Television-Mediated Conversation: Coherence in Italian iTV SMS Chat

Text messaging on interactive television in Italy is a media convergence phenomenon involving short message service, traditional television, and the World Wide Web. This study investigates the frequency and coherence of viewer-to-viewer textual exchanges on an Italian iTV SMS program, employing methods of interaction analysis and the visualization tool VisualDTA to represent interactional coherence. The findings show that despite numerous factors that discourage it, some users more-or-less successfully adapt the medium to engage in interpersonal exchanges. Design recommendations are advanced for fostering more coherent viewer-to-viewer interaction via iTV SMS.