Artefact 3 followed from the results received from the previous artefact and highlights the issue brought forward about time-shifting in US and UK television programming. It presented users with a task about the availability of programmes online. Two users took part in this experiment; one who watches online television regularly and one who doesn’t.
As the previous artefact made clear, TV shows are aired in the US many weeks in advance and are then available for viewers online to see before being aired in their own country. The task required the two users to go online after the latest episode of a TV show called 90210 was aired in the US, and see how long it would take them to locate it online after its broadcast.
Users were given details of the task in hand and the TV programme. The episode they were required to find was episode 15 from season 3 called ‘Revenge with the Nerd’, which aired on the 14th February 2011 at 9.00pm US time for one hour.
User one, who was a regular online programme watcher, located the episodes availability online in a mere 2 hours and 10 minutes after being broadcast in the US. User two, who didn’t watch television online, located the episode by the early following morning and took 11 hours.
Taking into account that this specific episode was a whole six weeks ahead in programming than the UK, it shows that it is easy even for the people that have no knowledge of online programming to watch these episodes illegally if they wanted.
My next artefact will try tackling this issue and see what children are being told about the issue of online piracy in schools. For this, I will visit the Nottingham Academy and set up a series of focus groups.
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