Please cite this article in press as: Kim, J., et al. Being social during the big dance: Social presence and social TV viewing for March Madness in public and private platforms. The Social Science Journal (2019), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2019.04.004 ARTICLE IN PRESS G Model SOCSCI-1603; No. of Pages 9 The Social Science Journal xxx (2019) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect The Social Science Journal journa l h om epa ge: www.elsevier.com/locate/soscij Being social during the big dance: Social presence and social TV viewing for March Madness in public and private platforms Jihyun Kim a,* , Hocheol Yang b , Jinyoung Kim c a Nicholson School of Communication and Media, University of Central Florida, USA b School of Media and Communication, Temple University, USA c Pennsylvania State University, College of Communications, USA a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 13 March 2018 Received in revised form 12 April 2019 Accepted 15 April 2019 Available online xxx Keywords: Communication platforms Enjoyment March Madness Social presence Social TV a b s t r a c t In response to a recent trend in a TV viewing behavior, the current study examined the role of motives for social TV viewing in public and private communication platforms. Using an online survey, data were collected from college students in the U.S., who engaged in social TV viewing for March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Primary findings indicate that the entertainment and communication motives for social TV viewing are stronger in the public platform than in private. Conversely, the social motive is slightly stronger in the private platform than in the public one. Further, in the public platform, the entertainment motive is found to be the strongest motive for social TV viewing; in the private platform, the communication motive is the strongest. Additionally, social presence has a mediation effect on social TV enjoyment. © 2019 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction With advancement of communication technologies, TV viewing has begun a new era. Survey results revealed that 85% of Internet users habitually use Twitter to talk about TV with other viewers in real time while watching a prime- time TV show, and 58% engage in such multi-platform usage even when they watch on-demand content (Nagy & Midha, 2014). Another report indicated that an average of 14.2 million internet users have engaged in conversations about various TV programs on social media while they were watching TV (Nielsen, 2017). Both reports suggest that a new way of enjoying TV has arrived in this digital era. * Corresponding author at: Nicholson School of Communication and Media, University of Central Florida, P.O. Box 161344, Orlando, FL 32816, USA. E-mail address: jihyunkim218@gmail.com (J. Kim). The relatively new TV viewing practice implies that peo- ple are actively finding ways to interact with others to talk about the media content while consuming it. Whether it is through social media posting or text messaging, people interact with other viewers in the virtually shared space. Although people watch TV alone in a physically solitary place, this does not necessarily mean they are alone as they are interacting with virtual co-viewers – other social TV viewers who are connected in a mediated environment (Kim, Song, & Lee, 2018). The term of social TV viewing has not yet been fully established, but it is generally understood as a simultaneous act of watching TV and communicating about it with virtual co-viewers (e.g., Doughty, Rowland, & Lawson, 2012; Kim et al., 2018; Montpetit & Médard, 2012). With the increasing popularity of social TV viewing, scholars have started investigating this phenomenon from diverse perspectives. In particular, there has been an increased interest in understanding why people engage https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2019.04.004 0362-3319/© 2019 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.