Different Diversities: A comparison of policies and practices at three European Public Service Video on Demand Services

Beskrivelse

While commercial globally operating SVODs have discovered identity-based diversity as a branding strategy (Asmar et al. 2023) and way to project a benevolent image, the concept of diversity has a much longer history and a broader meaning in public service media (PSM) tied to the foundational ideal of universality that obliges PSM to speak to all members of a, usually nationally delimited, society and to offer them a diverse array of programmes and viewpoints. More identity-based ideas of diversity have entered public service remits and practice in a cultural "diversity turn" since the 1990s (Horsti 2014) as well as entering regulators’ efforts in benchmarking and monitoring diversity. Our question is thus: How are these two understandings of ‘diversity’ expressed 1) in legal and policy requirements to the PSM, 2) in strategy papers and public service audits issued by PSM or their regulators and 3) in the presentation and exposure of content in the VoD interfaces?

We examine these questions through quantitative and qualitative studies of three PSM organisations and their VoD services: BBC iPlayer (UK), DRTV (DK) and the different VoDs in the ARD Mediathek (DE). We analyse the presentation and exposure of ‘diversity’ (in its different understandings) in VoD content via longitudinal datasets that document the VoD landing pages daily - starting February 2022 - and record the position of every programme title at the VoDs’ front pages, as well as deck titles. We analyse for each of the three countries policy- and legal documents such as The Royal Charter (UK), the public service contract (DK) and Medienstaatsvertrag (DE). We analyse how strategy documents and auditing reports issued by the PSM organisations or their regulators have talked about diversity in relation to their VoDs in the period covering these two years. The combination of these methods and comparison of the three broadcasters from different countries allows us to showcase how differently diversity can be conceptualised and operationalised in VoD practice.

This paper is a report on different publishing strategies for ‘diversity content’ in PSM VoD interfaces, a discussion of the potentially conflicting relation between the foundational politically oriented diversity ideals at the heart of PSMs’ contribution to societal coherence, and the more recent, individualised understanding of diversity as defining one’s identity, one’s relation to society and one’s ability to exercise one’s rights (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002).

Periode	26 sep. 2024
Begivenhedstitel	10th ECREA Conference in Ljubljana: 24 - 27 September 2024
Begivenhedstype	Konference
Placering	Ljubljana, SlovenienVis på kort
Grad af anerkendelse	International