Public Service Broadcasting, Hard News, and Citizens’ Knowledge of Current Affairs

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toril Aalberg ◽  
Stephen Cushion
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
News Media ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Commercial Media ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
Media Environments ◽  
Media Systems

Public service broadcasters are a central part of national news media environments in most advanced democracies. Although their market positions can vary considerably between countries, they are generally seen to enhance democratic culture, pursuing a more serious and harder news agenda compared to commercial media . . . But to what extent is this perspective supported by empirical evidence? How far can we generalize that all public service news media equally pursue a harder news agenda than commercial broadcasters? And what impact does public service broadcasting have on public knowledge? Does exposure to public service broadcasting increase citizens’ knowledge of current affairs, or are they only regularly viewed by citizens with an above average interest in politics and hard news?The overview of the evidence provided by empirical research suggests that citizens are more likely to be exposed to hard news, and be more knowledgeable about current affairs, when they watch public service news—or rather news in media systems where public service is well funded and widely watched. The research evidence also suggests there are considerable variations between public broadcasters, just as there are between more market-driven and commercial media. An important limitation of previous research is related to the question of causality. Therefore, a main challenge for future research is to determine not only if public service broadcasting is the preferred news provider of most knowledgeable citizens, but also whether it more widely improves and increases citizens’ knowledge about public affairs.

Is public service broadcasting a threat to commercial media?

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 808-827 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helle Sjøvaag ◽  
Truls André Pedersen ◽  
Thomas Owren
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Latent Dirichlet Allocation ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Online News ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Commercial Media ◽  
Quantitative Content ◽  
News Service

This article asks to what extent public service broadcasting’s online news service resembles that of commercial media. The context of this inquiry is claims of ‘out-crowding’ facing public service broadcasters across Europe. In Norway, commercial players in this debate accuse the public service broadcaster, NRK, of being too similar to competitors in the private sector for commercial operators to attain sustainable revenues in the online realm. To ascertain the extent to what these claims are warranted, this article compares NRK’s online content with that of nine commercial competitors in national and local markets, using a hybrid methodological approach combining quantitative content analysis with Latent Dirichlet allocation, analysing in excess of 115,000 documents. Findings show that commercial operators resemble each other more than they do NRK, indicating closer competition in the commercial segment than between the public service broadcaster and market players.

scholarly journals Locking Out the Mother Corp: Nationalism and Popular Imaginings of Public Service Broadcasting in the Print News Media

2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Service ◽  
News Media ◽  
English Language ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Print News ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
Société Civile ◽  
Media Choices

Abstract: Early promoters of public-service broadcasting (PSB) in Canada emphasized its democratic and nationalist merit. Of these twin pillars, only nationalism appears to still be standing. In this article, the author surveys the vision of PSB that emerged in the national English-language print media during the 2005 CBC/Radio-Canada lockout and suggests that our peculiar brand of multicultural nationalism (which underestimates the divisions within civil society) has subsumed democratic values. Yet, she argues democratic principles—particularly those of access, participation, and publicness—are critically important to defending the relevance of PSB in the current environment of seemingly endless media choices and borderless technology. Résumé : Les premiers promoteurs de la radiotélédiffusion de service public au Canada mettaient l’accent sur ses mérites démocratique et nationaliste. Aujourd’hui, de ces deux piliers, il semble que le mérite nationaliste soit le seul qui tienne bon. Dans cet article, l’auteur analyse la vision de la radiotélédiffusion de service public que l’on retrouve dans la presse écrite nationale de langue anglaise au cours du lock-out de CBC/Radio-Canada en 2005 et elle suggère que notre type spécifique de nationalisme multiculturel (qui sous estime les divisions de la société civile) a englobé les valeurs démocratiques. Toutefois, l’auteur affirme que ces principes démocratiques—en particulier ceux d’accessibilité, de participation et de valeurs publiques—sont extrêmement importants lorsqu’il s’agit de défendre la pertinence de la radiotélédiffusion de service public dans le contexte actuel de soi-disant choix infinis de médias et de technologies sans frontières.

scholarly journals Auntie Knows Best? Public Broadcasters and Current Affairs Knowledge

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 719-739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Soroka ◽  
Blake Andrew ◽  
Toril Aalberg ◽  
Shanto Iyengar ◽  
James Curran ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Propensity Score ◽  
Public Service ◽  
News Media ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Media Consumption ◽  
Public Financing ◽  
National Surveys ◽  
National Differences ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
Cross National

Public service broadcasters (PSBs) are a central part of national news media landscapes, and are often regarded as specialists in the provision of hard news. But does exposure to public versus commercial news influence citizens’ knowledge of current affairs? This question is investigated in this article using cross-national surveys capturing knowledge of current affairs and media consumption. Propensity score analyses test for effects of PSBs on knowledge, and examine whether PSBs vary in this regard. Results indicate that compared to commercial news, PSBs have a positive influence on knowledge of hard news, though not all PSBs are equally effective in this way. Cross-national differences are related to factors such asde jureindependence, proportion of public financing and audience share.

Representing climate change on public service television: A case study

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 452-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Debrett
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
Commercial Media ◽  
Track Record ◽  
Vested Interests

Publicly funded broadcasters with a track record in science programming would appear ideally placed to represent climate change to the lay public. Free from the constraints of vested interests and the economic imperative, public service providers are better equipped to represent the scientific, social and economic aspects of climate change than commercial media, where ownership conglomeration, corporate lobbyists and online competition have driven increasingly tabloid coverage with an emphasis on controversy. This prime-time snapshot of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s main television channel explores how the structural/rhetorical conventions of three established public service genres – a science programme, a documentary and a live public affairs talk show – impact on the representation of anthropogenic climate change. The study findings note implications for public trust, and discuss possibilities for innovation in the interests of better public understanding of climate change.

Content Diversity1

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Consumer Preferences ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Sports Events ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
Data Consumer

This chapter considers the programme genres in public service broadcasting. Genres that have been traditionally associated with public service broadcasting — such as education, natural history, science, arts, current affairs, children's and religion — have been in steady decline for over a decade. A shift to on-demand viewing in recent years has further segmented viewing habits. Although the vast majority of viewing continues to be live, some genres are increasingly viewed on catch-up services. Big entertainment shows and sports events often account for the highest proportion of live viewing, compared to drama series, which have the highest proportion of on-demand viewing. These trends point to the increasing complexity of maintaining public service mixed genre provision given an increasing reliance on ‘big data’, consumer preferences, and taste algorithms that may limit the diversity and visibility of a broad range of genres.

scholarly journals Young people’s news orientations and uses of traditional and new media for news

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Van Cauwenberge ◽  
Leen d’Haenens ◽  
Hans Beentjes
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Public Service ◽  
News Media ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
National Quality

AbstractThis article reports on Flemish college students’ news orientations and their uses of traditional and new media for news within a public service media environment. We used five homogeneous focus groups that covered variation in news media use. The analysis of the focus groups revealed major differences in news behaviors and attitudes between participants who mainly depended on traditional media for news, and those who also went online for news. While a growing body of research reports on young people’s increasing use of online media for news, particularly among those that are most disengaged with traditional news media, our findings indicated that only the most eager news-users were motivated to gather information online. Additionally, we found that traditional media, in particular national quality papers and the Flemish public service newscast, were still the main reference points for public affairs information among our participants.

Explaining public service broadcasting entrenched politicization: The case of South Africa’s SABC

Journalism ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 817-834 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Ciaglia
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
The West ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Media Logic ◽  
Media Systems

Public service broadcasting is the terrain par excellence within today’s media systems on which political power and media logic interact and overlap. This study will argue that public service broadcasting politicization arising in certain democratic regimes cannot be effectively explained if attention is uncritically paid to the same theoretical grounds upon which media scholars rely to study the corresponding phenomenon in the West. By relying on content and legal analysis of the proceedings concerning five terrestrial channels by the Broadcasting Complaint Commission of South Africa between 1994 and 2014, and on three interviews with civil society representatives, the article will discuss the concept of entrenched politicization as a more proper analytical tool to assess subtler forms of media politicization.

scholarly journals PSB goes personal: The failure of personalised PSB web pages

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (55) ◽  
pp. 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jannick Kirk Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
Social Networking ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Web Pages ◽  
Font Size ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Commercial Media ◽  
User Comments ◽  
European Public ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Web

<p><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'CronosPro'; color: #504f53;">Between</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'CronosPro'; color: #504f53;"> 2006 and 2011, a number of European public service broadcasting (PSB) organisations offered their website users the opportunity to create their own PSB homepage. The web customisation was conceived by the editors as a response to developments in commercial web services, particularly social networking and content aggregation services, but the customisation projects revealed tensions between the ideals of customer sovereignty and the editorial agenda-setting. This paper presents an overview of the PSB activities as well as reflections on the failure of the customisable PSB homepages. The analysis is based on interviews with the PSB editors involved in the projects and on studies of the interfaces and user comments. Commercial media customisation is discussed along with the PSB projects to identify similarities and differences. </span></p>

scholarly journals Cyberpolitics

Communication ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Howard
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Media Environments ◽  
Media Systems

Cyberpolitics is a domain of inquiry into the role of new information technologies in contemporary political life. It is an exciting domain of inquiry because not all of the things that communication scholars learned by studying mass media systems and interpersonal communication hold up in digital media environments. Studying cyberpolitics usually means one of two things. It can mean investigating the ways in which political actors use new technologies in creative—and sometimes problematic—ways. Some voters use digital media to improve their knowledge of public affairs, others use the same media to limit the flow of news and information. The Internet allows some journalists to do more research and track down more sources, but such digital media has had a significant impact on the organization of the newsroom and the features of the news market. Politicians and candidates for elected office use the Internet to reach out to new voters, but they also use it for data mining and manipulating public opinion. But studying cyberpolitics can also mean investigating the less overt political machinations that go into setting telecommunications standards and making decisions about how to engineer information infrastructure. Allocating the public spectrum, setting privacy standards into law, building universal broadband access, or deciding which information packets may be more important than others are technical issues with significant implications for political life.

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