The Impact of Social TV and Audience Participation on National Cultural Policy: Co-creating television comedy with #7DaysLater

Abstract

The democratising promise of increased audience participation (Benkler 2006; Bruns 2008; Jenkins 2006) has in recent times come under scrutiny as scholars suggest the facilitators of collaborative online spaces may reject the political shift of convergence culture (Hay et al. 2011). The apparent (non) shift in power is particularly interesting in the context of public service media (PSM), which fills the role of a cultural infrastructure media organisation and incorporates the voice of its citizens as crucial to its national and cultural building capacities. Under the guise of audience participation, this paper demonstrates how social TV has considerably larger implications beyond back channel communication and co-creation: it is demonstrative of how media acquires its meaning through public discourse. By examining the impact of social TV, that is audience members participating in content through commenting and co-creation, it is also indicative of how public service media policy can be seen as what Brevini (2013) terms PSB 2.0. This paper illustrates how social TV and audience participation has been positioned within the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), how it challenges existing governmental practices and nation boundary construction, and strengthens its public service remit by providing voice to those who may otherwise be marginalised.

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Copyright © 2015 (Jonathon Hutchinson). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-
NoDerivs (CC BY_ND) License. For information on use, visit
www.creativecommons.org/licenses. Cite as Hutchinson, J. (2015), ‘The Impact of Social TV and
Audience Participation on National Cultural Policy: Co-
creating television comedy with
#7DaysLater’, Communication, Politics & Culture, vol. 47, issue 3, pp. 21-33.
The Impact of Social TV and Audience
Participation on National Cultural Policy: Co-
creating television comedy with #7DaysLater
Jonathon Hutchinson, The University of Sydney
Abstract
The democratising promise of increased audience participation (Benkler 2006; Bruns
2008; Jenkins 2006) has in recent times come under scrutiny as scholars suggest the
facilitators of collaborative online spaces may reject the political shift of convergence
culture (Hay et al. 2011). The apparent (non) shift in power is particularly interesting in
the context of public service media (PSM), which fills the role of a cultural
infrastructure media organisation and incorporates the voice of its citizens as crucial to
its national and cultural building capacities. Under the guise of audience participation,
this paper demonstrates how social TV has considerably larger implications beyond
back channel communication and co-creation: it is demonstrative of how media
acquires its meaning through public discourse. By examining the impact of social TV,
that is audience members participating in content through commenting and co-creation,
it is also indicative of how public service media policy can be seen as what Brevini
(2013) terms PSB 2.0. This paper illustrates how social TV and audience participation
has been positioned within the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), how it
challenges existing governmental practices and nation boundary construction, and
strengthens its public service remit by providing voice to those who may otherwise be
marginalised.
Public Service Media and Social TV as Convergence
Convergence culture has been explored as a democratising experience in journalism (Bruns
2008), economics (Benkler 2006), organisations (Shirky 2008) and political movements
(Hermida 2012). The decentralised, co-creative approach of convergence has flourished in the
creative industries where both producer and consumer have adopted new cultural goods
production models (Hesmondhalgh 2007). In the context of content production, producers
have incorporated the participation of the audience for new production methodologies
(Hutchinson 2013a), to reduce the canyon between content production and consumption
(Negus 2002). Audience participation also addresses the complications introduced through
digital, niche interest audiences by producing content specific to the tastes of fragmenting
audiences (McClean 2011). By incorporating new ideas from those whom the content seeks to
entertain or inform into the professional media production framework, the media industry has
employed convergence to some degree through commentary and in some instances as content
co-creation.
However, convergence has not entirely delivered on its promise of democratising power
shifts, where some scholars argue that the democratic activities in the creative industries are
80 per cent speculation (Turner 2011). From this perspective, one can question whether media
organisations have adopted the power shift into their governance models, or if convergence is
a toothless tiger shaped as an empowering tool for audiences. This question is particularly

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important to explore in the context of public service media (PSM), a particular type of media
organisation that has been legislated to build and facilitate national and cultural identities
(Wilson et al. 2010), particularly through the voice of the citizens it represents (McClean
2008).
PSM in Australia is unique compared to the rest of the world insofar as it operates within a
dual licensing system; the Australian media system is designed to operate with both public
and commercial interests in unison. The dual licensing system enables the commercial sector
to operate in areas where the market dictates, while PSM is responsible for experimentation
and innovation that can be shared with the market as a whole. This phenomenon is described
as distinctive innovation (Cunningham 2013) and builds upon the existing Reithian1 public
service broadcasting (PSB) values of distance from vested interests, content maker
independence, providing voice to those who are otherwise marginalised and building and
facilitating national and cultural spheres (ibid. 2013). The ABC is one of the two public
broadcasters within Australia that continues to experiment with convergent culture and
technology to fulfil the PSM adage of ‘inform, educate and entertain’ by experimenting with
new ways of producing and delivering content. As part of that experimentation, the ABC has
aligned with broader recommendations to evolve in its adaption of Web 2.0 technologies and
move towards activities that are beyond its remit of procuring and broadcasting content
(Debrett 2010). Indeed, Flew et al. (2008) suggest the role of the ABC as a public service
media organisation is to encourage social innovation through user-created content, where
‘UCC strategies can make a considerable contribution to its provision of Australian content in
news and current affairs, localism and diversity of news and information, particularly through
the development of hyper-local content that exploits its network of broadcast media outlets
throughout Australia and its unique presence in non-metropolitan Australia’ (p. 2). In talking
about news and current affairs, Flew et al. highlight the potential of including the audience in
the production cycle as an advantageous experience for the broadcaster. In other words, PSM
experimenting with user-created content and innovative production methodologies is also
valuable for the media market as a whole.
There is a body of knowledge that explores the concept of participation as part of the
convergence mantle, where researchers now have a more nuanced understanding of how
convergence operates within PSM (Hutchinson 2013b). Verstraete (2011) highlights that
participation needs to be understood in terms of who is doing what with whom and ‘whether
something is politically rather than economically productive’ (p. 539). The political driving
force of participation is particularly interesting to explore through the lens of social TV to
understand how audiences use information and communication technologies to bolster their
personal standings within the participation process. Audience participation in television
programming usually occurs across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and
YouTube, and is broadly labelled ‘social TV’ (Harrington et al. 2013). Historically, social TV
usually takes the form of user comments appearing within the lower third graphic of the
broadcast program, or as a guest answering an audience member’s question. However,
mediated technologies can marginalise users through network politics (Castells 2009) and the
rise of mass self-communication (Wellmen 2010). Castells and Wellman both indicate that
the flat, heterarchical affordances of networked communication can be construed to benefit
the individual for personal gain. This is a phenomenon common to existing social media
pillars such as YouTube (views), LinkedIn (professional promotion), Facebook (increased
network/popularity) and Twitter (increased status), but is not typically associated with
participation in PSM audiences.
To explore the concept of network politics and mass self-communication within the public
service media context, the ABC’s co-creative #7DaysLater program provides a unique social
TV example. The ABC’s #7DaysLater recently extended audience participation through

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social TV in television production by ‘…taking comedy to the scary arena of interactive
storytelling where the audience gets to write the brief via social media’ (ABC 2013). By
drawing on audience participation, each seven-minute program challenged the traditional
television production model by testing which users and which types of content are suitable for
an ABC-branded television program. Further, #7DaysLater highlighted the inconsistencies of
non-ABC produced content, which problematised the standards upheld by the network’s
editorial policies (ABC 1983), the regulatory framework that the ABC operates within. In
these instances, it is the responsibility of the cultural intermediaries (Negus 2002; Hutchinson
2013a; Maguire et al. 2010) to negotiate content inconsistencies between audience
expectations and institutional regulatory frameworks, and facilitate the participation process.
To understand the impact of social TV on PSM policy, social network analysis highlights how
the communication leaders drive the innovative production process of programs such as
#7DaysLater.
The larger question within this co-creative social media environment is how does
participatory activity disrupt or even demolish the national boundaries previously constructed
through PSM? Social media are location-agnostic and, by interacting with a global audience,
the contributions are constructed from a diverse cultural background that does not necessarily
align with the national focus of the PSM organisation. In this case, the constructions of media,
media meaning and even the concept of audience and publics are challenged. What was
traditionally a locally defined, national audience now needs to be considered a global group of
users, which significantly challenges the role of PSM and the core foundations of public
service broadcasting. Therefore, new foundational approaches for PSM are required to update
existing policy frameworks for national broadcasters.
Using a mixed method research design of social media network analysis (SMNA) and
digital ethnography, this paper describes how an advanced academic research methodology,
when combined with television production, can assist the future development of PSM and its
impact on national cultural policymaking. This research tracked the Twitter conversation for
the entire first season of #7DaysLater, identified the network influencers and assessed the
impacts the production had on existing ABC editorial policies. From an informed
understanding of audience participation within PSM regulation in the Australian context, it is
possible to address how new media technologies challenge existing communication policies
and improve the value of a global public service broadcasting approach. This research
contributes to developing PSB 2.0 (Brevini 2013) as a policy framework.
Social Media Network Analysis (SMNA)
The methodology for this research is a mixed method approach, comprised of an emerging
social media network analysis (SMNA) model combined with digital ethnography (Dirksen et
al. 2010; Bowler 2010; Horst et al. 2012). The combination of qualitative with quantitative
research methods enables the research to address new areas that were previously inaccessible.
For example, digital ethnography would likely reveal the key actors within a Twitter network
who are interacting with a television program to understand how they communicate, the types
of languages and norms they use and with whom they are communicating. However, digital
ethnography is limited in its ability to reveal the impact of that social media communication
and, more significantly, whom that communication has influenced beyond an immediate
conversation. An iterative discovery process is possible by combining qualitative research
with quantitative methods, where findings that are revealed from the social media network
analysis (SMNA) provide useful data that can be incorporated into qualitative research, and
vice versa. In the context of #7DaysLater, the quantitative research provided useful findings
to target the digital ethnography and conduct semi-structured interviews, which were then
incorporated into a second round of SMNA.

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SMNA builds on earlier network analysis literature (Granovetter 1973; Terranova 2004;
Watts 2003) that attempts to understand the relationship between nodes within a network,
where ‘a network is nothing more than a collection of objects connected to each other in some
fashion’ (Watts 2003, p. 27). SMNA specifically takes two approaches in an attempt to
understand who is involved and how information is moved within a social network. In the
first instance, SMNA looks at ‘the relationship between network structure – the observed set
of ties linking the members of a population … and the corresponding social structure,
according to which individuals can be differentiated by their membership in socially distinct
groups and roles’ Ibid., p. 48). In the second, SMNA incorporates the network ‘viewed as a
conduit for the propagation of information or the exertion of influence, and an individual’s
place in the overall pattern of relations determines what information that person has access to
or, correspondingly, whom he or she is in a position to influence’ (Ibid., p.48). In this respect,
SMNA focuses on understanding a network through both network and social structures to
specifically determine how individual influence operates within a complex, interwoven
collection of networked individuals.
The SMNA research method contained four unique stages to extract the data, visualise and
analyse the results. As this research focuses on Twitter conversations associated with the
hashtag #7DaysLater, the first process was to access the Twitter public streaming API2. In the
first instance, the Hootsuite archiving service enabled the data to be scrapped and stored for
further analysis. This provided a .csv file that contained all 28 fields of metadata associated
with a tweet, for example the text, where it was tweeted, when it was tweeted and from what
type of device. For the purposes of this research, the focus is on who is talking with whom
and about what, suggesting that we only required the ‘@’ handles (Twitter names) and
hashtag topics. To extract this information, Google Refine was used to clean the data and
provide a .csv file that could be imported into Gephi, the social media network analysis
software.
Within Gephi, the data described above was run through a combination of the Force Atlas 2
and Fruchterman Rheingold spatialisation algorithms to indicate which users and topics were
more relevant to the conversation by placing them in the centre of the graph. The nodes were
then adjusted by their size according to the amount of outward edges, or how many times they
connected to other nodes. Therefore, the most connected nodes were the largest in size, with
the most significant located at the centre of the graph. Finally, the data was analysed through
a modulation algorithm to detect the communities present within the network. The modularity
algorithm, used by Gephi, and as Reichardt and Bornholdt developed, should perform the
following:
a.) reward internal edges between nodes of the same group (in the same spin state) and
b.) penalize missing edges (non-links) between nodes in the same group. Further, it
should c.) penalize existing edges between different groups (nodes in the different spin
state) and d.) reward non-links between different groups (Reichardt and Bornholdt
2006, p. 1).
As a result, similar nodes are attracted to one another; non-related nodes, in terms of the
hashtag topic, are repelled from each other. The modularity algorithm produces a betweenness
centrality measure. This is useful because it not only signifies how often nodes are referenced,
but also their significance within the network, where ‘a point in a communication network is
central to the extent that it falls in the shortest path between pairs of other points’ (Freeman
1977, p. 35). In other words, if combinations of other nodes are connected to a given node,
that node will have an increased betweenness centrality, indicating that it is a popular user or
topic within the network. The final result is a network graph that has the most significant and

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connected nodes centrally located on the graph with clusters of communities to represent the
communication relationship between users and topics.
Finally, the methodology included digital ethnography in an attempt to understand the
quantitative results of the SMNA. Digital ethnography, which has emerged from
‘netnography’ (Bowler 2010), is the practice of ethnography in online environments. The key
characteristic of ethnography is participant observation that incorporates a significant amount
of time embedded in the research environment to understand the people and structures of the
research environment and to reveal any insights that can assist in answering the research
question (Atkinson et al. 2005). In this mode, rich detailed data was gathered that was used to
explain how the network graph made sense, who the users were, why they were connected
and the types of conversations they were having. The rich ethnographic data that was
extracted shored up the claims generated by the SMNA and enabled the network users to
respond to targeted questions.
Current Australian Media Policy Environment for the ABC
The current political landscape of Australia has seen a return to a conservative government
that is consistent in promoting the neoliberal demands of the commercial media sector. Rupert
Murdoch’s News Corp has been consistent in attacking the online media efforts of the ABC,
which is ‘typically most forcefully expressed by puppet-master Murdoch’s News Corporation
Australia who regard the ABC as a threat, particularly their online media outlets, to
their commercial operations’ (Dwyer 2014, p. 2). However, the most recent government
budget at the time of writing indicated that the ABC would lose significant amounts of
operating funds. It has since been revealed that both the ABC and the Special Broadcasting
Service (SBS) will lose up to $300 million over the next five years, with the ABC to take the
biggest loss of $250 million. This may result in 400 to 500 lost jobs and significant cuts to
programming and services (Robin 2014). The ABC faces a conundrum in this highly
contested media policy environment: under a conservative government engaging in landmark
budget cuts, how might the ABC fulfil its legislated requirements to innovate and engage its
audience through participation?
Including convergence culture through audience participation in media discourse is crucial
when applied to the remit of public service media (PSM) that incorporates audience
participation and co-created media. The benefits of audience participation in PSM have
previously been outlined as generative and democratising (Bardoel and Lowe 2007;
Hutchinson 2013b; Jackson 2008). However, the current Australian political environment that
is aligned with the commercial sector may axe new and experimental production methods to
inhibit the social innovation potential of the PSM sector. Further, funding cuts will inhibit
experimental efforts to develop distinctive innovations, along with limiting the impact the
ABC has in constructing conceptual regional borders for national and cultural identity.
There are examples of innovative production models emerging from within the ABC that
incorporate convergence culture, new media technologies and display high levels of
efficiency. If the distinctive innovation framework is used here, there is tremendous value in
the ABC experimenting with new innovative online media production methodologies that
could be shared with the commercial sector. While the ABC has experimented with
convergence in recent times through ABC Pool and ABC Open amongst other user-created
content services, it is the efforts emerging from the Television and Entertainment departments
that demonstrate a market-valuable use of convergence. Through combining the talents of the
in-house supervising producers, up-and-coming popular YouTube producers and content
contributed from the audience, #7DaysLater has pioneered an innovative PSM production
methodology. The production model of #7DaysLater challenged the Editorial Policies of the
ABC, yet returned a collection of very distinct programs that satisfy distinctive innovation,

26
are efficient to produce and uphold the core PSB values. In this light, the value of PSM
becomes increasingly significant to many elements of the public and private sectors,
challenging the logic of the current funding cuts to the Australian PSM sector.
Understanding the Impacts of Social TV: The Case of
#7DaysLater
The #7DaysLater producer’s approach was to combine the talents of the in-house ABC staff
with that of the emerging online producers from YouTube, along with the input of the
audience, to produce comedy television that was ideally suited to the pre-determined
demographic. According to Richard Huddleston (2014), the Supervising Executive Producer
for Television Entertainment, the goal for #7DaysLater was to attract new audiences aged 18
to 24 (a declining demographic for PSM broadly) who are typically digital content
consumers, as opposed to terrestrial content viewers. Huddleston also notes a key goal was to
‘cut through the digital noise and become a visible media product’ (Ibid.) by growing an
online, digital audience. They sought to achieve these goals by incorporating the talents of
several popular YouTube producers who brought their online audience with them to
#7DaysLater.
Each week the producers would start with a Google Hangout on Monday and invite anyone
to participate and contribute plot ideas, character names or script lines to begin the
development process of the show for the following week. On Tuesday, the producer, Daley
Pearson, would talk during a slot on the popular morning program Breakfast with Alex and
Tom on the national ABC youth network, triplej, to build on Monday’s pre-production ideas.
From there, the production team would begin filming on Wednesday and Thursday, edit the
production on Friday, take the program online during the weekend and broadcast on the
following Monday. Through each stage of production, the crew utilised social media to
continue co-creation with the audience, where Daley could use his network and networks of
the YouTube producers to source ideas from the audience. The outcome of #7DaysLater was
a television series that was comprised of seven weekly, seven-minute episodes that increased
the viewing of the ABC’s desired demographic: the 18–24 year olds (Huddleston 2014). The
program recently won a Digital Emmy, a sign that the production has received recognition
from its professional peers.
Figure 1 visualises the #7DaysLater network through the ‘@’ usernames and hashtag
conversation topics, representing how users are connected to both topics and other users.
Node size indicates how many times an item was mentioned, with 172 topics discussed. The
larger nodes are more active users or more talked-about topics. Betweenness centrality
metrics revealed the network influencers: the green nodes are the most influential users and
the pink nodes indicate the most talked-about topics. Betweenness centrality is a useful
measure in this analysis, instead of connectivity, as it indicates the importance of the node
within the network. Betweenness centrality then indicates not only how many times a topic or
user is referred to, but also its significance. The modularity analysis highlighted 48
communities within the network, where colour indicates each community’s connectedness.
An example of the connectedness of the network influencers is @Daley_Pearson, the
#7DaysLater director. Not surprisingly, his node is centrally located and has a large purple
connected community, with the hashtag #7DaysLater strongly connected to his conversation.
This indicates he frequently talked to his network about #7DaysLater, which was very
significant in the conversation. In contrast, the node that represents @tokyostuntbear, one of
the professional directorial contributors, indicates that while they are centrally located to the
#7DaysLater conversation, their network is not as extensive as Pearson’s nor does it have as

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much impact. The brown colour highlights their connectivity within this conversational
network.
Figure 1: The #7DaysLater Twitter Network and Communication Influencers
The quantitative analysis established the following:
Users
Topics
@7DaysLaterTV
@Daley_Pearson
@HarrisonTheFan
@MWhalan
@henry_and_aaron
@bajopants
@ABC2
@WASHINGTONx
@JordanRasko
@tomandalex
#7DaysLater
#qanda
#ZandA
#spooky
#Animation
#FlightoftheConchords
#Western
#Hawaii
#ggtv
#zombie
If we eliminate the ABC staff Twitter handles (@7DaysLaterTV, @Daley_Pearson,
@bajopants, @ABC2, @JordanRasko and @tomandalex) along with celebrities and external
production professionals (@henry_and_aaron, and @WASHINGTONx), @HarrisonTheFan
and @MWhalan are the top two network influencers. To broaden the investigable sample
group, @zenjito, @jarradseng and @Mikey_Nicholson were also included. From the highest

28
engaged topics, it is also clear that Episode 3, ‘Zombies Flight for Equality’ (#ZandA) and
Episode 5, ‘A Bullet with Braille on It’, were the most engaged episodes of the season – a fact
confirmed during the interview with Richard Huddleston. This quantitative analysis provides
the basis for the qualitative research, which included interviews with the #7DaysLater team
and the most influential Twitter contributors.
Through the interview process, it emerged that participants engaged in social TV to learn
how to operate in the professional production environment. Users were also interested in
understanding if the program was co-creative in its approach and inclusive of the trumpeted
‘audience participation’. @HarrisonTheFan indicates that his participation aligns with what
Kuehn and Corrigan (2013) refer to as hope labour:
I eventually want to end up writing and producing for film and television and thought
this would be just a good experience to start with. I mainly have a background in
writing and directing for theatre and handling social media (as a job), so this was the
perfect crossover.
@MWhalan indicates concern with whether this program is indeed collaborative and
inclusive of the audience input:
I felt in the early shows the whole 'collaborative' thing was a bit of a fraud, a front for
the strongly pre-conceived ideas of the writers and performers on '7DayLater' [sic]. Sort
of choosing the tablecloths while the captain steered the ship. I saw many, many
suggestions that were never used. Later I noticed a big shift where the '7DaysLater'
realised the real power of crowdsourcing, though it rather felt the template of each show
had been pre-produced well in advance. Maybe they did throw it all together from
scratch but I wonder. I think Daley learnt to throw decisions he normally reserved to
himself to the crowd, and often found a vastly improved result. Part of it was having
enough critical mass of creative people to make worthwhile responses. I think
7DaysLater learnt the more open they were, the better it got.
Overall, there are indicators that the transfer of knowledge occurs within this innovative
production project. While participation in the production process of the program is one aspect
of social TV, the exchange of knowledge between the participants is also a very attractive
motivation for user participation. @HarrisonTheFan indicates how the skills he learnt from
participating in the #7DaysLater project are directly transferable to his developing media
career:
I learnt how open some people are to a creating new content and television with some
incredible and outlandish ideas. I also learnt how to be a better director from Daley and
what it takes to write a good sketch. Also how to interact with different areas of social
media, which eventually lead to me creating a calculated effort to making an Australian
Horror film go viral on Reddit.
The @MWhalan quote in particular indicates how some input was used while other
crowdsourced input was ignored. I have previously argued the case for cultural intermediation
as a means of managing audience input against the technical, regulatory and editorial
constraints of co-creative production within the ABC (Hutchinson 2013a). The cultural
intermediation framework aligns with social TV in that it is a co-creative production
methodology that is facilitated by intermediaries that understand both the interests of the

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participants and the institutional focus of the ABC. The cultural intermediaries of
#7DaysLater may not have understood the interests of the participants initially, but through
interaction with the vocal members, they developed a rapport that enabled interests and
concerns to be developed and shared amongst the professional producers and the online
participants. The challenge for the cultural intermediaries operating in this capacity is to not
only interact with the most vocal participants but to also engage with the marginalised
participants. Although a complex undertaking, the combination of rigorous social media
network analysis combined with an innovative production methodology may reduce the
potential for such fringe voices to be ignored.
The Role of Cultural Intermediation for Developing PSB 2.0
So far, this paper has addressed convergence’s impact on PSM, the current PSM environment
in Australia, the #7DaysLater case study and how cultural intermediation can operate to
mitigate the marginalisation of voices. The final area this paper will explore is the meta-level
of online governance and the intersection of PSB policymaking. To do this I will build on the
framework of Benedetta Brevini, who notes a shift in PSM policymaking towards what could
be viewed as PSB 2.0 (2013).
Brevini notes that ‘PSB as a policy framework has been based on a socio-democratic set of
beliefs that recognize the crucial function of the state in providing the conditions for an
effective social, cultural and political participation in a democratic society’ (2013, p. 3).
Combining this definition with the #7DaysLater case study suggests that the emerging
production methodology is more than comedy television, but also a vehicle for effective
social, cultural and political participation. Further, in a networked communication
environment that utilises social media for participation – specifically social TV – national
boundary construction becomes obsolete as users participate from all parts of the globe,
drawing on their local culture(s) to do so. In this environment, a shift towards a global PSM
approach is required, but raises an important question. Who will pay for such a mechanism? If
the government and its citizens financially support a nation’s PSM organisation, why should
its content and services be made available to other nations? For this reason, PSM policy needs
to be constructed beyond economic criteria when an update to its policy framework is
required.
As a policy framework, PSB 2.0 acts as a way of incorporating online media and their
technologies into the global policy arena. Brevini holds that ‘PSB 2.0 becomes a media policy
instrument (Syversten 1999) based on a set of normative values that aims to fulfil the
democratic, social and cultural needs of the society by transferring traditional PSB ethos
online’ (2013, p. 31). As part of this mechanism, PSB 2.0 contains four normative criteria in
citizenship, universality, quality and trust: citizenship for full participation in politics;
universality for access and retrievability of content and services; quality that requires constant
renegotiation ‘from the producers with the needs of the viewers’ (Ibid., p. 49); and finally,
trust in PSM as a source of information within the media cornucopia. The globally networked
environment – where local ideals and values are introduced to the policy arena – means that
the significance of cultural values is increasing in each of these criteria. Beyond the question
of economics, it is problematic to introduce PSB 2.0 through these criteria for reasons
including the liberalism/social democracy distinction and the heterogeneity of
access/retrievability via differing internet protocols in different countries. In light of these
complications, the cultural intermediary becomes more than a mediator between the producers
and consumers of cultural products; the intermediary is an agent in the implementation of a
developing PSM policy framework.
In the #7DaysLater case study, the supervising producer, as a cultural intermediary, was
responsible for aligning the contributions to the program with the editorial policies of the

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ABC, as legislated in the ABC Act 1983. In this example, the cultural intermediary was
specifically responsible for ensuring the brand of the ABC maintained its integrity across
multiple social media platforms as contributors participated in content production, most times
unaware of the implications of the editorial policies. The cultural intermediaries are certainly
building trust amongst the audience as they consistently negotiate the quality of the content,
however the impact that their involvement may play in citizenship and access is yet
undetermined. One could argue that the cultural intermediary is promoting access through the
use of numerous online platforms, which ties in to the notion of citizenship. I would argue
that cultural intermediation has the potential to facilitate the global perspective of
development and implementation of public service media policy frameworks, doing so
through increased involvement in citizenship, access and retrievability of content and
services.
Discussion
Convergence culture and its technology have dramatically changed how audiences interact
with media and disrupted governance models in the process. Although it has been argued that
the democratisation capacity of convergence is for the most part speculation, there are now
documented accounts of convergence media being operationalised within the PSM sector.
Within PSM, it is an unaccepted notion that convergence has disrupted its governance to
completely democratise its operation and redefine the societal impact of these organisations.
At the same time, various in-house policies have shifted to accommodate increased volumes
of user-created content on specific projects and programming. As cultural practice and values
shift through new media technologies, the call for a reworked global public service media
policy framework is crucial. In this scenario, cultural intermediation plays a significant role in
developing the citizenship, access, quality and trust of content production and service
distribution as elements of an alternative model to market-driven cultural production. Perhaps
without realising, PSM has been developing PSB 2.0 policies through its innovative content
production strategies that have more or less overridden nation-state boundaries.
If PSM is responsible for the conceptual construction of regional borders for national and
cultural identity, how does audience participation disrupt those borders and their national
cultural policies? Social TV is reflective of how digital technologies are ignorant towards
geography, and therefore circumvent existing national and cultural boundaries. In this
research, users interacting with the production of the television program #7DaysLater were
primarily based in Australia, but could have easily been located in any part of the world,
drawing on their own locative and cultural perspectives to co-create. In this context, the
innovative capacity of PSM challenges some of the core understandings of public service
broadcasting as a builder of national boundaries and the public sphere; the broadcaster is
actually talking with a new, hybrid, global audience. It is in this environment that the
construction of new publics and new public service media catering to global perspectives is
required. It is crucial, however, that while facilitating these new publics, cultural
intermediaries ensure that individuals are not merely pushed to the outside of social networks,
and that user interests are continually negotiated to ensure genuine civic and cultural
participation.
Keane (2014) suggests that the new global public service media organisation is one that is
slightly detached from the core Reithian PSB values in that it is a hybrid form of media beast.
Martin (2014) notes that it is difficult to identify where the PSM-ness ends and the private
production begins in high quality ABC television drama, where the post-production (and
indeed the funding model) resembles a blend of public service and private, commercial
entities. This is also true of the impacts of convergence culture on the evolving public service
media model. Discerning convergence culture is crucial for not only aligning national public

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media institutions with audience participation, but also for the development and
implementation of regulatory frameworks that facilitate co-creative media within the
commercial sector. The challenge for public service media is to translate the value of these
hybrid media systems for globalhybridised audiences into the policy arena in order to bolster
the support for innovative convergent culture participants.
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1Rethian values refer to the original public service values as described by Sir John Reith,
the first General Director of the BBC.
2 The Twitter Application Programming Interface (API) enables users to access public
streams of information from hashtags and/or users. Although it is ideal for research, it
worth noting this is only a portion of the entire conversation, which would otherwise be
referred to as the ‘firehose’.
Author Bio:
Jonathon Hutchinson (Ph.D. 2013, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and
Innovation, Queensland University of Technology) has recently completed his thesis
investigating the role of user-generated content within the ABC. During this time, he trained
as an ethnographer in both online and offline environments, and is also skilled at
organisational ethnography. Hutchinson has been published in the Australian Journal of
Communication, Media International Australia, M/C Journal and Platform, and is the 2013
winner of the Australian and New Zealand Communications Association’s Grant Noble Prize
for Best Postgraduate Student Paper Award. He is currently a Lecturer in Online Media and
Communication at the University of Sydney.