Second Screens for Engaging with Political Discourse

Katerina Gorkovenko’s PhD is explored how the use of personal devices while watching television—commonly known as second screens—can support engagement with political discourse.

The first phase of her research involved understanding existing behaviour around political TV programmes. For example, BBC’s Question Time is accompanied by a backchannel of discussion and commentary on Twitter. Part this research included an observational study around the 2015 UK General Election debates.

She responded to these findings with design-led interventions, including with Social Printers, a network of connected products that linked a small group of participants during the 2016 Scottish and European elections, and with speculative concepts for future second screen experiences.

Key Publications

Gorkovenko, K. and Taylor, N. (2019). Audience and expert perspectives on second screen engagement with political debatesProceedings of TVX 2019, ACM, 70–82. doi:10.1145/3317697.3323352

Gorkovenko, K., Taylor, N. and Rogers, J. (2017). Social Printers: a physical social network for political debatesProceedings of CHI 2017, ACM, 2269–2281. doi:10.1145/3025453.3025611 (Honorable Mention Award)

Gorkovenko, K. and Taylor, N. (2016). Politics at home: second screen behaviours and motivations during TV debates. Proceedings of NordiCHI 2016, ACM. doi:10.1145/2971485.2971514

Funding Details

Funded by the University of Dundee’s EPSRC Doctoral Training Partnership. Oct 2014–Jun 2018.