Week ten’s reading posed, in my mind, a really interesting question: essentially, how do we maintain the core values of public broadcasting via public networks while interacting with and incorporating social media to better engage a younger demographic? The answer isn’t simple. Ultimately it is incredibly difficult to keep public broadcasting values (ie. honesty and credibility) totally intact, when those very core values don’t necessarily align with what can be published through means of social media.
But public broadcasters, such as the Australian Broadcasting Network, are being forced to rely on and incorporate these new technologies, to appeal to these younger audiences and keep all citizens (which public broadcasting networks treat audiences as being) actively participating. This idea also makes reference to how new technologies are re-shifting the traditional power imbalance and, forcing conventional outlets to relinquish the stronghold on power that they have traditionally maintained.
Producers are increasingly embracing the affordances of social media (such as Twitter and Facebook) to entice younger generational cohorts. This does prove effective in attracting younger audiences. However, the nature of social media (particularly the element of user-created content) poses challenges for the producer of the public broadcasting network.
We have seen some clear examples of this dilemma played out on Q&A. The producers curate what gets discussed on the show to a certain extent, given that they select panel members as well as employing Tony Jones as a mediator. His job is to guide the discussion, probe certain points of conversation and to detract away from others. But, because of the interactive elements of the show, sometimes these attempts to regulate the content are compromised. For example, while questions are pre-approved, producers can not interfere with audience members changing their question that they ask or the manner in which they say it.
Monitoring content becomes far more difficult, however, when social media is involved. A prime example of this is when, last year, a tweet was broadcasted with a derogatory reference to (then) Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Whether or not Q&A should have allowed the tweet to air is irrelevant to discussion. It does, however, bring to our attention the potential repercussions that come come from attempting to fuse together traditional and emerging technologies in an attempt to entice a younger audience.
