Reimagining Public Service Broadcasting News for the Digital Age

This dissertation compares and contrasts the development of the use of online technologies in the national newsrooms of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). It critically assesses the relationship that the implementation of these technologies has with each public service broadcasters (PSB) respective mandate. It uncovers how the three online national news services have been framed in public discourse in relation to the mandates of the PSBs considered and explores how various structures, including legislative and regulatory ones, have enabled and constrained the development of online use for national news services at each of the PSBs. It further provides a comparative analysis that sheds light on the similarities and differences of online news at the BBC, CBC and ABC. This project relies on a content analysis of the homepages of the national news websites of each of the broadcasters considered, a critical document analysis of official documents pertaining to the development of online news services at each of the broadcasters, and a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the coverage of the development of online news services at the broadcasters considered, in the national daily press of the countries where each PSB operates. This dissertation shows that the influence of market liberalism on newspaper coverage and on government media policies has placed commercial media organizations, including newspapers, in a position of power and privilege within media ecologies and has marginalized the PSBs. It found that PSB in Britain, Canada and Australia, to varying extents, needs to be reimagined not just through new initiatives by the PSBs themselves but also through new legislation and regulatory mechanisms that are designed specifically with the digital media environment in mind. Reimagining PSB for the digital media age is essential because failing to do so will result in the continued and increasing marginalization of public broadcasters, which in turn will facilitate media systems in which access to quality, relevant news and information is unequal. This will leave some citizens without reasonable access to the news and information needed to participate meaningfully in the public sphere.