From ‘Content Providers’ to ‘Key Social Structures’: a Turn to Practice in Citizens’ Discourses on Spanish Public Service Television (TVE)

Abstract

This work analyses the evolution of citizens’ discourses on public service broadcasting in Spain before and after the wave of social unrest occurring between 2011 and 2013. A shift from a demand for barely defined towards more specific content, relating to the very structure of public service broadcasting, was detected. On the basis of an analysis of 11 focus groups formed by viewers of Televisión Española (TVE) and performed in two stages (2008-2009 and 2014-2016), a paradigm definable as a ‘turn to practice’ is confirmed. It has been observed that the practices pertaining to that paradigm have advocated for convergence and collaboration in the fields of information, the arts, critical thinking and certain institutional policies, which are also present in the citizenry’s definition of public service broadcasting. This has led viewers to call for a greater say in public service broadcasting and to emphasise communitarian forms of relating to it.