What is Television? Comparing Media Systems in the Post-Broadcast Era

Abstract

This article emerges from the early stages of a large international study of the social, cultural and political role of television in the post-broadcast era where the convergence of media platforms has challenged conventional understandings of how the mass media work. Even though it might be premature to jump on the bandwagon which claims that national media systems are now irrelevant and that television, as the leading ‘old media’ format, is history, there is significant theoretical and empirical work to be done to adjust to the new, and highly contingent, environment — to find out what ‘television is’ today.