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Understanding Public Service Media Value Beyond Audience Metrics:Influence, vanity metrics and critical analyticsPresented byDr Jonathon HutchinsonDepartment of Media and Communication@dhutchman

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Should Moretoki be the face of PSM?

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‘Generation Notification’– They have created an ecology, which

contain enormous, engaged audiences– Excellent (high-level) media literacy– They contribute content, insights,

trends– In terms of fandom, this audience is

the upper level– Conversations are influential: to and

from audience– Typically not engaging with broadcast

content– They display an enormous level of

‘social talent’

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Connor Franta– Aged 23– ‘American

Entrepreneur, writer & YouTuber’

– +2m Facebook Likes– +5m Instagram

Followers– 4.8m Twitter Followers– 5.5m YouTube

subscribers– ‘coming of age’

videos?

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Troye Sivan– Aged 21– ‘Australian singer,

songwriter, actor and YouTuber’

– 4.6m Instagram followers

– 4m Twitter followers– 2.2m Facebook fans– 4.2m YouTube

Subscriptions– Vlogger

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@babyariel– 15 yo– In the game for about

9 months– 330k Twitter followers– 3.6m Instagram

followers– 1.4m YouTube

subscribers– 13.3m Musical.ly fans

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@babyariel

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MCNs – Multichannel Networks

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Nude by Nature“Calling all natural beauty lovers! We are looking for those of you in the Vamp Collective who would like to collaborate with Nude by Nature on a campaign to promote the launch of their brand new Contour & Highlight Collection.

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Vamp Collective, 2016

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Vidcon

How do they do it? The basics of social talent…

– Consistent message– Understand the

language– Work the platform

conventions– Conversation first,

branding second– Increased exposure

through intermediaries (MCNs & collabs for example)

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Social Talent:Towards Cultural Intermediation

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Social Talent– Content creators– Large audiences– Influential– Operate across

multiple platforms: e.g. Insta = main, YouTube = B Role

– Humorous (mostly)– ‘collabs’

Louis Cole, ‘Fun for Louis’

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stampylongnose – Minecraft video influencers

Who are these people?

– Change Agents– Digital Influencers– Cultural

Intermediaries

Fashion bloggers, brand ambassadors, musicians, etc.

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Change AgentsChange agents, e.g. opinion leaders, peer educators, community facilitators, counsellors, outreach workers etc., can assist in building and strengthening these influence relationships and can also shape behavioural norms (Kempe, Kleinberg, & Tardos, 2003).

Many programs make use of change agents – e.g. peer educators, counsellors, opinion leaders and community health workers – to disseminate messages within target communities. (Goodwin, 2015).

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Digital Influencers“Influencers — everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a relatively large following on blogs and social media through the textual and visual narration of their personal lives and lifestyles, engage with their following in “digital” and “physical” spaces, and monetize their following by integrating “advertorials” into their blogs or social media posts and making physical paid-guest appearances at events” (Abidin, 2016).

Jennifer Lam , Bamboo Garden:

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Hutchinson, 2016.

Cultural Intermediaries:“are the taste makers defining what counts as good taste and cool culture in today's marketplace” (Smith-Maguire, 2014).

“are specific in how they source emerging creativity, and make this type of cultural production accessible for larger audiences. They enable consumers and producers of cultural texts to engage in a two-way dialogue: producers are exposed to fringe, and highly creative, practices by non-professional creative practitioners, while contributors are published to larger audiences” (Hutchinson, 2016).

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Cultur(al intermediation) and a network society

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Network Society– The symbiotic relationship between technology

and society– Post-industrialization: information and knowledge

societies, based on (private) networks– Network society: new social structures based on

technological paradigms – “The tools to master our own condition” (Castells,

2005)– Representative of how ICTs are central to the ever

evolving range of societies that embody social, political, economic, cultural practices, institutions, and relationships

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Culture within a networked society

Williams (1989)  notes that culture is specific to each society based on finding the common

meanings and direction. Culture is very much present within a networked society, which Castells

notes is the connection of “major social, technological, economic, and cultural

transformations (…) to give rise to a new form of society, the network society” (Castells, 2007: xvii).

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Network Making Power Switchers“(a) the ability to constitute network(s) and to program/reprogram the network(s) in terms of the goals assigned to the network; and (b) the ability to connect and ensure the cooperation of different networks by sharing common goals and combining resources while fending off competition from other networks by setting up strategic cooperation”(Castells, 2011, p. 776).

– 1st characteristic: Common goals

– 2nd characteristic: Switchers “control the connecting points between various strategic networks” for example “the connection between the political networks and the media networks to produce and diffuse specific political-ideological discourses” (Castells, 2011, p. 777).

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Public Service Media, Participation, & Digital Influencers

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Public Service Media (PSM)– “has been tasked to serve the societal and cultural

needs of each member nation and to promote democracy and participation within the national geographical boundaries” (Głowacki, 2015, p. 26)

– Built on PSB, which “was to inform, educate and entertain with total independence from political power and commercial pressure” (Tremblay, 2016, p. 194)

– The thematic shift from PSB and towards PSM is taken as “common parlance as services are extended across ‘new’ media platforms and experiments undertaken into new interactive content forms” (Debrett, 2015, p. 557).

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PSM: tokenistic participation?– Głowacki and Jackson (2014)

highlight that websites are often ‘bolt-on’ extras for marketing purposes

– Jakubowicz (2014): “seems to remain in most cases [as] marginal forms, either designed to obtain input … that professional journalists use in producing their programmes, under their exclusive control, or web pages … serving as a display case for UGC” (p. 229)

– ‘Maximalist’ participation– Carpentier (2009) notes

for user participation to be useful, it needs to be ‘socially relevant’ and ‘of professional standard’

– This moves participation within PSM beyond ‘trophy case’ or ‘bolt-ons’

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The ABC– Dual licensing regime– Fully government funded– Not ‘crowding-out’– Rather ‘distinctive

innovation’ (Cunningham, 2013)

– The broader media environment can learn from ABC

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Digital Influencers for #7DaysLater 1. @7DaysLaterTV

2. @Daley_Pearson

3. @HarrisonTheFan

4. @Mwhalan

5. @henry_and_aaron

6. @bajopants

7. @ABC2

8. @WASHINGTONx

9. @JordanRasko

10. @tomandalex

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@mentions > 56

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1. You Can’t Ask That – Australian Muslims

2. Anh’s Brush With Fame

3. You Can’t Ask That - Transsexuals

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PSM Cultural Intermediary Models

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How should PSM operate in a Network Society?– Work with digital influencers to understand

important public issues ( Cultural intermediation for PSM value)

– Leverage digital influencer audiences to bolster the PSM universality remit

– Acknowledge PSM’s importance as an operator within a neoliberal environment (and this OK)

– Learn from those around them that excel in social media spaces

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So what does all this mean?– PSM do reasonably well on social media– PSM still treat it like traditional, top-down

broadcast, which is against the core of the network society

– They need to embody the success of the MCN model

– PSM needs to employ and bolster the digital influencer role – tis is key to operating as ‘switchers’ within the network society

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So should Moretoki be the face of PSM?

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Dr Jonathon Hutchinsonjonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au@dhutchman