Twitter has been in the media a lot in recent months. Surgery Live was the second of three experiments to come out of Channel 4’s cross-platform department using this increasingly popular ‘microblogging’ service in connection with television programmes. The experiment reflects the increasingly common habit of ‘Twittering’ whilst watching TV, plugging in to that behaviour in the context of a bold, educative factual television series – importantly a live one.

Twitter, if it hasn’t crossed your path, is a website from which you can send short messages (of up to 140 characters) to a network of people who are interested in similar things to you or who choose to follow your short messages or ‘tweets’.

When I first saw Twitter a few years ago I thought it was the end of civilisation as we know it. Since then I’ve come to see it as a tool in search of a purpose and I’ve now commissioned three experiments (Osama Loves,  Surgery Live and the forthcoming Alone in the Wild – watch this space) that have been about applying the Twitter tool to a worthwhile mission or purpose.

Surgery Live, broadcast in May, used Twitter to enable viewers to ask questions and discuss live the surgical procedures featured in the series. Viewers were invited to watch a selection of four fascinating operations live at around 11pm each night of the Surgery Live week. From open heart surgery to awake brain surgery to keyhole surgery, viewers were invited to ask questions of the surgeons via Twitter (or email or phone), all filtered via the production team and then posed through the intermediary of the presenter, arch-Twitterer Krishnan Guru-Murthy… A matter of seconds between tweet and the question being asked on live TV.

There is of course a long and honourable tradition of surgeons talking and teaching whilst operating and every effort was made to make the Twittering aspect of Surgery Live no more distracting than that normal medical training practice.

So viewers were encouraged to tweet away during the live operations, sharing their thoughts and asking questions. The big difference from the few previous experiments in this area is that this was live TV and so viewers were able to make an impact on the actual TV editorial. Now of course there are echoes of phone-ins and combining TV with forums/chatrooms the best part of a decade ago (notably by Danny Baker on Channel 4) but what this new generation of social media brings is a networked conversation, which is global, searchable, tagable and open. In other words, unlike emails, text messages or phones, you can join in a discussion among numerous people from right across the UK and beyond – fellow viewers, experts, medical students, enthusiasts, all manner of interested parties – live and simultaneously.

One measure of Surgery Live’s impact online was that it ‘trended’ #1, #2# or #3 on Twitter every night – that is, for a while around transmission was the 1st, 2nd or 3rd most popular topic globally. Another is that by the second night, if you googled the word “surgery” the Surgery Live website showed up number 2 of 121 million results.

But to get a real sense of how the Surgery Live experiment panned out, I leave it to the words of our viewers/participants.

• philroberts: #slive this could be one of the best models for twitter, live interactive feedback brilliant twitter was a great enhancement to the show
• manpreet1: Surgery live on channel 4, and #slive, was a great use of a new format.
• bruceelrick: @wellcometrust it was a great success on twitter. #slive now 3rd most popular trend on twitter – pretty great achievement!
• J_Dizzle_: just watched heart surgery live on channel 4, twitter questions and updates.. very well done. #slive

In a previous post on my own blog entitled Evidence of Body, I pointed out a special characteristic of this cross-platform initiative – that unusually you can see, after very little time, evidence of immediate, positive changes of behaviour. That observation was made with reference to the week-long series of Embarrassing Bodies broadcast in April/May, but the recent four-part series focused on teenagers yielded similar clear evidence of real public value.

A quick and pretty unscientific trawl through the comments submitted to the Embarrassing Teenage Bodies website – this time there were 11,000 submitted over the six days around transmission! – reveal actual changes of behaviour; the building of confidence around illnesses perceived as “embarrassing”; the prompting of increased openness in discussing such matters; reassurance; clarification; and the encouragement of peer-to-peer support.

On this page you’ll find a brief selection of comments that illustrate the sorts of impact evident across the site. There’s a more comprehensive list of such comments on More Evidence of Body (a post on my blog) or even better, take a few moments to explore the Embarrassing Teenage Bodies website itself to get a feel for what it’s achieved.

Sample quotes:

“thanks teenage bodies thanks to you i’ve had the confidence to go and have a std test.”

“This site and video is soooo useful and informative!!! I feel more confident to see my GP and look him/her in the eye and state my problem.”

“I was worried about how i looked “down there” but this video made me realise everybody is different and that it’s completely normal to worry.”

“GREAT show. It encouraged me to go get something checked out =) & I’m sure it encouraged a lot of other teenagers to get stuff thats bothering them checked out!”

“After watching your show, my husband decided to check himself one night whilst having a shower. To his shock he found a lump. He went straight to his doctor and within a week he had surgery for testicular cancer, needs to have a few more scans, but thanks to the show he managed to find it in time.”

“I find this so embarrassing… but i’m glad to know i’m not the only one.”

“i am so glad i’ve actually found this website, because it has really helped me reading all these comments about other people that have this problem.”

“these videos hav helped me check my self down below and now me and my friends have been comfitable talking to each other about our pubity problems!!!”

I’d be very interested to hear from anyone who watched the shows or used the website – did you feel they engaged viewers with the vital health issues covered in a constructive way? How does this kind of lively, colourful approach to preventive healthcare compare to more official, formal approaches?

The Sex Education Show

You navigate the Sexperience site mainly through questions – ranging from “Have you ever had a problem using contraception?” to “What impact did abortion have on you longer term?” and for any given question you’ll find a range of answers which may even be mutually contradictory and will certainly be diverse. The idea behind this is to offer something which goes beyond the easy answers of self-help manuals and acknowledges the complexity and individuality of sex.

In the three hours after the show went out this week there were 480,000 page views on the site, taking it to the top of the hit parade on channel4.com. There were 2,000 (pre-moderated) comments and questions posted in the first week, a large proportion evidently from 16-18 year olds, clearly hungry  for answers and often astonishingly ill-informed. So there are strong indications that the interest, the engagement and the need are there. One of the first viewer enquiries that made its way through to me was an NHS teen pregnancy unit in Lincolnshire which asked to use the site in their advice literature.

In the same way, you can take it as read that The Guardian may well understand the rationale of The Sex Education Show and its pre-watershed scheduling, needless to say the Daily Mail gave it a bit of a rough ride:

“Channel 4 has been accused of peddling obscenity… school pupils asked to discuss pornography… In the programme a group of boys were shown close-up images of penises and asked which they thought was the average size… A male model’s genitals were also shown in close up as a female doctor described in depth the anatomy of the penis… “

So it seems only appropriate to give the last word to the Daily Mail readers who posted 167 comments in 108 minutes under that article… (for copyright reasons I can’t reproduce the comments verbatim so allow me to paraphrase):

Annie from Lincoln recounts how she watched the show with her husband and 12-year-old son and how, “it sparked a really honest and helpful discussion.” She says that she didn’t find the images of genitalia prurient or arousing and with reference to her son confirms, “it was actually helpful for him to see how other normal people looked, without resorting to porn.” The message she took from those sequences was to be happy with your body.

Jeff from Chester, a parent of teenagers, found the programme “very informative and real”. He thought it would be much more useful to show teenagers a programme like this than “the tepid sex education stuff they usually get at school”. He felt this kind of real-life education is what is needed to reduce the prevalence of STIs and unwanted pregnancies.

David Burns of Coventry thought it was “not vulgar or seedy in any way at all”. As a 48-year-old with four children he even learnt new things himself – he had never realised that condoms come in different sizes. Shouldn’t teenagers know that? he asks.

Ali from Liverpool reminds readers of Channel 4’s particular remit, feels the Channel is the only UK broadcaster which could make a programme like this and defends the scheduling at 8pm, confirming it as “the right time but no earlier.” He sees The Sex Education Show as clearly educational with responsible pre-warning of the frank and sometimes explicit nature of the content.

Ellie from London highlights how children and teenagers are exposed through the internet to what she calls the “soft pornographic side of sex which is zero education”. She appreciates the honesty and reality of the portrayal of sexual anatomy and feels it is what responsible parents should be doing anyway. She is wary of glossing over these realities when addressing say a 13 year old child otherwise they are “then more than likely going to naively get into trouble”. She wishes more parents would speak to their children as honestly.

Arwen from Edinburgh concisely states, “This show is educational” and believes society needs to be less scared of talking about sexn concluding “unless you prefer teen pregnancy that is.”

Whether you’re an alpha Mail or a Guardian of free expression, I’d be delighted to hear whether you feel Sexperience and/or The Sex Education Show achieves its underlying educative intent. Please leave your comments below…