Applied Media Research....

For this weeks lecture, we finally decided upon what questions we were going to research and present our answer to the class.
We were to choose the question to which personally you prefer so I chose the question:

• Nine Lives Media - Which are the three most successful ever examples of cross platform television programming, how did viewers participate and most importantly, what did they gain from the experience? 

Luckily, Sarah, my lecturer, was able to give me this question and put me into a group with two other class peers where we will complete two presentations; one online and one to the class and lectures.
We are to answer this question accordingly and give as much as we can to it so that the company who set the question, Nine lives Media, is able to get an idea of where we as students think media is heading and how it is developing.
I'm rather exited at beginning this assignment because there is so much you can do with this in a presentation sense and there are many areas to research, in depth.
We began by getting into our group and taking ourselves away from the class, instead to a quiet area where we could concentrate. I then started by getting a clear and good understanding of what 'cross platform' exactly means. It is essentially another phrase for 'multi platform' thus meaning (within television) that people are able to watch a television programme and then, or even during the show, use other media devices to engage further with the programme. A good example of this would be The X Factor where there is a smartphone App people can use to vote whilst watching the programme, Hollyoaks where the public is able to go online and 'speak' to the characters and even get texts from them! It seems rather crazy as it is all virtual and most certainly will not be the actual actors/characters writing and sending out these texts however, it makes people engage more with the programme and its plots and feel much more involved as if they no more than their friends might. Another good example of cross platform television programmes would be the acclaimed American TV show, The Walking Dead. This programme has its own website, like many others but you are able to play many games and have virtual tours around sets.
We want to know what people gain from these experiences, so we have set out to do some qualitative research to begin with where we have devised up a questionnaire and will hand out next week to students, asking how they engage further with television programmes and what they feel they get out of it.
There is much more research to do yet so we are getting together over the next few days to discuss further!