School of Culture and Communication - Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/11343/396

Filters

2012 1
1
1
Reset filters

Settings
Statistics
Citations
End date: 2012 × Start date: 2012 × Subject: globalisation × Subject: marketisation ×

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Marketisation in 'transboundary networks': a comparative study of public service media in Australia and Germany
    MEYERHOFER, TANJA ( 2012)
    Public service media are in a process of change, attempting to balance the challenges of the increasing global interconnectivity of media environments. Digital communications technologies make content available on-demand via various ‘access points’ such as satellite and broadband television, tablet computers, smartphones and video game consoles, multiplying and diversifying content choices. As a result the use of media is no longer a communal but a highly individualised and fragmented activity. Furthermore, the myriads of ‘access points’ created by digital communications technologies empower individuals to directly choose what content they consume when, where and how. Media users’ empowerment significantly challenges the capacity of public service media to strengthen the democratic values and social cohesion of national societies by gathering and engaging civic communities in discourses of shared public interests. To continue to be a relevant fragment in individuals’ relationship with content, public service media organisations are inevitably drawn into multidimensional networks of marketisation involving competition and cooperations with other public service and commercial, national and transnational content providers. Built on Sassen’s (2006) approach of ‘transboundary networks’, this study investigates new models of transnational ‘commercialisation’ of public service media in Australia and Germany. The thesis explores in particular the emerging microsphere of marketisation where ‘national’ public purpose goals and ‘global’ market forces converge. These ‘transboundary’ trajectories are further examined through semi-structured interviews with corporate executives of the ABC and SBS in Australia and ZDF and Deutsche Welle in Germany. Results reveal that while marketisation relates on the surface to strategies implemented to remain competitive, at a deeper level it constitutes a means to protect and reinforce public purpose values. The leveraging of these public purpose values, which are what makes public media services marketable, constitutes a key brand advantage enabling public service media to remain competitive in complex networks of ‘coopetition’ (Küng, Leandros, Picard, Schroeder, & van der Wurff, 2008).