El uso de hashtags en Twitter por parte de los programas de televisión españoles

Abstract

The present paper aims to study how the major Spanish television programmes, based on audience data, use the particular tag known as hashtag and symbolized with the hash symbol or number sign (#), that allows to classify and categorize the subject matter of the messages in which it is included on the Twitter social network. Recently, we have seen how mass media such as television have included Internet, in general, and social media, in particular, within their channels for broadcasting their contents, due to the growth of social media users and as a strategy to integrate 2.0 philosophy within the television speech, in such a way that user can participate and his/her opinion is part of programme contents. One of the most popular platforms and in which mass media have increasingly greater presence is Twitter. Open to the public since October 2006, the microblogging network Twitter has become the 2.0 platform more suitable for immediate and real time information, also characterized by the shortness of the message, limited to the 140 characters that a tweet has. This paper studies the integration of Twitter platform in the most popular television programmes for each time slot, based on audience data from Kantar Media, focusing on the use of own hashtags. After identifying television programmes and their own hashtags, we study the frequence of publication of the television programmes in the third social network with more Spanish users, the popularity achieved by the used hashtags, the interaction carried out by Twitter users, analyzed thanks to monitoring tools such as TwitterCounter or The Archivist, and the presence that these messages have within the contents of the television programmes: references, screen messages, ad hoc spaces, etc. The results show how contents generated by users through social platforms such as Twitter are increasingly more important within the very own contents of the television programmes, as well as the possibility that this microblogging network offers as a space to chat with viewers live and simultaneously to the broadcasting of television programmes.