An Emergent Role for TV in Social Communication

This paper discusses early results from the EU FP7 project Together Anywhere Together Anytime (TA2). TA2 is related to the use of television as a device which supports social interactions between groups. The paper introduces the idea of framing experiences, within which social communication can take place, and explains that social communication is a key motivator in a number theories on a human motivation. The paper reports how some ideas from framing experiences were evaluated through semi structured interviews with 16 families across 4 European countries. It discusses how some of the key issues and behaviours mentioned by users generate a number of hypotheses about how such communications could be improved.