Both during and after

Preference luring social interaction

There is a shared phenomenon supported by many findings in our research: People would tend to play an active role in social activities only if they know others might interest about it.

First, we look some results shown in interviews, people would only invite collocate viewers to watch important games, those important moments during sport events are much like to be talked or shared by our participants. And if our participants receive something related to sport events that their peers might feel interested about, they would directly share with the peers, such as a highlight reel about the player who is supported by the peers. Second, as the

results recorded in the probe diaries, all the share activities are point to a common reason: related to the important moments and important games, since these information would have the best chance to be appreciated by our participants’ peers. From the viewpoint of co-experience, the experience of “important information” which evaluated by our participant has the largest opportunity to form a co-experience, either being supported or teased, but it would not being ignored. (Battarbee & Koskinen, 2005) Moreover, as we seen many of the shared information are overlay important moments and important games, we might assume that the more importance overlapping the information is, the more tend to be shared, and a higher chance to be responded.

To add an odd evidence, although all the participants claim they prefer to watch the sport events with their peers, most of the time they watch alone. It might not because only those important games are worth to watch together, but the importance game would guarantee others’ appreciation. (Battarbee & Koskinen, 2005) Besides, they are not actually watch alone, as they all claim they would stay on the BBS boards, they are actually watch with a group of strangers who are appreciating the game they watch. Again, a typical stereotype thinking that watching television is a solitary activity.

Different Sharing in public or in private

Through analyzing the results from the interviews and probe diaries, we found most of the sharing activities go two ways: publicly or privately. As most of our informants reported, information they are interested in would usually be shared publicly via their social network, such as Facebook. They further explain that via share publicly, the openly information can be seen by everyone on the sites, just like an invitation to attract people who shared the same interest to talk over about the shared information.

“Sometimes there are situation like you have very interesting information, but you do not know who might share the same interest with you. So you put it on your wall and expecting someone would come and talk about it!” (P5)

Conversely, if the information they tend to share would make them associate with some particular peers who might interested about it, they would share the information privately to

those peers, and usually with annotation. More interesting, as we found in probe diaries, most of our participant would consider using the media which are much familiar by the receivers to share the information. Some participants also expressed that the expectation of being response would be much stronger when share privately.

Figure 5-7 Sharing public and privately to get the most feedback

Although the two sharing path shown in figure 5-7 seems quite independently, it is believed the motivation behind is the same: to get the most feedbacks. To our knowledge, most of our participants using Facebook as the public share platform, and most of their peers are also using the site. Therefore, to share the information publicly on the Facebook is like sending an invitation to the largest number of people which create the best chance for discussion. On the other hand, via sharing the information privately to the particular peers, especially via the media they familiar with, they can ensure their peers would receive the information. The add annotation also represent the specific intention which might garb the receivers’ attention and raise a higher chance to be reply.

Stranger as the content selection signifier

In previous discussion, we have shown how people could enlarge their excitement by the aggregating emotional discussion on the BBS boards. However, the pervasive impacts of strangers’ discussion seems much more than just enhance our participants’ emotion during the games, but also their daily life around sport events. As contradictory evidence shared by most of our participants, although they claim sport information presented on related websites is much clear and professional than on the BBS boards, most of the time they still spend on BBS and use it as a main source for gathering sport events information. This evidence has no difference during or after sport events.

Furthermore, many of our participants reported that browsing the BBS board is one of their favorite recreations, and comments on the boards are always hilarious and sometime even knowledgeable. And they would also take those discussions as a reference to choose the game they want to watch. Similarly, many informants in the interviews also stated that sometimes when they leave during the broadcasting, they would keep their eyes on the discussion on BBS boards to help them decide whether to go back to the channel or not.

When comparing the BBS boards with other websites, information shows on the two platforms although not identical, they shared similar quantity and degree of variety, but the biggest different is that each information on the BBS would followed its own comments and popularity which generate by other strangers. This provides a good indication to the most interesting information. Additionally, those comments on the boards might not only offer entertainment for our participants, but also point out the importance of the game, especially important moments. Masses reaction to the game might work as a signifier to hint participants which game is more interesting to watch, and by detecting the aggregated sentiments on the boards to infer the presence of important moments during sport events.

Therefore, we might argue that the presentation of popularity and comments shown on BBS work as a signifier to guide our participants’ content selection about sport events. Such social signifier is what current websites lack, so our participants only use it as a complement with BBS, which explained the contradictory evidence.

Conservative attitude towards strangers

Although we have seen the pervasive impact from the strangers, most of our participants present a conservative social attitude toward the strangers on the BBS boards. Throughout the research, all of our participant claim they only passively receive the discussion which generate from the strangers, and usually they do not intend to actively interact or share information. Unless the participants are very familiar with the sport events, or the discussion on the boards brings a strong feeling to them, such as an insult to the player they supported.

While we compare the evidence to the previous results, peoples’ social attitude seems much openly and actively with their peers, as they do not even care if they familiar with the sport events but to share whatever they wants. Even they do interact with strangers; the content would usually focus on sport events.

“It’s not easy to chat with a stranger, especially gossip.”(P4)

Since our participants did not know the strangers from Adam, it is hard to evaluate if an experience are worth to be tell or not, because the preference states of others are unknown,

especially when they are not familiar with the sport events.

“Sometimes there are hostility atmosphere on the boards, I wish I could know others’

standpoint before I share my thought” (P3)

Conversely, people who are knowledgeable about the game might have a better ability to evaluate whether the information would be appreciated by others based on their rich experience. (Battarbee & Koskinen, 2005)