Open Media Content

Content characteristics

Threaded through all of the creative propositions discussed in the Creative Forum process has been one key idea - Participation. This is the defining quality that separates successful networked content from broadcast media. The ability of users to create, annotate, comment and communicate around content underpinned the adoption of the internet as a cultural phenomenon from the days of email, through the spread of the world wide web to blogs, social networking sites like Flickr and Massively Multiplayer Online Games like World of Warcraft. This is a two way communications medium where users need an "architecture of participation" to engage.

The concept of participation can provide the heart of a new concept of Public Service. It encourages citizens to become users rather than viewers of content: active participants, who produce, modify, comment on, judge and repurpose content rather than act as the passive (though grateful) recipients of broadcast information and entertainment. Rather than thinking of high quality "content" in the manner of TV programmes it might be more useful to think of high quality participatory services where linear content is only one aspect of an experience that might be accessed through many channels - online, via mobile, kiosk or TV.

Pulse is an illustrative example of just such a content-led service - a hypothetical online platform for social history created from user generated and archived digital media. Its initial aim is to provide a public space to allow users to deposit material of social significance which can be tagged by theme, location and context. Pulse would also have an editorial layer which encourages and commissions individuals and communities, professionals and amateurs to weave stories or 'curate' areas of the service.

Could a broadcaster not serve these audiences equally well? Narrative history has of course been one of the most successful TV genres of recent years. The first problem is structural: Pulse's combination of social history, cultural identity, current affairs and interactive digital media would probably fall across several commissioning departments; 360 degree commissioning is still an aspiration rather than a reality. Even so, any of the current PSBs could be expected to deliver some high quality, probably presenter led, flagship series in this area. Innovative new formats might draw in new audiences with celebrity or archive as Wall to Wall's Who Do You Think You Are? has done for the BBC and The Second World War in Colour did for ITV. There might even be a web site where users are asked to contribute their own stories around the TV material. But after the series' broadcast these contributions will remain untended and unused - until and unless the series is re-commissioned. And money talks - current evidence suggests that the budget provided for any online participatory element is unlikely to exceed 5% of the budget for the TV series. With the best will in the world it is hard for the participatory tail to wag the television dog.

That isn't to say that there haven't been worthy attempts by broadcasters to create stand-alone participatory projects that share some of the characteristics of Pulse. But this has proven problematic. Without a TV component much of the armoury of the broadcasting organisation cannot be used: the editorial excellence, promotion and ability to engage the audience. The partnerships with other organisations which could mitigate this are rarely successful. And absence of TV means these projects receive little recognition within the organisation. Delivering these types of project through the online division of current PSBs seems to offer no clear advantage over a PSP type entity which could always partner with broadcasters where a television component is required.

The whole PSP approach to the creative process and the relationship to its audiences will be the reverse of that in television. In television the editorial vision is the producers'; they determine subject, story, format and presentation; the audience is only invited to comment afterwards (if at all) as an extension of the programme. Pulse starts from the participatory principle - the audience are the users who build and own it. They contribute content and by tagging the content, they decide what is meaningful to themselves and to others. Narrative layers are vital but they contextualise and structure the content - they do not replace it. Any subject can be covered if the users want to see it and the service is there for the long term. And because of this, audience numbers are different. Pulse, like many other PSP projects is probably best seen as having the "long tail" characteristics described by Chris Anderson.

Participation

It seems to us that an assumption of Participation is the starting point for all PSP experiences but we believe there are other characteristics that are likely to be almost as important:

Personalisation

In a networked world there is no need to think of the audience for a drama, entertainment or informational experience as an undifferentiated mass. As an active participant you can choose to tell me who you are, where you are and what you are interested in. As a producer I can use this information to provide you with a personalised experience.

Permeability

Growing from the traditions of the Internet, PSP-supported projects and services blur the distinction between producers and consumers. The creators of the story sit at the centre of concentric rings of other professional and amateur participants. Those nearer the centre invest time and energy in active participation; those at the margins consume the story more passively. Everyone can find a place where they gain most reward.

Community mediation

Though seen by many traditional media owners as a recent phenomenon, User Generated Content (UGC) in the form of self-publishing was always one of the prime engines for adoption of the web in the mid-90s. Harnessing the power of UGC for public service objectives will mean identifying communities with public service objectives and empowering them to create, mediate and moderate their own content and services. This shift in emphasis recognises the need for new editorial visions but devolves this to the community to deliver rather than establishing the PSP as an all-knowing editorial monolith.

Location sensitivity

The development of mobile technologies allows content to become sensitive to the location in which it is accessed. Factual, information, entertainment, drama and arts experiences will be pervasive - delivered to users dependent on where as well as when they want to engage.

Collaborative authorship

The PSP should encourage the emergence of new, strong and distinctive authorial voices that reflect the contemporary UK as well as incorporating diversity of views both within individual projects or services and across the entire output. Participative experiences require new forms of collaborative authorship that will foster the diversity of views that is felt to be disappearing from Public Service Broadcasting.

These are the qualities that will be central to the Public Service Content and experiences that the PSP will call into being. Some of them are present in (some) Public Service broadcasting and PSB-associated digital media activities but they certainly are not, and probably cannot be, central to organisations whose centre of gravity is the commissioning and production of television. But if these are a first draft of the Public Service Values of the PSP, in which areas should it be active?

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