more demanding than for emissive displays because defined illumination–detection geometries must be maintained for each viewing direction. In addition, the geometry should mimic the behavior of viewers who tend to exclude the reflection of light sources from a handheld reflective display. Viewing direction data was extracted from measured Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions, showing that a source inclination of 45° sufficiently excludes the specular and haze components of source reflection from the measurement. Applying this so‐called 45/θ geometry to curved flexible displays is not straightforward since viewing direction, display curvature, and alignment each affect the measured reflectance. The viewing direction geometry proposed for convex cylindrical displays uses a ring light to deliver viewing‐direction independent illuminance, and maps the range of viewing directions onto the pixels of an image sensor. The illumination can also be applied to flat displays, allowing direct comparisons of flat and cylindrical display states. First results on e‐paper show good agreement with Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function data.

Impact Of Television Advertisments On Children: A Case Study Of Makurdi Town

The research assesses the Impact of Television Advertisements on Children in a Survey of 800 children drawn from Makurdi, the capital city of Benue State, Nigeria. The result among other things reveals that television advertisements exert substantial influence on the attitude and behaviour of children viewers. It is further revealed that the effects reach well beyond moving products desire from one brand to another. It concludes that in as much as advertisers are out to make huge returns by focusing their messages at the “captive audience” (children), they should be aware of the destruction meted on children (tomorrow’s leaders). Summarily, it is recommended that concerned authorities, as well as parents, teachers and churches/mosques should sit up to their responsibilities to protect the future of our children by checking the activities of the advertisers and the children’s viewership of television and other audio visual media.

ShadowStream

As live streaming networks grow in scale and complexity, they are becoming increasingly difficult to evaluate. Existing evaluation methods including lab/testbed testing, simulation, and theoretical modeling, lack either scale or realism. The industrial practice of gradually-rolling-out in a testing channel is lacking in controllability and protection when experimental algorithms fail, due to its passive approach. In this paper, we design a novel system called ShadowStream that introduces evaluation as a built-in capability in production Internet live streaming networks. ShadowStream introduces a simple, novel, transparent embedding of experimental live streaming algorithms to achieve safe evaluations of the algorithms during large-scale, real production live streaming, despite the possibility of large performance failures of the tested algorithms. ShadowStream also introduces transparent, scalable, distributed experiment orchestration to resolve the mismatch between desired viewer behaviors and actual production viewer behaviors, achieving experimental scenario controllability. We implement ShadowStream based on a major Internet live streaming network, build additional evaluation tools such as deterministic replay, and demonstrate the benefits of ShadowStream through extensive evaluations.

36.1: Invited Paper: Trends of Future Image Quality Enhancements with Case Studies

AbstractVarious impacts on image qualities are described from display panels, multi‐screens, viewing distances, viewing angles, ambient light, viewer's human behavior, and image characteristics for the integration of image enhancement methods with efficient programmability. Image quality issues on LCD BLU dimming are discussed as a case study.

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Who will be idol? The importance of social networks for winning on reality shows

This paper examines, both theoretically and empirically, the effect of social networks and belonging to minority groups (or race) on the probability of winning in reality television shows. We develop a theoretical model that studies viewer behavior by presenting a framework of competition between two contestants from two different groups. The results are examined empirically using unique contestant data from the highly popular reality show “A Star Is Born”, the Israeli counterpart of “American Idol”. Our main finding is that social networks and belonging to minority groups play key roles in the contestant's victory. While the effect of belonging to a minority group is positive, the social network effect is U-shaped. Beyond the world of reality TV, this paper sheds light on the general behavior of social networks as well.

When the Shift Hits the (Television) Fan: A Growing Opportunity for Companion Devices

The television ecosystem faces growing attention and audience fragmentation thanks to an explosion of content sources and content consumption devices. In this article, the author looks at some of the interaction paradigms, viewer behaviors, and innovative social and dual-screen experiences that seek to disrupt or redefine the traditional models of audience measurement and content distribution, in an effort to address these challenges.

Do We Act upon What We See? Direct Effects of Alcohol Cues in Movies on Young Adults' Alcohol Drinking

Ample survey research has shown that alcohol portrayals in movies affect the development of alcohol consumption in youth. Hence, there is preliminary evidence that alcohol portrayals in movies also directly influence viewers' drinking of alcohol while watching movies. One process that might account for these direct effects is imitation. The present study therefore examined whether young people imitate actors sipping alcohol on screen. We observed sipping behaviours of 79 young adults (ages 18-25) watching a 60-min movie clip, 'What Happens in Vegas', in a semi-naturalistic home setting. Each of the 79 participants was exposed to 25 alcohol cues. Two-level logistic regression analyses were used to analyse whether participants in general imitated actors' sipping during this clip. In addition, we applied proportional hazard models in a survival analysis framework (Cox regression) to test whether there was a difference in imitation of the cues between male and female participants, and to test whether the timing of the actors' sipping throughout the movie played a role. The findings showed that participants were more likely to sip in accordance with the actors' sipping than without such a cue. Further, we found that men were more likely to imitate actors' sipping than females and that participants tended to respond to actors' sipping at the beginning of the movie rather than at the end. Exposure to actors sipping alcohol in a movie seems to have an immediate impact on the drinking behaviour of viewers, via the mechanism of imitation.

Television Study: “Gossip Girl” and It’s Affects on Viewer’s Fashion

In 2007, the CW network debuted an hour long teen drama entitled Gossip Girl. The program was based on the already popular novels of the same title by Cecily von Ziegesar (The CW, 2008). While this teen drama resembles the many teen dramas before it, there is a distinctive production element which makes this program stand out, the costuming. The styling of the program is the creation of Eric Damam, who ironically also was the stylist for the fashion forward program “Sex in the City” (Wharmby, 2008). In any given episode designer names such as Christian Louboutin, Tory Burch, or Chanel can be heard and seen on the various characters. When not in top designer names, the character’s costuming still present an unseen level of glamour and innovation. With so much focus placed on the wardrobe of the characters, it must be questioned what this translates to for the audience. This research will set out to identify whether the costuming of the Gossip Girl characters affects the audience’s personal fashion choice. In order to discover the answer to this question, three steps are taken. Firstly, a brief literature review will explore the scholarly work published in regards to television show’s affects on viewer behaviour, specifically on fashion choices. Secondly, a small content analysis will attempt to establish how important costuming is to the production of Gossip Girl. Thirdly, an audience study will give insight into how this importance of costuming affects viewers’ personal fashion choices.

Communicating Healthy Lifestyle Choices in Primetime TV Advertisements

Mass media continue to provide important channels for communicating information about personal health. This study aims to describe the knowledge, attitude and behavior of viewers regarding healthy lifestyle; explore whether the portrayals and messages in TV advertisements can influence people’s attitudes and behaviors toward leading a healthy lifestyle; and find out how the viewers’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviors regarding healthy lifestyles vary across subgroups by sex, age and socio-economic status. The paper reports on a survey of 200 prime-time viewers in Quezon City and key informant interviews of 36 prime-time viewers in Metro Manila. Results show that viewers are able to acquire information from the health advertisements that are relevant to them. They have a positive attitude towards these health messages and are willing to adopt some of the aspects of healthy lifestyle portrayed, however this does not translate to willingness to buy the product advertised.

Who Will Be Idol? The Importance of Social Networks for Winning on Reality Shows

This paper examines, both theoretically and empirically, the effect of social networks and belonging to minority groups (or race) on the probability of winning in reality television shows. We develop a theoretical model that studies viewer behavior by presenting a framework of competition between two contestants from two different groups. The results are examined empirically using unique contestant data from the highly popular reality show A Star Is Born, the Israeli counterpart of American Idol. Our main finding is that social networks and belonging to minority groups play key roles in the contestant’s victory, but their effects are nonlinear: the social network effect is U-shaped, whereas that of belonging to a minority group follows an inverted U shape. Beyond the world of reality TV, this paper sheds light on the general behavior of social networks as well.

Gendered Relationships on Television: Portrayals of Same-Sex and Heterosexual Couples

Although intimate heterosexual couples often exhibit power imbalances in gender role behaviors, with one partner more dominant and the other more submissive, it is unclear whether the same is true for homosexual relationships. Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that television portrays both heterosexual and homosexual couples as gendered. This content analysis of intimate relationships on television examined whether heterosexual and homosexual couples are portrayed as gendered, finding evidence of gendering for both homosexual couples and heterosexual couples. Possible implications of these gendered portrayals for viewers' perceptions and behaviors include cultivation of negative stereotypes and modeling of gender-typed behaviors.

The Bold and the Bankable: How the Nuestro Barrio Telenovela Reaches Latino Immigrants with Financial Education

This article presents and evaluates Nuestro Barrio, a Spanish‐language telenovela designed to reach Latino immigrants with financial education. Nuestro Barrio’s educational model is discussed in the context of the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change, which defines the stages individuals move through as they make incremental progress toward sustained behavior change. The Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change is also used to inform a limited evaluation of the impact of Nuestro Barrio on viewer behavior. The empirical evidence is consistent with Nuestro Barrio’s intended educational effects, suggesting that Nuestro Barrio is particularly useful as a tool for raising viewer awareness.

Television Viewing and Aggression: Some Alternative Perspectives.

The focus of this article is on the examination of variables that moderate the influence of exposure to TV violence. The research on the relationship between TV violence and aggressive behavior of the audience has largely focused on addressing the social policy issue of whether witnessing TV violence fosters aggressive behavior in viewers, particularly children. There has been a dearth of research addressing the conditions that enhance the aggression stimulating effects of media violence, those that mitigate these effects, and those that may even result in reduced aggression after one witnesses media violence. To illustrate the importance of potential moderating factors, we present longitudinal correlational data relating the degree of viewing TV violence to various social behaviors and cognitive attributes of White and African-American male and female elementary-school-age children. Although TV violence viewing was associated with lower cognitive attributes and negative social behaviors in White males and females and African-American females, a very different pattern of relationships was found for African-American males.