Social Media Skits: Reshaping the Entertainment Experience of Broadcast Audience

Abstract

The emergence of social media has produced diverse changes for broadcast media in the discharge of their entertainment function. While the uses and gratification theory identifies entertainment as one of the needs that motivate the audience to use the media, the technological determinism theory argues that the nature and strength of interaction in the society change as new media technologies evolve. This study is a descriptive and predictive discourse on how social media skits are reshaping audience consumption, participation, expectation, and production of entertainment. As opposed to broadcast experience, the audience engage with social media skits, own them, many times produce them, form relationships around them, demand for new contents, and through their reactions, affect the sustainability of the content providers online. They also redefine entertainment for comedians who release skits to test new comedy materials. These interacting features together reshape the way the audience experience entertainment on social media.