The current study, carried out by Sentab and co-funded by EU H2020 program, is researching the links between mood and the nature of consumed media by spectators. The objective of the study was to investigate if media programming may have an effect on audience’s mood.
We have grouped the key findings from the study below.
- The empirical findings from the present study indicate that videos on more important topics for people have also created more positive mood. It can be concluded that the importance of a particular topic for a member of the pilot group, and how he or she liked the videos on a specific topic are tightly interconnected. As an example, if a person ranked health related video highly in terms of perceived importance (be it educational or any other personal reason), this person tended to like the same video the most;
- Although users watched the short videos selectively (only two users watched all the 29 videos), the mood was affected only by the consumed media content. People choose the videos they watch based on the topics that have previously provided them with good emotions;
- 5 out of the total pilot group members of 14 returned to Sentab to watch mood-elevating videos and another 3 visited the system from time to time to elevate their mood. Hence, about 1/3 of people may use digital platforms for elevating their mood or look for positive emotions when they feel down any particular day;
- The videos about nature, physical activity and theater & cinema received the highest scores in terms of positive emotional feeling. Health videos also created good feeling with an average rating of 2.9 out of 4.
- Videos about social topics were the most watched (an average of 20.7 per video), despite its 9th rank among topics and 8th rank in the liking list. Social topics seem to relate to people the most, although they tend not to be important or even create positive emotions. This indicates that there are some exceptions to the preferred media, and that people can be influenced via media also outside of what seem to be highly important topics to them;
- Sentab as a medium was ranked highly - system’s usability index is 79.17. An SUS score of 80 indicates an A-grade product from usability and the team learned that there are a few small improvements to be made to reach a higher score, primarily around on-boarding.
The full report can be accessed here.