Everyday Life as a Text

This article explores how audience data are utilized in thetentative partnerships created between television and social media companies. Specially,it looks at the mutually beneficial relationship formed between the social mediaplatform Twitter and television. It calls attention to how audience data are utilized asa way for the television industry to map itself onto the everyday lives of digital mediaaudiences. I argue that the data-intensive monitoring of everyday life offers somemeasure of soft control over audiences in a digital media landscape. To do this, Iexplore “Social TV”—the relationships created between social media technologies andtelevision—before explaining how Twitter leverages user data into partnerships withvarious television companies. Finally, the article explains what is fruitful aboutunderstanding the Twitter–television relationship as a form of soft control