Reading: Making Public Television Social? Public Service Broadcasting and the Challenges of Social Media (Jose van Dijick and Thomas Poell)

Rapidly, social media platforms have infiltrated all segments of our lives and this has impacted the fabric of social institutions from our law enforcement to journalism. Social media has dominated people’s opinions through mass media corporations such as LinkedIn, Twitter and in particular Facebook. The concept of “social” in social media moved away from “public” as in “public broadcasting” and aligned itself with “public” as in “public company”.

YouTube and Twitter offer promising propositions to independent makers, specifically the ability to distribute their content globally and to monetise their programs through targeted advertising. Even when a YouTube video takes a while for the ad to finish and then the video, YouTube make a killing out of the way they entice companies and corporations to ally with YouTube, they are very successful at business and influential to the mass audiences.

YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have impacted professional practices, the increased freedom to broadcast or for those to speak their opinions have made them powerful and others weak. It also prompts an argument about what is deemed “social” and what is deemed “public”. This ability by these institutions to lure and empower younger generations of viewers to the social media platform and television has shown the influence of these powerful media organisations.

Popularity has never been tested more as a tool of judgement and criticism with the ‘like’ and ‘views’ buttons on Facebook and YouTube. What they have done is limit public space as any change of any other network platforms are increasingly difficult.

Youtube and Twitter relies of the support of the people and that isn’t decreasing as more is shared and liked everyday, as the people continue to use these media platforms, the more richer and powerful these entities becoming and the owner of YouTube, Google will continue to create and assert it’s authority on the mass media.

Michael Serpell