JOURNAL
NHK and ABC

Zorana Kostic

Department of Media and Communications, University of Sydney, Australia

Published for RIPE@2014, Workgroup 5: PSM and Convergence


Overview

Triggered by the pressures of globalization, the processes of media convergence have split into a two-way communication process consisting of both convergent and-divergent axes. The challenges this duality has created have a continuing and accelerating impact on public broadcasting around the world, and the way it is being experienced by audiences. The more the themes and technology of convergence are exploited in and through the media, the more possibilities appear across multiple digital platforms, which cohere to form a type of techno-postmodernism or techno-cyberism. These convergent processes, where they intersect with public broadcasting have been branded, for want of a better term, as Public Service Media (PSM). The paper analyses these processes through an examination of transformational experiences in the oldest PSBs in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan’s NHK and Australia’s ABC. In this context the NHK and ABC become paradigms of how technological knowledge and social/cultural transformation can be reimagined to benefit the public interest.