Liking social media as an extension of online public service media strategy

While public service broadcasters started out as monopolistic organizations in their respective countries, they have currently evolved into public service media in highly commercialized and diverse media markets. Not only commercial broadcasters, but also online video on demand services and other web media companies have started to compete with them. Social media platforms can also be thrown into this equation, although these third-party platforms also offer many opportunities for public service media to engage and interact with their audiences. Nonetheless, the commercial nature of these platforms conflicts with the public values most European public service broadcasters have to adhere to. Hence, the following research question is posed: “How do European public service media strategically utilize commercial social media platforms as part of their online activities to meet their public objectives?” Through 10 interviews with 11 employees from various public broadcasting organizations across Europe, many interesting insights into the social media usage of public service media were found. A thematic analysis was performed on the data, which in the first place brought to light the complicated organizational structure that makes online and in particular social media activity still quite hard to do in comparison to the core Radio and TV activities. Nonetheless, online activities are growing steadily: public service media are currently mainly focusing on building centralized video on demand platforms where all broadcast content can be consumed. Web-only content and other classic web characteristics such as personalization features are also gradually becoming more accepted at public broadcasters. Furthermore, public service media are also slowly expanding their activities on third-party social media platforms, most notably Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Strategies used on these platforms include second screen functionalities, pure promotion of their own content and online platforms, and the creation of native stand-alone content for various social platforms. The ability to successfully do that though with the desired high-quality is limited, due to current regulations but most notably due to a lack of available resources for such online activities. Most respondents acknowledged the third-party commercial status of the social media platforms they used, but did not see this as an issue that should hold them back in using such platforms. Consequently they valued connecting with the fragmented audiences on these platforms as more important than trying to completely protect their public service mission, by arguing that the presence of various audiences is precisely the reason why they should also be present on social media platforms. Nevertheless, social media activity by public service media is still very much in development as the organizations are still adapting to its emergence and the situation might be completely different a few years from now. Subsequently it will be interesting to see how social media utilization by public service media develops in the future.