International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology Vol. 29, No. 7, (2020), pp. 8030-8038 Discovering Binge watching and Audience Engagement through Sentiment Analysis *Devesh Lowe1, Bhavna Galhotra2, Yukti Ahuja3 1,2IT Department, JIMS Rohini Sector-5, Delhi-1100851 *[email protected], [email protected] 3Management Department, JIMS Rohini Sector-5, Delhi-1100852 [email protected] Abstract Indian audience have trusted and enjoyed television entertainment for the longest time until an alternate medium called Internet based Video on demand (VOD) emerged. The new digital medium let users handpick and watch/listen to video or audio content at a time of their choice. Binge-watching, meaning watching multiple episodes of the same TV series continuously constitutes this phenomenon. Little is known about the transition in the Indian viewer’s behaviour from scheduled broadcast viewership to marathon consumption of entertainment. This study explores how social platforms are deployed to reach and entice audience towards Netflix, Amazon Mx player etc. The study unfolds the audience sentiments towards OVD programming, its promotion and impact with the use of sentiment analysis. The methodology deployed for the study includes a preliminary analysis of secondary data comprising articles, research papers and cases followed by analysis of data collated via Twitter to articulate the viewers’ opinion. The results of the study reflect upon the rising interest in web content and growing fondness for web based video programming. The study is first of its kind in the Indian context and has key takeaways for practitioners in the VOD programming industry, marketing professionals and researchers working in this arena. Keywords: Internet Based Video Program, Binge Watching, Social Media, Twitter Sentiment Analysis. 1 Introduction: With constant advancements in the technology, viewers consume entertainment content available on various platforms. Binge watching has acquired much limelight [1]. There is a sea change in the landscape of the television industry with the availability of the internet services, the streaming services on television and also the entry of the OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Voot etc. which entered with original content all at once (Devesh Lowe et al., 2019). Binge watching is supported by many other factors like- Binge Dumps: The availability of all the episodes of the show at the launch itself either on the OTT platforms or television networks [1] TV Everywhere: Availability of the services provided by the service providers, which lets the user access the services anywhere and anytime. This is an on demand service provided to the users by downloading the respective applications and sign in with the superscription based plans [2] Bandwidth: Rate of transferring the data in a point of time i.e. how much data can be downloaded and how easily the user can watch or get connected with the content available. ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST 8030 Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology Vol. 29, No. 7, (2020), pp. 8030-8038 Over the top: Service based subscription that needs to be opted by the user to check and view the content of his/her own choice , it can be easily consumed in a digital context via wired or wireless network. Streaming Services:Video on demand services which are different from the traditional source of watching television and are available through the cable networks or satellite media. Cord cutting: Process of cutting more expensive cable packages in order to change to a low-cost television subscription through over the-air (OTA), where the free broadcasting is possible over the internet anywhere and under all conditions. This is growing up fast and having an adverse effects on the cable and other digital industries. In India Netflix, Amazon Prime, Voot, Hotstaretc some of the popular subscription services that encourage cord cutting Pay-Tv:Aservice which is provided on the basis of a subscription fee for a stipulated period of time. Users are required to login with the unique user id and password and then they are free to watch the content available. Also there are various service providers that take note of the IP addresses and do not allow more that 3 IP address to be logged in for the content available. In the present study authors have tried to investigate the link between Binge watching and twitter as a tool to promote it. It is observed that OTT companies are promoting their video content using various tools available on twitter. Effective use of social media not only creates a buzz in audience but also acts as an important factor to engage them for the upcoming series. In section II authors discuss the promotional campaigns that are launched using Twitter. In section III, authors present the complete process of fetching and analysing the data from twitter developer accounts based on popular hashtags, twitter handles, Tweets, retweets, likes and dislikes. In the process we have recorded certain observations which establish a direct relationship between binge watching and its social media connection. 2 Twitter: A Promotional Tool Twitter is a micro blogging site where users from all walks of society voice their opinion about any topic of their choice [3]. Twitter started in 2006 in California, USA and is now world‟s leading news and social networking service. Active users of twitter, commonly called twitteratis often reflect the opinion of society on a large about various current affairs. A tweet can be published in a word limit of 280 words and can reflect a person‟s opinion which he wants to share with his followers or any onlooker. Every user of twitter uses a special identification called twitter handle which is a unique username prefixed with „@‟ sign. Tweets can be written with special reference to any other twitter handle or by using some recognizable keywords called „hashtags‟. It is considered to be an integral part of their digital strategy by most large corporations; customers also use twitter to actively voice their opinions regarding products and services. Netflix is the most popular online streaming service that lets customers watch a wide variety of award-winning TV shows, movies, documentaries without any commercials. PrashantSawant elaborates upon use of Twitter to forecast popularity and sales revenue of electronic products [4]. From many case studies, we can know that Twitter is really useful for predicting products, services, or markets. Development Twitter explains the various ways how it is considered as a platform [5] for many promotional activities also these are used in launching and promoting their web contents Advertise: Programmatically create and manage twitter advertisement campaigns, Once Twitter Ads campaigns have been set up and launched and there will be attention of the users, the immediate step is to analyse the performance of these campaigns by checking the likes and retweets. The performance of the ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST 8031 Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology Vol. 29, No. 7, (2020), pp. 8030-8038 campaign can be measured through engagements, impressions, retweets, likes, and several others. Before the launch of the web series the OTT channel may create a handle to advertise their upcoming series where they can easily see the response of the viewers or may just observe the responses published on twitter. Publish and curate: The step in which the promoters of the web series create a content/story which is directly or indirectly linked with the series. Then they configure timelines to automatically display the live updates from trends, people, and places them in the application for or by the publisher tools available with twitter to engage with audience. Twitter also provides a suite of tools to integrate Twitter content and features in websites and applications. Analyse: Data from twitter presents an inside story of the audience, market requirements, emerging trends, expectations etc. Sentiment analysis can predict the outcome of upcoming events, evaluate the impact of a recent launch, pivot the direction or content of an ad campaign, and more. Engage: Twitter is the best place in the world for businesses and people to connect [5]. Since the launch of the season till its availability people and promoters use twitter to connect with audience and also for conversational nature of the platform to engage with businesses. The public, live, and conversational nature of Twitter had made it an ideal place for people to engage with the upcoming web series which has created a large amount of people to turn to Twitter when they want to connect with a business. 3 Methodology In order to study the promotions and audience perceptions towards OVD, authors used twitter for the purpose of collection of data. Authors observed that OVD, binge watching and subscription based on-line viewing is hugely popular amongst twitteratis. Every launch of new web-series receives thousands of tweets with every emotion possible. Authors compiled a list of original web-series content provided by most popular online content providers namely Netflix, MXPlayer and Amazon Prime Videos. For the purpose of current study. Authors tried to explore the huge resources of twitter by extracting tweets related to original content hosted on Netflix, MXPlayer and Amazon Prime, as tweeted by common users and media promoters. Authors used their developer‟s accounts at twiiter.com and python scripts to extract tweets related to the presented study. Authors used the wide range of libraries available with python like numpy, tweepy, textblob and pandas for the purpose of data collection, data cleansing, data storage and sentiment analysis. Python scripts written using IDEs like Spyder and Anaconda were used to extract data from twitter using tweepy. To avoid any misuse of downloaded data, twitter ensures that data is extracted by authentic users who have verified consumer_key, consumer_secret_key, access_token and access_secret key.