Now that virtually anyone can publish almost anything from just about anywhere, how relevant is our national broadcaster? Mike McCluskey, State Director for the ABC, New South Wales, says the ABC’s relevance is growing.
The use of digital devices and the amount of digital content available is growing exponentially. With a reasonable amount of digital literacy and at relatively low cost, we can tap into world-wide information resources – to read, to view, to listen to. We can also publish our own content to a global audience: virtually anyone can publish anything and from anywhere.
It’s a new and exciting time, and one that poses questions and raises challenges for organisations such as the ABC, Australia’s public broadcaster, as it evolves from analog to digital, and adapts to the dynamic of an ever more participatory media environment, with constant, rapid change.
It’s the ABC’s challenge to meet the interests, expectations and demands of the Australian community. These demands and expectations are not easy to assess, given the nature of ongoing change. The community cannot always know what to expect in terms of technology or how that will impact on what it requires from its national broadcaster in the future.
Twenty years ago it would have been difficult to imagine twittering. It was even a challenge to imagine using a mobile phone in the ways we do today. It would certainly have been difficult to anticipate the kind of access to the depth of every imaginable kind of information that many of us now enjoy from a personal computer in the living room of our own homes – or indeed from a mobile device on a train or in a car.
This pace of change is set to continue – and there is no certainty in predicting how things may evolve. We do know, however, that media organisations will continue to operate in a space where the publication of user-generated content is ubiquitous. This isn’t an entirely new state of affairs. Audience contribution of content to the traditional media has a long history: letters to the editor, talkback radio, even the participation in television shows through phone-ins, for example, are common ways audiences have interacted with their media providers.
But we must differentiate between the nature of user-generated content and the content put out by the ABC.
User-generated content can be instantaneous. It doesn’t need to be mediated or go through an editorial process before going to air or being published in any online or other media.
When anyone can publish from anywhere, virtually anything, the audience must ask itself: how do you choose the information you want or need? How do you know whether it can be trusted? How do you assess the integrity of the information available? What can you tell about its validity and accuracy?
I believe that an important role of organisations such as the ABC is to ensure that there is a trusted environment that the community can rely on when required. This means, a media outlet that provides the integrity of information that the ABC’s rigorous editorial process ensures. The ABC will continue to be valued and trusted so long as we continue to provide editorial rigour, integrity and validity.
This is not to say that the ABC can’t participate in the amazing interchange of information with the community through user-generated content, via all forms of digital exchange. But the rigour of our editorial process and the validity of information we deliver are the differentiators between user-generated content and ABC content.
Times of natural disaster or other significant events provide abundant evidence of how the community looks for information that it can rely on. In these times people need information that may save lives, or help them protect their property or their animals. In such times, the ABC has found that audience numbers rise considerably, and we believe this is because we pay significant attention to providing the right kind of reliable disaster information across all our media outlets. During bushfires, floods, even the recent dust storms in New South Wales, the community has a dire need to know what is going on, and they flock to the ABC. They come, of course through the traditional services of radio and television, but also to interact with the ABC, twittering, texting, accessing our social networking pages and so on, providing large volumes of user-generated content. In this way, we find the community is reporting on the incident to itself. They come to us for information – and they use us to share their information about what is happening with us and with the rest of the affected community.
The ABC plays a role as a provider of trusted content, and, as the community develops digital literacy, the ABC helps people to make choices of content and how they can participate in the changing world. By and large it is very hard for the community to know what they want or what will come next, although it is clear that there is a general demand for converged media access tools, allowing people to read, view, listen and create content from anywhere at anytime.
In the meantime, even making the choice of what kind of television to buy at a retail store can be difficult. The multiple options available with different technology platforms and other variables can make it difficult to know what the right thing is – especially if all the choices look good. We believe it is our role to assist people in developing digital literacy and provide trusted content to help the community make the best choices possible.
In these contexts, we believe that there will continue to be a significant role for high quality journalism, high quality entertainment programming, high quality information programming and high quality service provision. We also believe that the ABC is well placed as it evolves to meet these new challenges to continue to provide the rigour and reliability that will ensure its ongoing relevance in a changing world.