SOCIAL TV: CREATING COMMUNITIES WITH TELEVISION (SPRING 2014)
DESCRIPTION:
Television is not changing: television has changed. In the last few years “television” went from a living-room staple to portable mobile devices, from a controlled distribution system to an over the Internet offering, and from a single stream to an increasingly connected and social experience. What is next? In this course we plot the next 10 years and study the current disruptions in the TV industry to answer the question: "how are new technologies and user behavior changing the way we view and define the television of the future?"
TV is not just a device, distribution path, or collection of content, but a platform for shared cultural experiences expressed through innovative video production. This class will address specific topics that relate to the creation and delivery of next generation TV from novel display technology, connected and collaborating devices, content creation in a social context, to community viewing challenges. We will invite subject experts for lectures on targeted topics from storytelling to User Interfaces to illustrative systems of providing Social TV. There will be a particular emphasis on the place of television in a social context at the center of one’s converging communication and entertainment ecosystem. And this year we will emphasize this creation of television communities: of storytellers with our collaboration with the Comparative Media Studies, of devices, with the help of the Media Lab's Camera Culture group and of course of viewers continuing the focus of the past few years. The goal of the class will be to truly define Television in the context of "social visual communication".
The classwork for the course includes targeted readings as well as well as individual and team project focused excercises, culminating in each team developing a prototype of a novel approach to television with a 5-10 years out time frame in mind. The projects allow participants to explore the multiple facets of the class from video technology challenges, to user interface design, content consumption paradigms, and business case analysis.
KEYWORDS:
Background: Television, Connected Television, Smart Television, Social Networking, Video Technologies
Anyone who has argued over what television program to watch, wrestled with a sibling or spouse for the remote control, or gone to a pub to watch and support their local sports team knows that television viewing can be a highly social experience. The original technological design, content programming, and business model of television relied on it being a social medium: TV's were too expensive to be personal, they were designed for thousands (if not millions) of people to be watching the same program at the same time, and the programing was funded through an advertising model that demanded shows be popular to the masses, hence becoming part of the cultural and social landscape.
For the most part, technological advances have served to drive a wedge between television and its function as a social center. Decreased costs in receivers have made it possible for each family member to disappear into their own room; IPTV, cable and satellite have provided so many choices of what to watch that commonality of experience is weakened; and the personal video recorder (PVR) and Video on Demand have freed people who watch the same show from watching it at the same time. What was once fun converstation around the water cooler must now be relegated to strangers on blogs and bboard sites because in most groups of friend and co-workers, somebody hasn't yet watched the latest episode and doesn't want their enjoyment of it spoiled.
The Internet brings to bear on TV a curious combination of social and anti-social forces and of traditional and novel viewing behavior. It completes the trend toward individual screens and isolated viewing experiences on a variety of devices and at many locations inside and outside the home. At the same time it helps viewers form new social groups based on shared interests rather than proximity, and democratizes media production and distribution giving many more people a voice. , and is popular for building systems that electronically support social interactions. Perhaps most importantly, the novelty and popularity of legitimate Internet television systems, starting with YouTube, iTunes, Amazon, and Hulu, and now continuing with AppleTV, Netflix, GoogleTV and others are forcing traditional television providers and content producers to reconsider their models for interaction, their platforms for creation, and eventually their business models and television itself. The scent of large-scale disruption is in the air and there will be no turning back. What will be kept of the traditional viewing experience that made television the most ubiquitous entertainment medium?
PROJECT:
The project is to implement a TV application on a PC, smartphone or tablet. While JavaScript or similar scripting language is recommended other platforms could be used after discussion with the instructors. Each of the first 3 weeks of the class will be used to propose a potential project idea. Teams will be formed based on commonality of project interest and variety of skills. One of the ideas, chosen by the instructors after discussion with the team, will lead to a quick mock-up and prototype, as well as a short user behavior and/or business case analysis. The project should also produce a short conference-style paper that describes the architecture, salient features and implementation of the solution. The other proposals can be used as fall back solutions if the first choice turns out to be too complicated or fails. The project will be presented to Media Lab and other MIT sponsors for friendly evaluation at the end of the semester and the best reports could be submitted to academic conferences in the fields of future television, posted on the class web and Facebook sites or presented in industry meetings in 2014-2015.
Syllabus:
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COURSE NUMBER: MAS 571 UNITS: 12 PREREQUISITES: Permission of Instructor SCHEDULE: T 10:30-12:30, R 10:30-11:30 LOCATION: E14-525 INSTRUCTORS: Henry Holtzman, Marie-Jose Montpetit, & Guest Lectures |
Television is not changing: television has changed. In the last few years “television” went from a living-room staple to portable mobile devices, from a controlled distribution system to an over the Internet offering, and from a single stream to an increasingly connected and social experience. What is next? In this course we plot the next 10 years and study the current disruptions in the TV industry to answer the question: "how are new technologies and user behavior changing the way we view and define the television of the future?"
TV is not just a device, distribution path, or collection of content, but a platform for shared cultural experiences expressed through innovative video production. This class will address specific topics that relate to the creation and delivery of next generation TV from novel display technology, connected and collaborating devices, content creation in a social context, to community viewing challenges. We will invite subject experts for lectures on targeted topics from storytelling to User Interfaces to illustrative systems of providing Social TV. There will be a particular emphasis on the place of television in a social context at the center of one’s converging communication and entertainment ecosystem. And this year we will emphasize this creation of television communities: of storytellers with our collaboration with the Comparative Media Studies, of devices, with the help of the Media Lab's Camera Culture group and of course of viewers continuing the focus of the past few years. The goal of the class will be to truly define Television in the context of "social visual communication".
The classwork for the course includes targeted readings as well as well as individual and team project focused excercises, culminating in each team developing a prototype of a novel approach to television with a 5-10 years out time frame in mind. The projects allow participants to explore the multiple facets of the class from video technology challenges, to user interface design, content consumption paradigms, and business case analysis.
KEYWORDS:
Background: Television, Connected Television, Smart Television, Social Networking, Video Technologies
Anyone who has argued over what television program to watch, wrestled with a sibling or spouse for the remote control, or gone to a pub to watch and support their local sports team knows that television viewing can be a highly social experience. The original technological design, content programming, and business model of television relied on it being a social medium: TV's were too expensive to be personal, they were designed for thousands (if not millions) of people to be watching the same program at the same time, and the programing was funded through an advertising model that demanded shows be popular to the masses, hence becoming part of the cultural and social landscape.
For the most part, technological advances have served to drive a wedge between television and its function as a social center. Decreased costs in receivers have made it possible for each family member to disappear into their own room; IPTV, cable and satellite have provided so many choices of what to watch that commonality of experience is weakened; and the personal video recorder (PVR) and Video on Demand have freed people who watch the same show from watching it at the same time. What was once fun converstation around the water cooler must now be relegated to strangers on blogs and bboard sites because in most groups of friend and co-workers, somebody hasn't yet watched the latest episode and doesn't want their enjoyment of it spoiled.
The Internet brings to bear on TV a curious combination of social and anti-social forces and of traditional and novel viewing behavior. It completes the trend toward individual screens and isolated viewing experiences on a variety of devices and at many locations inside and outside the home. At the same time it helps viewers form new social groups based on shared interests rather than proximity, and democratizes media production and distribution giving many more people a voice. , and is popular for building systems that electronically support social interactions. Perhaps most importantly, the novelty and popularity of legitimate Internet television systems, starting with YouTube, iTunes, Amazon, and Hulu, and now continuing with AppleTV, Netflix, GoogleTV and others are forcing traditional television providers and content producers to reconsider their models for interaction, their platforms for creation, and eventually their business models and television itself. The scent of large-scale disruption is in the air and there will be no turning back. What will be kept of the traditional viewing experience that made television the most ubiquitous entertainment medium?
PROJECT:
The project is to implement a TV application on a PC, smartphone or tablet. While JavaScript or similar scripting language is recommended other platforms could be used after discussion with the instructors. Each of the first 3 weeks of the class will be used to propose a potential project idea. Teams will be formed based on commonality of project interest and variety of skills. One of the ideas, chosen by the instructors after discussion with the team, will lead to a quick mock-up and prototype, as well as a short user behavior and/or business case analysis. The project should also produce a short conference-style paper that describes the architecture, salient features and implementation of the solution. The other proposals can be used as fall back solutions if the first choice turns out to be too complicated or fails. The project will be presented to Media Lab and other MIT sponsors for friendly evaluation at the end of the semester and the best reports could be submitted to academic conferences in the fields of future television, posted on the class web and Facebook sites or presented in industry meetings in 2014-2015.
Syllabus:
Social
TV:
Creating
Communities with Television
MIT Comparative Media
Studies
MIT Media Laboratory
Instructors
Marie-José Montpetit,
Ph.D.
Henry Holtzman
Logistics
Prerequisites:
Basic knowledge of web technologies and programming.
Units: TBD
Students:
Undergraduate (Junior/Senior)
Graduate
Instructors:
Marie-José Montpetit
Henry Holtzman
and guest lectures from topic experts (see lesson plan)
Times/Days:
Lecture on Tuesday from 10:30-12:30pm
Recitation/invited lectures on Thursday from 10:30-11:30am
Office Hours:
Tuesday 1:30-4:30
Thursday: 9:00-10:00
Other on demand
Keywords:
Television, Connected TV, Social Networking, Internet video, User
generated content
Evaluation:
Class participation
10%
Annotated readings/ summaries 10%
Written project proposals and posters 15%
Project prototype and presentation 35%
Final project paper (5 pages IEEE
format) 30%
Project
The project is the implementation of a social TV application on a PC,
tablet or smartphone using tools that will be presented in the 1st
few weeks on the class. Projects from previous year will be presented as
examples. It will be possible for students to work on one previous idea as long
as the new project provides an improvement or a new approach. The class will
initially be separated in teams of 3-4 students (2 is acceptable for the
graduate students). Each team will propose 3 ideas, 1 per week starting the 3rd
week of class and a selection of these will be presented as posters to the
class on three consecutive recitation days.
Then teams will chose a final and develop it into a full-fledged project
to be presented at the end of the semester to a selected group of research
sponsors, industry representatives and other member of the MIT community.
Lectures
In this course we examine the disruptions in the TV industry by asking
the questions "how are new technologies changing the way television fits
into society” by positioning television as the creator of communities: people,
devices and stories. The course will first take a systemic look at the various
ways television was historically produced and socialized and how the Internet
and the mobile network are impacting the notion of TV itself. TV is not a
device or a technology but provides a common experience.
The class will cover the building blocks of social TV and invite subject
experts for lectures on specific topics. There will be a particular emphasis on
those new technologies that place television at the center of one’s community.
In addition new paradigms for content and program acquisition and generation
will be explored.
The classwork for the course is team and project focused, culminating in
each team developing a prototype of a new social TV application. The projects
allow the teams to explore the multiple facets of the social TV experience from
video technology challenges, to user interfaces, content consumption and
business cases.
The class goal is to work on inventing TV’s future and wants to go
beyond entertainment to address all social aspects of TV viewing and include
crowd sourcing news gathering and analytics. The class will profit from 5
semesters of class projects that have covered many aspects of the social TV
experience.
The whole semester is organized over themes that are indicative of the TV
evolution in the past years.
Theme 1: Community of People
As more and more content migrates
to the Internet, “personal” content has become the norm and the sharing of that
content can take many forms. The immediacy and social aspects of content
consumption of every kind, and of video in particular, are being integrated
into better experiences that start with a good understanding of how television
is created. With Internet content, multiple delivery mechanisms and personalization,
the television “sandbox” is expanding fast. TV content in is being impacted by
social viewing expectations, which reconnect with and go beyond a type of
experience that reaches back to TV’s original social roots. It reaches to all the facets of the new content
experience from perception, acquisition and video technology to user interfaces
and microblogging.
Theme 2: Community of Devices
Connectivity is essential to
social consumption of content. The old model based on total operator control of
content formatting, advertisement serving and rendering is being challenged by
over the top (OTT), user generated content, co-viewing and mobile services. The
result of this disintermediation is that any content consumption experience
will be influenced by platforms that support it. TV rendering devices are now
used in novel areas and common platforms allow to move the experience through
that ecosystem.
Theme 3: Communities of
Stories
The creation of communities
around storytelling and content production is interesting, promising and
difficult. Viewers can be given the opportunity to shape the content and
socially influence what they are watching. Even though these concepts have
created a new popular genre by allowing people to rate contestants, it remains
in its infancy. There is still much research that is being done, since good
storytelling is a complicated task that cannot be taken lightly. Nevertheless,
there is much to gain by involving content producers and viewers alike with the
goal of making television social, beyond checking how programs are doing on
social networking sites.
Collaborators and Potential Invited Speakers
Jason Spingarn-Koff, The New York Times (and class alumn) (US)
Deb Roy, Media Lab Professor and Chief Media Officer, Twitter (US)
Boris Kizelshteyn, Product Manager, Viggle (US)
Sylvain Lafrance, Professor in Media Business and Science (Canada)
Albert Cheng, VP Digital Media, ABC/Disney (US)
Nicole De Wandre, Media Policy, European Commission (Belgium)
Susan Faulkner and Alex Zafiroglu, Intel User Experience Group (US)
Anthony Rose, Zeebox (UK)
Seth Shapiro, UCLA Annenberg and the EMMY board (US)
Patrice Slupowksi, VP New Technologies, Orange (France)
Kevin Brooks, Story Teller, Hallmark (US)
Class Web Presence
(need Media Lab login)
Lesson Plan and Reading List
Each week is broken into two classes, a 2-hour lecture-based class, and
1-hour “recitation” to address more hands-on material (The three hours will all
be classified as lecture; no lab credit is awarded through this class). The
Lesson Plan is based on 12 weeks starting .
Reference Books:
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.
Revised edition. New York: NYU Press, 2008.
Spigel, Lynn and Olsson, Jan ed. Television after TV, Duke
University Press, 2004
Other books to be added during the semester on specific projects.
Classes (tentatively):
Introduction – What is Social TV?
Reading:
Future of real-time communication:
Social TV is disappearing
2/4/14 Lecture:
Semester Logistics
Introduction: What is social TV?
2/4/16 Recitation:
Sample projects from the past semesters.
Theme 1: Community of People
Television for Humans: Visual and Audio Perception Fundamentals
Readings:
Selected Chapters from:
Poynton, Charles. Digital Video and HDTV: Algorithms and Interfaces,
Morgan Kaufman 2003.
Jack, Keith. Video Demystified; 4th edition. Elsevier (Newnes),
2005
(eBook available)
Bosi, Marina and Richard E. Goldberg. Introduction to Digital Audio
Coding and Standards.
Kluwer, 2002
2/11/14 Lecture:
Audio and video perception, MPEG fundamentals, television and streaming
protocols, Web2.0 multimedia applications how they led to television systems of
the past and of today
2/13/16 Recitation:
Introduction to class projects: platforms, logistics and management
2/18/2014 – Monday Schedule – NO
CLASS
2/20/2014 – 1st project idea due
Social Visual Computation
Readings:
To be provided.
2/25/2014 Invited Lecture: Nikhil Naik, Media Lab Camera Culture Group,
presentation of novel social imaging and ideas for 3rd project to be
presented 3/6
2/27/2014 Recitation: 2nd project idea due
The New Television Paradigms
Readings:
To be provided
3/4/2014 Invited Lecture: William Uricchio, Comparative Media Studies
3/6/2014 Recitation: 3rd project idea due
Evolution of the Social Video
Behavior
Reading:
Intel paper by Françoise Bourdonnec:
Klym, Natalie and Montpetit, Marie-José "Social TV: Innovation at
the Edge." Communication Futures Program Oct. 2008.
Kate Cizek “Highrise” project: http://highrise.nfb.ca/about/
Lecture:
3/11/2014 Lecture: user behavior e-journalism, eHealth,
eEducation
Recitation: Project logistics
Theme 2: Community of Devices
Device and Platform Convergence
Reading:
Bonastre-Martinez,
Oscar, Montpetit, Marie-José, Cesar, Pablo, Crowcroft,
Jon, Matijasevic, Maja and Liu, Zhu “Surveying
The Social Smart And Converged TV Landscape:
Where Is Television Research Headed“, IEEE
Transaction on Multimedia, Summer 2012.
Selected Social TV web sites
3/18/2014 Lecture:
Social TV application platforms and applications in the age of the
device convergence and the emergence of the device ecosystem.
3/20/2014 Recitation:
Invited speaker from the Social TV industry
3/24-3/28 MIT
Spring Break - NO CLASS
During the in April and May there will be readings but no specific
homework as the project will count as homework. Each week teams will however
need to send a short 4-5 lines email to report on the project progress and
initiate discussion with the instructor(s) to address problems as they arise.
The Multiscreen Television:
“Social” Devices and Networking
Readings:
Montpetit, Marie-José and Médard,
Muriel, “Social Television: Enabling Technologies and Architectures.” Invited
paper. Proceedings of the IEEE, Summer 2012
CISCO Videoscape Whitepaper
Montpetit, Marie-José, Klym,
Natalie and Mirlacher, Thomas. “The Future of IPTV: Adding Social Networking
and Mobility”, keynote and invited paper. Proceedings of Contel 2009.
Papers from the 2013 EuroITV
conference (under press)
4/1/2014 Lecture:
The elements of the design of social TV infrastructure based on the
“concept of “TV everywhere and including ingestion, processing, transmission
and content protection aspects.
4/3/2014 Recitation:
Final Project proposals – 5 minutes to present + 5 minutes discussion
Theme 3: Communities of
Stories
UIs and UI design: telling the
story
Reading:
Jennifer Tidwell article
UX Matters
4/8/2014: Guest Lecture:
User interface designer(TBC)
4/10/2014 Recitation:
Final Project Status Reports
Interactive Documentary
4/17/2014 Guest
Lecture: Sarah Wolocin,
Comparative Media Studies
4/18/2014 Recitation:
Final Project workshop
4/21 and 4/22 Patriot Day – NO CLASS
4/23 and 4/24 Media Lab Open House – NO CLASS
From Transmedia to Crossmedia:
the Story in all its Forms
Readings:
Selected chapters from Henry Jenkin’s book
Others to come
4/29/2014 Lecture:
Examples of transmedia and
cross-media storytelling in television, movies and advertisement
5/1/2014 Recitation:
Invited speaker (TBD)
5/6 and 5/8/2014 – Projects
Workshops in Class
No lecture or recitation – Attendance mandatory - per-team meetings and preparation for the
presentations.
Final Week
5/13/2014 Lecture: Project Presentations (10 minutes presentation and 10minutes
discussion) with invited Guests
5/15/2014 Recitation: Class self-evaluation, lessons learned.
5/16/2014 Final Papers Due
