Everyday Life as a Text

Abstract

This article explores how audience data are utilized in the tentative partnerships created between television and social media companies. Specially, it looks at the mutually beneficial relationship formed between the social media platform Twitter and television. It calls attention to how audience data are utilized as a way for the television industry to map itself onto the everyday lives of digital media audiences. I argue that the data-intensive monitoring of everyday life offers some measure of soft control over audiences in a digital media landscape. To do this, I explore “Social TV”—the relationships created between social media technologies and television—before explaining how Twitter leverages user data into partnerships with various television companies. Finally, the article explains what is fruitful about understanding the Twitter–television relationship as a form of soft control.