Professionals in the television industry are working towards a certain future-rather than end-for the medium based on multi-platform storytelling, as well as multiple screens, distribution channels and streaming platforms. They do so rooted in institutional frameworks where traditional conceptualizations of television still persist. In this context, we reflect on the role of the national television archive as an agent of historical knowledge in the convergence era. Contextualisation and infrastructure function as important preconditions for users of archives to find their way through the enormous amounts of audio-visual material. Specifically, we consider the case of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, taking a critical stance towards the archive's practices of contextualisation and preservation of audio-visual footage in the convergence era. To do so, this article considers the impact of online circulation, contextualisation and preservation of audio-visual materials in relation to, first, how media policy complicates the re-use of material, and second, the archive's use by television professionals and media researchers. This article reflects on the possibilities for and benefits of systematic archiving, developments in web archiving, and accessibility of production and contextual documentation of public broadcasters in the Netherlands. We do so based on an analysis of internal documentation, best practices of archive-based history programmes and their related cross-media practices, as well as media policy documentation. We consider how audio-visual archives should deal with the shift towards multi-platform productions, and argue for both a more systematic archiving of production and contextual documentation in the Netherlands, and for media researchers who draw upon archival resources to show a greater awareness of an archive's history. In the digital age, even more people are part of the archive's processes of selection and aggregation, affecting how the past is preserved through audio-visual images.
This article explores strategies used by television programme makers in the multiplatform era, principally concerning personal memories of historical events. The availability and use of televisual materials has increased in the current 'post-scarcity culture', especially through the digitization of archival collections and production of history-based content for television. The author therefore considers the contemporary role of television in the active experience of (re-)engaging with past events in the present. The analysis focuses on a specific case of historical television documentary, the Dutch cross-media project In Europe, grounded in a textual analysis of the project and the creators' strategies of multi-platform storytelling. These strategies hold opportunities and implications for a specific kind of shared engagement with the past, which can arguably be called a 'participatory memory'.Recent studies have pointed out the centrality of media to the formation of memory. Memory narratives are not only produced in socio-cultural contexts, but are also repurposed and preserved through media practices (Neiger, Meyers, and Zandberg 2011;Erll and Rigney 2009;Huyssen 2003). Media technologies can therefore be defined as 'tools that mediate between personal and collective cultural memory' (Van Dijck 2007, 19). Societies continuously negotiate a (shared) understanding of the past and television facilitates such negotiations (Holdsworth 2011;Bourdon 2003;Edgerton and Rollins 2001). In our contemporary 'post-scarcity culture' (Hoskins 2011), audiences make conscious decisions to assimilate and discuss televisual images of the past across various platforms. This might signify a growing popularity of television history amongst a wider audience, but can also point to a more complex and dynamic relationship between personal and collective cultural memories in the current media landscape.In this context, I will explore a case concerning the efforts undertaken by the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO to engage the public in European history. The historical documentary project In Europe [In Europa ] was intentionally designed with a cross-media approach. In Europe is principally concerned with providing a 'space of participation' (Mu ¨ller 2009) for users to connect with. The project has been broadcast and made accessible online for approximately seven years, which provides a considerable starting point for a reflection on the interplay between past and present via television. This article poses the following question: how do creators of historical television documentary utilize multi-platform strategies to constitute engagement with the past, and what are the subsequent opportunities and implications for the construction of memory? Multiplatform storytelling involves a distinct dramaturgy in terms of shaping a story. I will therefore first describe how the In Europe documentary makers engage viewers with q 2015 Taylor & Francis
In this article, television is reconsidered as a hybrid ‘repertoire’ ofmemory. It is demonstrated how new dynamic production and scheduling practicesin connection with highly accessible and participatory forms of user engagementoffer opportunities for television users to engage with the past, and how suchpractices affect television as a practice of memory. The media platform HollandDoc is discussed as a principal casestudy. By adopting and expanding Aleida Assmann’s model of the dynamics ofcultural memory between remembering and forgetting, a new model to studytelevision as cultural memory is proposed which represents the medium’shybridity in the multi-platform era.
This article sheds light on how adults in Barcelona (ES), Groningen (NL), and Milan (IT) utilized WhatsApp to compensate for the lack of face-to-face interactions and to fight social isolation during the first 2 months of the COVID-19 lockdown. We argue that practices of WhatsApp usage have multiplied and diversified experiences of co-presence at distance and made group socialities even more important than before. Building on the concepts of “scalable socialities” and “polymedia,” the article formulates the concept of “scalable co-presence” to account for ways in which WhatsApp has enabled multiple experiences of proximity to others across different scales of sociality, from one-to-one to large groups interactions. In this article, we also argue that the concept of “scalable co-presence” is relevant to bring the study of mediated co-presence out of media and migration studies into the broader field of media and cultural studies. With reduction in mobility, increased social distancing, and ubiquitous connectivity, the role of communication technologies in mediating proximity at distance has become crucial for many more people around the world outside the context of transnational migration. The concept is also relevant to acknowledge the increased importance of mediated group interactions and communications in (post)-pandemic digital societies.
Abstract:Modern audiences engage with representations of the past in a particular way via the medium of television, negotiating a shared understanding of the past. This is evidenced by the increasing popularity of reboots, newly developed history and documentary programming, re-use of archival footage and nostalgia content. This article takes a closer look at television's abilities to circulate and contextualize the past in the current era of convergence through narrowcasting or niche programming on digital television platforms, specifically via nostalgia programming. Such platforms exemplify the multifaceted way of looking at and gaining access to television programming through a variety of connected platforms and screens in the current multi-platform era. Since the way in which television professionals (producers, schedulers, commissioners, researchers) act as moderators in this process needs to be further analysed, the article places an emphasis on how meaningful connections via previously broadcast history and nostalgia programming are also curated, principally through scheduling and production practices for niche programming -key elements in television's creative process that have received less academic attention. Furthermore, the article discusses to what extent media policy in the Netherlands is attuned to the (re-)circulation of previously broadcast content and programming about past events, and reflects on television's possibilities for "re-screening" references to the past in the contemporary media landscape. The analysis is based on a combination of textual analysis of audio-visual archival content and a production studies approach of interviews with key professionals, to gain insight into the creators' strategies in relation to nostalgia programming and scheduling. Subsequently, the article demonstrates how national collective memory, as understood by television professionals in the Netherlands, informs the scheduling and circulation of "living history" on the digital thematic channel -collective cultural memory hence functioning as a TV guide.Keywords: representing and re-screening the past, audio-visual and archival materials, multi-platform television, nostalgia programming and thematic scheduling, cultural memory.
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