France TV lab
TheFictionLab | Cognitive sciences and News
After a first experiment conducted with france tv studio about the soap opera Un si grand soleil, TheFictionLab‘s solution was tested at the end of December for the news.
TheFictionLab is a company specialized in the analysis of audience satisfaction through cognitive science. It tries to take into account the brain’s mechanisms of perception, sense, memorization and emotion, during the experience of the audience watching a content.
During this recent test, the intervention focused on the programmes of France Info (news TV channel), especially on two time slots on October 18th, 2018 : the morning, from 6.30 to 9.30 am, and the afternoon, from 5 pm to 8 pm. This study made it possible to carry out about twenty tests to explore two cognitive angles : the treatment of perceived stimuli on the one hand, and semantic aspects on the other hand. It proposes potential areas for improvement, such as:
- encouraging modified repetitions, i.e. to repeat the short stories by modifying 10 to 20% of the presentation in order to avoid a saturation and boredom effect on the viewer ;
- promoting the adequacy between text and audio flows. By simultaneously providing the same information orally and through the text, the viewer remains more focused ;
- promoting affects, in particular by offering interviews on set with a layout that can foster emotions, or by incorporating more storytelling techniques in some reports to arouse more curiosity and interest.
These few examples show the diversity of analyses and recommendations that TheFictionLab can produce, including for the news.
This study provided an opportunity to objectify reflections on broadcasting news show, and to confirm analyses or perceptions developed by news and image professionals.