Digital Technology and the Future of Broadcasting: Global Perspectives

Abstract

We live in a fast-changing, complex, and technology-driven world where users are confronted with a host of digital gadgets, and ever-expanding array of social media apps, and have the ability to generate content. The catchwords “digital technology” and “digital convergence” have permeated the internet, television, media, and communication studies for over a decade. Since 1990, emerging digital media technologies have increasingly become the hot topic for scholarly study in digital media and internet studies, widely theorized in academic circles, and the subject of practical considerations. Digital technologies are changing the way individuals are producing and consuming media texts. At the digital technology level, we are witnessing major changes in production, distribution, and exhibition practices of digital media. An academic, corporate executive or journalist dealing with digital technology must continually ask the painful question: Which technologies should be produced, distributed, sold and made accessible to future broadcasting audiences and generations? Pavlik’s Digital Technology and the Future Of Broadcasting refers to a vast array and a broad range of perspectives, topics, issues related to digital technologies in the short span of its 252 pages as diverse as: 3D imagery, virtual reality, algorithm, audience engagement, augmented reality, broadband, and more. Pavlik, professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, has written widely on the impact of new technology on journalism, media and society. His books include Converging Media (2015, in its fourth edition), Media in the Digital Age (2008), Journalism and New Media (2001) and The People’s Right to Know (1994). Specifically, this latest book features 14 original chapters organized into three parts. The first two parts contain chapters based on competitively reviewed research papers originally presented at the BEA2014 Research Symposium. The third part features chapters based on presentations by a panel of well-known broadcasting scholars from around the U.S. and internationally, as well as chapters authored by the paper discussants at the BEA2014 Research Symposium. While chapters in the first two parts provide empirically based scholarship on directions and issues in broadcasting in an increasingly global, digital arena, the third part provides reflection on the problems and prospects for research, education, and public policy that arise in this era of rapid and continuing change. Part I’s theme is research challenges in a changing broadcast environment, in particular, social media, social networking sites, streaming video, eye tracking, and audience measurement. The theme of part II is research issues and advances in global broadcasting, in particular, international broadcasting developments, visual structure, and digital displays. Authors here include Joon Soo Lim of Syracuse University, Young Chan Hwang of Seoul Broadcasting System, and Miao Guo, Michael Holmes, Michael Brouder, Robert Alan Brookey, all of Ball State University. Part II focuses on research INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON MEDIA MANAGEMENT 2016, VOL. 18, NOS. 3–4, 183–185