Channel 4 launches exclusive online community 'Tribes Live'

15 March 2013

Channel 4 today announced the launch of Tribes Live, a new ‘real time’ online community of 16 to 24 year-olds which will provide the broadcaster and its advertising clients with spontaneous, valuable insight and a better understanding of their most engaged audience demographic.

Tribes Live is the latest initiative from Channel 4’s on-going UK Tribes project specialising in youth research, created in collaboration with research and strategy agency, Crowd DNA.

Invitations to join Tribes Live have been sent to viewers aged 16 to 24 who are registered with Channel 4’s online database of over six million. Upon joining, members complete a questionnaire to determine which one of 25 ‘tribes’ or youth sub-cultures they fall into (e.g. Emos, Hipsters, Scene Kids), reflecting how this demographic arranges themselves in society.

Channel 4 will regularly pose questions and assign tasks to its Tribes Live online community, with the aim of collecting varied opinions from this key age group on a range of topics including media, lifestyle, brands, aspirations and current affairs. The insight gained will be of value to advertisers and agencies as there will be scope to conduct bespoke projects with the live community – and Channel 4 will gain important learnings which will help shape the broadcaster’s content.

A key component of Tribes Live will be to encourage video contributions and ‘citizen journalism’ blogging reports from community members, to feedback to Channel 4 on trends and attitudes among their friendship groups.

Sue Gray, Head of Advertising Research & Development, Channel 4 said: “Our Tribes Live initiative builds on the unique relationship Channel 4 has with young adults. Over a third of all 16-24 year olds in the UK have now registered with Channel 4 and our Tribes Live community enables us to engage a sample of these viewers and explore a broad range of issues with them in real time. 

“We’re looking forward to working with agencies and advertisers by extending the use of this immediately available community to our commercial partners to give them significant insight into the entire spectrum of young adults – an often elusive demographic for traditional research."  

Tribes Live will be live across 2013 and topical results will be updated regularly at http://uktribes.com/ and published later this year.

UK Tribes is a long-standing study of British youth culture. Established by Channel 4 and Crowd DNA seven years ago, it looks to capture an authentic and fluid feel for the passions (most often music, fashion, sport and technology) around which young people gravitate and build identity, bringing to life the personality and energy of each tribe. Research to date has noted numerous changes, particularly the emergence of many smaller, break-away tribes, many of which now largely thrive online – and a sense of young people feeling increasingly pressurised and, since the recession, far less sure of the path ahead in terms of university and work.