The platformisation of public-service broadcasting in Germany

Monday 3 April 2023, 15.30-17.00
Drift 21, Sweelinckzaal

How does public-service broadcasting in Germany position itself in the “platform society” (van Dijick et al. 2018) and undergo a process of “platformisation” (Poell et al. 2019)? The lecture explores these questions and discusses central challenges of platformisation, both for practitioners and for media scholars.
The presentation focuses especially at the levels of production and distribution and looks at different agents. Thereby, public-service broadcasting is understood as a heterogenous environment instead as one coherent institution. Based on a broader production study on the German TV fiction industry, the lecture analyses different strategies of platformisation especially in recent ‘quality’ or teen drama productions by ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, Second German Television). One case example is DRUCK/SKAM Germany (2018 –, ZDF/Funk), a transmedia youth series where a platformisation of public-service broadcasting becomes visible both in the distribution on different social media and in the production process with the emerging department of the social media producer.

Florian Krauß is a postdoc researcher at the department of Media Studies at the University of Siegen, Germany, and currently a visiting scholar at the Utrecht University. His research and teaching focuses on media industry studies, screenwriting research, gender and media, transnational media and media literacy. He is author of three books, including the forthcoming study Qualitätsserien aus Deutschland: Produktionspraktiken, Erzählweisen und Transformationen des Fernsehens (Quality Drama from Germany: Production Cultures, Narrative Styles and Television’s Transformations, Springer VS 2023), and co-editor of the recent anthologies Teen TV (Springer VS 2020) and Drehbuchforschung (“Screenwriting research”, Springer VS 2022).