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BBC and New Media: Legitimization Strategies of a Public Service Broadcaster in a Corporate Market Environment

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Media, Organizations and Identity

Abstract

This chapter explores the use of new media by the BBC as a strategy for the institution to sustain its legitimacy under a new regulative regime that favours open market competition. Even though the BBC, one of the major Public Service Broadcasting institutions worldwide, is not privatized, it is, nonetheless, now obliged both to adopt practices that originate in the private sector in order to remain competitive in the changing media environment, and, at the same time, continually to secure and consolidate its justification for public funding. We argue that one of the practices strategically employed by the BBC in this process is the use of new media for purposes of public participation and self-representation by ordinary people, and we focus on a particular case study of this practice: Capture Wales, a BBC Wales Internet-based project that pictures Wales from the citizens’ autobiographical perspectives.1

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Thumim, N., Chouliaraki, L. (2010). BBC and New Media: Legitimization Strategies of a Public Service Broadcaster in a Corporate Market Environment. In: Chouliaraki, L., Morsing, M. (eds) Media, Organizations and Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230248397_3

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