Sending Trustworthy News to the Elderly Through TV Notifications

Telmo Silva

and Jorge Abreu

Digimedia, Department of Communication and Arts, University of Aveiro, 3810-193Aveiro, Portugal

Keywords: Elderly, iTV, Notifications, Trustworthy, Fake News.

Abstract: Fake News is a global phenomenon that is increasing. They have the potential to spread rapidly in social

media due to the ease of sharing and to the large audiences these platforms can reach. Users need to be vigilant

in checking the accuracy of the information they consume. Considering that some older persons do not have

the digital literacy to distinguish between trustable digital sources, this paper depicts a proposal for a system

that sends trustable news to the elderly through TV notifications – by far the most used media device of this

target group.

1 INTRODUCTION

Fake news has become an increasingly prevalent

issue in recent years, with the proliferation of social

media and the ease of spreading misinformation. Fake

news is intentionally misleading information that is

presented as if it were real news. It can take many

forms, such as fictional articles, manipulated photos,

or distorted videos, where advanced Artificial

Intelligence (AI) techniques pay a major role. Fake

news can be spread through various channels,

including social media or websites or traditional

media like newspapers (Bathla et al., 2023).

This can be especially concerning for elderly

individuals, who may be more vulnerable to believe

in false information due to cognitive decline or a lack

of digital literacy (Baptista & Gradim, 2020). Munger

et Al in (Munger et al., 2018) reinforce that the

Clickbait effect is very prevalent among seniors thus

creating the potential to them to be influenced by fake

news.

According to the United Nations, the number of

elderly people (defined as those aged 60 or over) in

the world is expected to more than double by 2050,

from 962 million in 2017 to about 2.1 billion in 2050

(World Health Organization, n.d.).

The increase in the percentage of elderly

population is largely due to declining fertility rates

and increasing life expectancy. Many countries are

experiencing an aging population, but the trend is

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9383-7659

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0492-2307

most pronounced in developed countries, where birth

rates have been below the replacement level for

several decades.

The aging of the population has implications for

health care systems, social security systems, and the

economy more broadly. It is important for societies to

plan for, and address the needs, of their elderly

populations to ensure their well-being and support

their contributions to society.

However, to guarantee that elderly can participate

in the society it is crucial that they are well informed.

In this way, this paper proposes a solution that sends

trustworthy news to the elderly, through TV

notifications allowing them to be well informed.

2 STATE OF THE ART

For Industry (digital service providers), push

notifications have become a strategy that has the

power to attract audiences’ attention throughout the

day. As for the users, checking notifications is an

embedded behaviour across media sources to get

updates and quick access to personalized information,

namely, news feeds. In the TV ecosystem (that in its

wider concept includes the user’s experience in

audio-visual content consumption over an ecosystem

of different sources and devices) there are several

projects and initiatives that use notifications in TV

194

Silva, T. and Abreu, J.

Sending Trustworthy News to the Elderly Through TV Notiﬁcations.

DOI: 10.5220/0011973100003476

In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health (ICT4AWE 2023), pages 194-198

ISBN: 978-989-758-645-3; ISSN: 2184-4984

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

applications to get viewers’ attention. Some examples

include:

- Notification systems for social media apps,

such as Facebook or Twitter, which can send

notifications to a user's TV when a new

message or update is received (Anyfantis et

al., 2018)

- Alert systems for news apps, that pop-ups on

the user’s TV when a breaking news event

occurs (Anyfantis et al., 2018).

- Reminder systems for TV shows or movies,

which can send notifications to a user's TV

to remind them to watch a particular

program (Yoong et al., 2018).

- Personalized recommendation systems for

TV shows and movies, which triggers a

notification in the user's TV with

recommendations based on their viewing

history (McGee-Lennon, 2012).

- Alert systems for weather, traffic, and other

local information, which can send

notifications to a user's TV to keep them

informed about important events in their

area (Silva et al., 2020), (Silva, 2022).

Despite this significant number of works that use TV

notifications to get users attention, it is worth to note

that sending trustworthy news to elderly through iTV

notifications it is not an explored solution.

3 METHODOLOGY

To design, develop and test the digital solution, a user

centred design approach based on the following main

methodological steps was carried out:

1) A Focus group

2) The solution development

3) A field trial.

Figure 1 depicts the process and the key objectives of

each phase.

Figure 1: Research steps.

3.1 Focus Group

A focus group is a research method used to gather

insights and opinions on a specific topic or product.

A focus group typically consists of 6 to 10

participants who are selected to represent a larger

target audience.

In this case, the Focus Group (FG) sample is

composed of six individuals aged between 64 and 80

years, 4 of them female and 2 males. The participants

knew each other, as students at the Senior University

of AAA (Removed for blind review), and one of his

teachers accompanied the session, in addition to the

moderator. The session lasted approximately 1h30m,

in a UX Lab, simulating a living room with a TV (Fig

1).

Figure 2: Focal Group in the UX Lab.

After contextualizing the session and signing the

informed consents, the importance of their opinions

for the future development of a notification service

was highlighted, and that none of them was being

evaluated and, on the contrary, the team need them to

contribute with their living experience. Then, the

participants were invited to introduce themselves and

report their television consumption habits and use of

technological devices.

The oral collection of habits and demographic

data was adopted instead of filling out a

questionnaire, so as not to tire the participants and

make them more available to focus on the discussion

of the proposed scenarios about TV notifications. For

this purpose, animated videos were shown, depicting

the proposed solution with a realistic character, to

maximize the understanding of the pratical scenarios

presented. After the presentation of each scenario,

participants were invited to openly express their

opinion on the usefulness of these notifications in

their daily lives. At the end of the session, a summary

image was presented, recalling all the scenarios, to

promote a discussion about their preferences and

collect suggestions for other scenarios they

considered relevant.

Regarding television consumption habits, all

participants stated that they watch TV every day. The

newscasts are the most watched programs by the

group, being consumed daily. In addition to news

content, 2 participants mentioned watching

documentaries, 2 mentioned movies, 1 mentioned

Sending Trustworthy News to the Elderly Through TV Notiﬁcations

195

entertainment programs and 1 of the participants

mentioned programs about sport. Additionally, 2

participants stated that they usually do other activities

while watching television, such as “playing

crosswords” or “making lace”. Another participant

demonstrated second screen practices, when referring

that he usually uses a tablet to search for news or

subjects he saw on TV – “It is a way of deepening

themes that I like or find interesting”– while another

participant demonstrated that he uses TV mainly as a

way of “feeling accompanied during the day”, since

she leaves the TV-sets on in different rooms of the

house.

As for the use of other devices, all participants

have cell phones. Only 2 individuals stated that they

use the cell phone only to answer or make

conventional calls. The remaining 4 participants use

their mobile phones daily to send messages, browse

social networks and make video calls. One of the

participants mentioned that this form of

communication facilitates contact with his family:

“My children live far away. Talking to them via video

is a way of being closer”. Regarding other devices, in

addition to the cell phone, 3 participants claimed to

own a computer, 1 participant owns a tablet, and 1

participant owns a smartwatch.

In order not to disperse attention, nor to tire the

participants too much, six scenarios centred on

information and contexts highlighted in the literature

for this senior audience were presented: phone call

notification on TV; exchanging messages with family

members; notification for participation in public

events; invite friends to public events; health

monitoring and breaking news from trustable sources.

As a final remark, all the participants considered

that notifications in the TV about breaking news were

very important.

3.2 Digital Solution Development

Digital news formats, specially provided by social

media and news aggregators, are dominant in younger

audiences, while older audiences tend to be more

focused on traditional media, like the printed press

and television. Thus, news notifications from credible

sources displayed on the TV can bring a surplus

value, specially to older adults.

The digital solution proposed in this paper

comprises components from 2 projects: TRUE and

OverTV.

On the one hand, the TRUE project offers a set of

news sources and robust instruments for the

automatic selection and credibility assessment of

information sources, as well as a newspaper creation

tool that incorporates a news writing tool, to help high

school students to produce trustworthy content. The

proposed solution in this project aims to promote

critical thinking and awareness about fake news. On

the other hand, the OverTV project provides a digital

solution based on TV-first interface to push

notifications, by using a notification management

platform, that allows scheduled personalized

information to be displayed on-screen in the TV

device as well as on personal connected devices, such

as smartphones and tablets.

The solution proposed in this article was based on

integrating news notifications in the OverTV project

information flow, that are generated and curated (in

terms of credibility) in the TRUE project. Thus, older

adults, that spend a considerable amount of time in

the front of the TV, will receive notifications about

breaking news (from credible sources) in their TV

sets allowing them to be informed and, consequently,

more able to participate in society. Figure 2 depicts

the System architecture of the digital solution.

Figure 3: System architecture.

The digital solution proposed comprises the

process of displaying news notifications on the TV

screen; a pop-up message integrated into the morning

and evening routines, with headlines of breaking

news (in the morning routine) and local news (in the

evening routine). This richer format of notification

adopts the look and feel of social media and Over the

Top (OTT) platforms’ thumbnail cards to appeal

audiences, aiming to foster the sense of knowledge of

older adults and generate engagement, to reinforce a

sense of community.

The solution was designed based on a flow of

information that automates the selection and dispatch

of credible news to people’s households.

Firstly, a WebApp obtain the content used to

create a notification based on news from the TRUE

engine main role.

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Figure 4: News'

notification.

For the notifications content, the OverTV engine

detects the breaking news’ key points. Then, the

project’s API returns the breaking news’ information

and their credibility level. Next, the system detects

the viewers’ district location, and the most credible

and relevant breaking news for that geographical area

are stored in the OverTV project’s database. Then, the

OverTV project solution creates and sends

notifications to the user’s TV, based on pre-

determined parameters.

Afterwards, if the user’s TV STB (Set Top Box)

is on and if the viewer is surfing TV channels, the

notifications are sent to the TV’s service provider

API. Finally, this API sends the notifications to the

designated household TV STB.

The news notifications are sent using the

following criteria: the general and local news

notifications are integrated into the morning (from 7

AM to 11AM) and evening routines (from 7PM to

11PM) sent when a viewer is zapping.

3.3 Field Trial

The main goal of the field trial was to understand how

the users react to TV notifications in a shared device

and how useful the trustworthy breaking news were

to their daily lives. After the users’ experience during

the trials, the aim was also to obtain suggestions for

improvements and for other typologies of

notifications.

The field trial was carried out between July and

August 2022. The assessment protocol was divided

into four phases: i) the recruitment of participants and

the provision of instructions about the proposed

solution and the field trial; ii) the filling-in of a pre-

test survey to characterize the users’ sample regarding

the usage of devices and TV consumption habits; iii)

the implementation of the developed solution at the

participants’ households, with permanent remote

monitoring and technical support when needed; and

iv) the final phase, which consisted of filling-in a

post-trial survey to obtain feedback, namely about the

different thematic notifications, problems faced,

suggestions for improvements, and the receptivity to

this service in the future.

The sample was comprised of 9 participants, 5

female and 4 males, between 65 and 85 years old. The

25 participants are distributed into 6 houses (each

corresponding to a STB) with different compositions

of family households.

The characterization questionary showed that,

given the wide age range of the sample, some

participants expressed difficulties using certain

devices. Seven users mentioned that they faced

difficulties using the smartphone, whilst other 2 do

not use this device at all. Regarding the tablet, 10

participants do not use it and another 2 have

difficulties doing so. Finally, 4 participants expressed

difficulties using the computer and 7 do not use it at

all. Regarding the TV consumption habits of the

sample, 7 of the participants mentioned that they

watch TV more than once a day, and 2 said they watch

it once a day.

4 PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Overall, throughout the field trial, 504 notifications

were created, of which 442 were sent (meaning that

the STB of the users are connected when the

notification was sent). When questioned about how

many notifications they viewed, 3 of the users said,

“more than 3 per day”. Complementing these

statistics, 6 of the participants considered that the

number of notifications they saw every day was

“adequate”, and another 2 considered it “very

adequate”, and one, “not adequate”.

In the post-trial survey, 5 of the users expressed

that the routines’ notifications were “very useful” and

4 considered them “useful”. However, 5 of the users

considered particularly “useful” the breaking news

sent in the mourning routine, suggesting that this type

of content may be more suited to the beginning of the

day.

5 FINAL REMARKS AND

FUTURE WORK

To evaluate a solution of notification on the TV a field

trial was carried out with a sample of 9 participants

from July to August of 2022. Overall, there was a

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Zealand

Sending Trustworthy News to the Elderly Through TV Notiﬁcations

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positive response to TV notifications in terms of

usefulness of the messages (56%) and a manifest

willingness to use such a service in the future (80%).

Despite the delivery rates registered (approximately

46%, conditioned to having the STB turned on), the

participants indicated the following preference of

time slots to receive notifications with trustworthy

breaking news in the TV: afternoon period (56%) and

the morning period (44%).

In this way, the field trial validated the usefulness

of TV notifications with trustworthy breaking news,

although with the need of fine-tuning the sending

schedules to increase the rate of sent notifications.

Improvements to the prototype according to

suggestions for new types of notifications will be

addressed in future iterations of the prototype and in

an extended field trial to allow to optimize the impact

of the delivery times.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was developed and funded under the scope

of the project TRUE (POCI-01- 0247-FEDER-

046923) financed by COMPETE 2020, POCI 2020

and Portugal 2020 and under the scope of the project

OverTV financed by AlticeLabs@UA.

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