Social television, creative collaboration and television production: The case of the BBC’s ‘the virtual revolution’

The way in which online users employ social media to enhance their television viewing experience is a phenomenon known as social television. The following study focuses on the possibility of embedding social television into the creative process of television production. The chapter is in five sections. The first extends the literature on creative collaboration by addressing its two components, collaboration and creativity. The second describes the nature of social media, highlighting those characteristics that overlap with methods of creative collaboration. The third offers a conceptual framework of television production by breaking it down into its three stages. The section also addresses the precarious nature of television production. The fourth section seeks to shed empirical light on the above frameworks by unfolding the creative process of the BBC/Open University 2010 documentary The Virtual Revolution. It specifically examines the unique way in which the four-part documentary was developed and how online collaboration played a role in the final version of the programme. Finally, based on the findings of this study, the fifth section offers future research themes of social television and television production research.