Twitter, dual screening and the BBC Northern Ireland Leaders’ debate

Previous research into ‘dual screening,’ when individuals switch between broadcast media and social media and provide commentary during media events, has suggested that this ‘viewertariat’ is typically a small but vocal minority (Anstead & O’Loughlin, 2011; Vaccari et al, 2015) . My aim here is to add to the limited empirical data on these practices by exploring the preliminary results of a study of how Northern Irish tweeters responded to the BBC Northern Ireland Leaders’ debate on 6th June