Van Dijck and Poell discuss making public television and the approaches revolving institutions, professional practice and content in the new age balance of social and public broadcasts. They explore how public broadcasters are dealing with social media. Social media’s infiltration on all segments of everyday life has impacted the fabric of social institutions, disrupting broadcasters convention production and distribution logistics (Dijck and Powell 2014). As social media increasingly becomes television soundbite and celebrity culture through the emergence of interactive Social TV, broadcasters need redirect their approaches to young audiences that now spend their lives on this social platform.

Traditionally Public Broadcaster produced television to its viewers as a form of communication within citizens and citizenship, with it’s main obligation to inform, educate and entertain. However, new age technology has given free access to users that transcend the unimpeded one direction conversation of the broadcast era. Thus, the online production and distribution of audio visuals and textual content leave broadcaster’s questioning the effectiveness of conservative communication channels as media professionals now debates user engagement. This duality of broadcast’s suspicion of social media’s attraction makes Public Broadcast’s institutional embrace of social media (D & P 2014). What previaled however was the development of friend sites into a commercial exploitated data driven platform were consequently the ecosystem of connective media quickly became dominated by a handful of large global groups (D & P 2014).

Van Dijck, José and Poell,Thomas (2014) Making Public Television Social? Public Service Broadcasting and the Challenges of Social Media, Television & New Media 2015, Vol. 16(2) 148–164 © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav. Sage Prints, London.