the role of public service media in building the #global stadium during fifa world cup 2014: the case of operators in belgium, portugal and uk

Abstract

The entry into the Twenty-First Century raised a number of challenges for journalism, mainly caused by the development of the Internet (Bivens, 2008; Erdal, 2011). In the first decade of this century, the mass of the network and computers marked the debates around the reconfiguration of journalism in this new environment. Already during the second decade, the development  of  mobile  information  devices  and  the  growth  of  social  media  added  new reasons  to  think  this  new  ecosystem.  All  these  discussions  will  necessarily  have  to  be integrated into the reflection on the renewed role of the Public Service Media (PSM). Once they have evolved in a broadcast environment, public operators are now faced with the need to distribute content on different platforms, using different languages and also addressing the public with diverse modes of consumption and positioning towards the contents (Hermida,

2013; Neto, 2014). Thus, we start from a case study about the media coverage that public operators from several European countries performed during the WORLD CUP in Brazil. To find structural elements of the PSM, we added to each country the study of a private channel. So,

12  games were  analysed, involving six  information outlets of  European  operators  -  three private and three public - from three different countries: Belgium, Portugal and the UK. We want, in this research, to highlight signs of convergence and opportunities created for a more active consumption (Moe, 2010; Westlund, 2013). Among the key findings of this study, we can highlight the poor utilization of the opportunities for effective convergence, both in terms of content and in that of citizens’ integration.