German Public Television, Social Media and Audience Engagement

Abstract

This article discusses how social media affect German public service broadcasting (PSB) in terms of PSB's efforts to reach younger audiences in the digital age. Since social media plays a significant role for younger media users, German PSB is attempting to merge television with social media (commonly referred to as social TV). Social TV, however, has the ability to develop into fairly integrated multiplatform application systems that are driven by the logic of social media. One example is the content network funk, launched by ARD ('a consortium of public broadcasters') and ZDF ('second German television') in 2016. The content network's shows demonstrate a changed television-audience relationship within the social media environment. I will analyze this changed television-audience relationship in terms of the way it addresses audience engagement due to its policy of participation. I n t r o d u c t i o nSocial media's spread, and the rise of its cultural influence, shape norms and rules for public communication. 1 They also affect the production, distribution and consumption of TV content. Television executives are constantly challenged by digital and social media to find new ways for TV to carry on in a networked multimedia environment. 2 In Germany, according to recent studies by the ARD ('a consortium of public broadcasters') and ZDF ('second German television'), 3 social media in particular are challenging television, since platforms like Facebook, YouTube or Instagram have a considerable impact on people's everyday lives and media culture. 4 As Frees and Koch write, 90.3 percent of the German population is online, while the daily use of the internet (of at least 196 and a maximum of 353 minutes) in the younger and middle age groups reaches nearly 100 percent (97.7 percent in the age group fourteen to nineteen, 98.0 percent in the age group twenty to twenty-nine, and 96.1 percent in the age group thirty to thirty-nine). 5 Moreover, the entertainment-related use of content on social media is gaining in importance as well. 6 The television medium, S. Stollfuß, German Public Television, Social Media and Audience Engagement 2 in contrast, is losing ground, especially among younger media users. 7 The smartphone as an "indicator and motor of mediatization" 8 , most associated with our everyday practice of being online, has become the preferred device that younger media users use to access content on the internet. 9 It accelerates the variability and flexibility in computer-mediated communication and constitutes the driving force for a very high daily range of networked online communication. 10 To inhibit television's crisis of validity, TV executives are trying to merge the "lean-back medium of television" with the "lean-forward mode of on-demand web and mobile use, in which users engage in diverse, highly personalized and individualistic forms of participation". 11 In this context, the structural convergence of television and social media results in the phenomenon of so-called social TV, commonly described as a for...

Public Service Media and Diversity in the Digital Media Landscape: Opportunities and Limitations for Social Justice

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