The TV needs a digital add-on: How multi-screening fosters engagement, social interaction and immersion

The proliferation of digital technologies, along with increasing rates of adoption of the internet and mobile devices, are reconfiguring the contemporary media landscape and fostering new usage practices. The television is undergoing a remediation or hybridization process, as content becomes transmedia and viewers become multiplatform. This paper focuses on multi-screening, i.e. the use of screened devices during television viewing. The aim of this research is identifying the most common multiscreening practices and the motivations, uses and gratifications behind those behaviors. Our theoretical framework articulates a discussion of the concept of multi-screening itself, along with a description of the most common multiscreening practices, with an overview of previous research in the Mobile Communication subfield on the motivations for mobile phone adoption and use. Our empirical work consists of focus group discussions with multi-screeners, exploring the goals, needs, preferences and expectations associated to these practices. Our results identify two main types of motivations for multi-screening: utilitarian (associated with making a better use of time and being more effective in accomplishing tasks) and affective (related to a constant and pressing need of being up-to-date with what is going on in the world and being connected to one’s network of close relationships). Mobile devices add a digital layer to television viewing, and this layer is more often unrelated to television content than related.