Social media has turned Oscars into participatory event

• More than 43 million people watched the Oscars ceremony last year.
• With social media%2C the broadcast is more engaging.
• People read more than 3 billion tweets about last year%27s show.

Why wouldn't you watch the Oscars?

Seriously. And not just because the Academy Awards recognize the best that film had to offer in 2014 (although voting is subjective and the best movies often haven't been seen by many people). Not because Neil Patrick Harris is hosting, and he has been stellar in the same role at the Emmys and Tonys. Not even because John Travolta once again is a part of the broadcast, so there's a chance he can mangle another name this year.

But truly, now more than ever, event television isn't a passive experience. Thanks to social media, it's a participatory event, and in some cases — Travolta's flubbing of Idina Menzel's name last year, for instance, calling her "Adele Dazeem" or something close to that — practically a full-contact sport.

Whether it's the Super Bowl, the Emmys, the Grammys, the World Cup or whatever big broadcast you can name, weighing in with your opinions and tapping into the experience of other viewers makes the show more fun and more engaging than it would be otherwise. More than that, it makes you feel a part of things.

A part of big things, actually: According to Twitter, last year more than 5 million people sent 19.1 million Oscar-related tweets in the 12 hours before, during and after the show (5 p.m. to 5 a.m.). Those tweets were viewed 3.3 billion — with a b — times.

I don't know about you, but at times I felt like I was responsible for about half that number.

(Pro tip: Live tweeting also serves as a form of note-taking for later writing, as well as a real-time chronicle of critical impressions throughout the night, and how they evolve.)

Travolta's flub didn't hurt those numbers, certainly. But it wasn't the biggest social-media moment. You may recall that host Ellen DeGeneres goaded some big-name stars, including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lawrence and Julia Roberts, into a "celebrity selfie," which actually had been planned. (Kevin Spacey's photobombing was not.)

"Break the Internet" is one of the more-loathsome phrases of the Kardashian pseudo-celebrity era, but in this case was kind of true — the selfie was retweeted more times than any tweet in history (to date), and clogged up Twitter for a time so that nothing was coming and going on the service.

It's hard to imagine Harris doesn't have something up his sleeve to try to top that.

Harris himself is a considerable draw. He can sing, he can dance and he can make a joke that cuts just deep enough without drawing blood. Jon Stewart and Chris Rock, among other former hosts, have been accused of cutting too deeply, for not respecting the talent in the room. I've always found that to be a great antidote to inane celebrity worship, and what better way to puncture ego balloons than right to a star's face?

But Harris doubtless will do a good job of walking the line between respectful and lacerating.

As for the awards themselves, well, several are foregone conclusions — Julianne Moore for best actress, J.K. Simmons for supporting actor, Patricia Arquette for supporting actress — but at least they're all worthy selections from mostly terrific movies. And the race for best picture between "Boyhood" and "Birdman" is tight, a reason to slog through the broadcast's always-slow midsection and stick around to the end. So, too, is the best-actor category, where Michael Keaton at one time seemed like a shoo-in but now finds himself a slight underdog to Eddie Redmayne.

There's something comforting about a big group of people — 43 million last year — doing the same thing at the same time. We've gotten away from that, with the fragmentation of media and the advance of technology, two things that are closely intertwined. But every now and then, we get to revisit what is now quaintly remembered as "appointment TV."

And with social media, we get to be a part of it.

'87th Annual Academy Awards'

When: 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 22.

On TV: Channel 15 (KNXV).

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: twitter.com/goodyk.