Steven Moffat calls Twitter “worst possible form of audience research”

Richard Forbes is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

‘I think Twitter is a useful tool for promoting a show, but I think it is the worst possible form of audience research, it really is,’ says Steven Moffat, Doctor Who executive producer, while in San Diego for Comic-Con International.

Moffat, or Steven, as he prefers to be called (reminding every fan as they asked ‘Moffat’ a question during the Comic-Con panel), notes that in the past he had been mistaken in equating the reactions of those on the popular social network with the opinion of a show’s general audience. Instead, Twitter, the Doctor Who showrunner argues is a place where people draw attention to themselves and get a rise from others – a social environment, not a proper test screening.

‘People on Twitter are having fun, they’re making gags,’ he adds. ‘It’s like overhearing a pub conversation, when you’re at a pub do you tell the truth, or do you try and get attention?’

It’s not the first time that the Grand Moff has mused about the pitfalls of judging an episode based on the opinions of those online – noting in a 2010 interview with his son, Joshua Moffat, that fandom sites represented ‘the voice of a very atypical, tiny sliver of the audience.’ Earlier this year, (Mister) Moffat also did an interview with another, younger Moffat, where he explained his departure from Twitter in 2012, noting that fellow writers and colleagues had been contacting him through Twitter as opposed to email (although there does appear to be a spoof Steven Moffat on Twitter, who has trouble with his very tall, Welsh cleaning lady and missing Hugo awards).

However, that departure from Twitter was lambasted as a retreat from scornful criticism. Adding fuel to the fire, jokes soon followed in the show itself bashing Twitter, like the Doctor saying ‘Twitter’ with disgust in Series 7’s The Power of Three (reflecting Matt Smith’s own personal decision to stay off Twitter) – leaving others to question the showrunner’s relationship with the social network.

Personally, I’d say Steven has a point and it stresses the age-old tension between designing a show for fans and designing a show for a mass audience, plus his criticism here of Twitter likely applies to most of the internet. However, just as Twitter and the rest of social media (and sites like Kasterborous, let’s be clear here) can contribute to an echo chamber of undeserved hysteria, the mad echo chamber echoes on, truth or no truth. Thus, running a television show in the Digital age, whether an Executive Producer likes it or not, means managing a show’s image online before the chattering mouths of the virtual ‘pub’ come to define a show to the public before they can. Critics on sites like Twitter may not be serious, but that doesn’t mean that their followers, a mass audience in and of itself, don’t take their remarks as genuine.

To Tweet or not to Tweet? That is the question! What do you, dear Kasterbourites, think? (Incidentally, you can follow @KasterborousDW on Twitter for the latest Doctor Who news and retweets!)

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