Analysis of the most discussed television programs on Twitter and their relationship with the traditional audience in Spain

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the most discussed television programs broadcast in Spain based on the number of users in Twitter (not comments). There were two objectives: to know which television programs are the most tweeted based on their genre and their time slots, and to observe if the most watched television programs are also the most tweeted. We use a quantitative methodology based on Spearman’s correlation and the Kappa coefficient from the data obtained during 30 days (150 observations). The data allows us to conclude that the most tweeted programs are tabloid talk shows and TV news magazines, reality shows and sporting events, and that 63.3% of the most tweeted programs are broadcast between 8:30 p.m. and 12 a.m. We have also noticed that if a television program is ranked in first place as the most watched that day or in its time slot, it has more probabilities than others to be in the top-five commented programs on Twitter. We also believe that the results found in Spain can be generalized to other countries and audiovisual markets.