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Television is a significant mediator of past and historical events in modern media systems. This dissertation studies practices of representing the past on Dutch television as a multi-platform phenomenon. Dynamic screen practices such as broadcasting, cross-media platforms, digital thematic channels and online television archives provide access to a wide range of audio-visual materials.By exploring how television's convergence with new media technologies has affected its role as a mediator of the past, this study reflects on how contemporary representations of history contribute to the construction of cultural memory. Specifically,the poetics of doing history in archive-based and documentary programming are analysed from 2000 onwards, when television professionals in the Netherlands seized the opportunity to experiment with storytelling practices made possible by the increased digitisation of archival collections and the presence of online and digital platforms. This study is founded on a textual analysis of audio-visual cases to reveal processes of meaning making, and a production studies approach to gain insight into creators' strategies of broadcasting and multi-platform storytelling in relation to historical events. Such an approach reveals distinct textual, cultural-historical and institutional aims, strategies and conventions for doing history on television, bringing power relations to the surface. By means of an analysis of distinct cases, different aspects of doing history on television and television as a practice of cultural memory in the multi-platform era are explicated. The studied programmes and practices were broadcast and provided an online cross-media experience between early 2000 and the first half of 2015, and continue to live on online. These include the archive-based history programme andere tijden [changing times] (NPS/NTR/VPRO, 2000– ), whose treatment of history is based on actuality; the narrowcasting and cross-platform scheduling of previously broadcast history and nostalgia programming on Dutch digital thematic channels, specifically NPO Doc and NostalgieNet; the World War II documentary project de oorlog/13 in de oorlog [the war/13 at war] (NPS, 2009–2010) focusing specifically on Holocaust representation through broadcasting and multi-platform storytelling; and the cross-media documentary project in europa [in europe] (VPRO, 2007–2009) which uses multi-platform strategies to constitute engagement with twentieth century European history. These cases provide a considerable starting point for a reflection on the interplay between past and present via television. New digital technologies are the driving force behind increasingly connected experiences offered and used by television creators.Each case discusses different dynamics in the degree of cross- and transmediality, as well as the choices made by the creators as 'memory makers' to represent a certain type of history. This dissertation consequently shows, first, how the selection and circulation of historical narratives and audio-visual archive materials in new contexts of television works in relation to processes of mediation, hybridity and curation, and second, how such practices help to search, preserve and perform individual and collective cultural memories. Televised histories connect users with the past and provide necessary contextual frameworks through cross-media and transmedia storytelling, demonstrating the continuing importance of stories and memories produced through televisual practices – challenging accepted versions of history.

In the first decade of the 21st century Indonesian television underwent drastic transformations as part of the broader socio-political changes following the fall of the New Order regime of President Suharto in 1998. As part of the reforms, Indonesia implemented regional autonomy, devolving powers from the central to sub-provincial governments. The process has turned the country from one of the most centralised states in the world into one of the highly decentralised. In contrast to the authoritarian New Order era when the central state government implemented a uniform top down policy at all levels of government administration, post-New Order Indonesia has seen the rise of the local, characterised by greater regional control over political and economic affairs. This has led to new social, political and cultural dynamics at the sub-national level. As the nation searches for a new post-authoritarian identity by transforming its political systems into a democracy, television is inextricably embedded in the process. The dissertation investigates one important aspect of such transformations, namely the rise of TV lokal (local television). Since the turn of the millennium the Indonesian television landscape has transformed rapidly from a centralised system, consisting of predominately national broadcasters into a more decentralised television structure with hundreds of new stations operating at a local level, broadcasting for a limited service area. The study set out to explore the rise of TV lokal by investigating its first decade of development (2002-2012). It aims to identify local television’s specific role in the construction of locality in post-New Order Indonesia. What are the underlying factors that shape such a role, and in what forms and through which mechanisms does local television contribute to the process? The analysis focuses on institutional developments, emphasising the industrial dimension of television. It is based on fieldwork that was carried out in several locations, including Yogyakarta and Solo in Central Java, Denpasar in Bali and Manado in North Sulawesi. Four sample stations were used as case studies namely Bali TV, Jogja TV, TATV and Pacific TV. By combining both macro and micro analyses the dissertation identifies factors that underpinned local television development (Chapter 1 and 2), scrutinises its characteristics and modes of operations (Chapter 3-5) and investigates its specific roles in the socio-cultural transformations at the local level (Chapter 6 and 7). It employs a critical media industry approach to examine different aspects of local television industry, including both its extrinsic (public discourse in Chapter 1, regulations in Chapter 2) and intrinsic elements (ownership in chapter 3, economic practices in Chapter 4, programming and production practices in Chapter 5-7). The interplay between these elements is examined from a historical perspective, situating the analysis within specific historical contexts that have shaped the development of local television at both local as well as national levels.

Liveness has been a persistent and much-debated concept in media studies. It has long been associated with broadcast media, and television in particular. However, the emergence of social media, following the dot-com bubble bust, has brought new forms of liveness into effect. These challenge common assumptions about and perspectives on liveness, which fail to capture these new forms, thus provoking a revisiting of the concept. This dissertation seeks to develop a more comprehensive understanding of what liveness is and, perhaps more pertinently, to clarify the stakes surrounding the category of the ‘live’. In this book, I argue that liveness is a product of the dynamic interaction of media institutions, technologies and users. It manifests itself in so-called constellations of liveness. By analyzing the constellations of liveness in four different cases - Livestream, eJamming, The Voice and Facebook - I explore the operation of the category of liveness and pinpoint the conditions under which it comes into being. In doing so, I identify a paradox inherent to liveness. This paradox derives from the fact that although liveness promises to de-mediate mediation, media institutions have a need, stemming from their reliance on schedules and tightly formatted narratives for economic viability, to ‘control’ media content (which inevitably requires mediation). The first two chapters introduce the liveness-as-constellation perspective. In chapter one the relation of liveness to media power is explored, whereas chapter two analyzes the constructedness of liveness. The attention of the dissertation then shifts in chapter three and four, where liveness is used to facilitate a comparison between the media of the broadcast era and those of the social media era. The comparative analysis of The Voice and Facebook allows for a discussion of the mechanisms of control (over content) in broadcast and social media. Instrumental in the analysis are a number of tensions surrounding liveness, which occur when its three domains – media institutions, technologies and users – don’t synch up to provide a coherent definition of the ‘live’. In comparing those two cases, I show that in the social media era control is increasingly executed through regulating distribution through algorithms rather than exercising control through media production. The cases’ selection furthermore stimulates a reflection on how social media interact with, rather than replace, broadcast media. In relation to The Voice I pinpoint tensions surrounding liveness pertaining to the rhythms and temporalities of broadcast television, which I then link to contemporary debates around television scheduling and Big Data driven artistic strategy. In addition, I locate a tension concerning audience participation, which in turn invites a consideration of how producers maintain control over the televised production. In the case of Facebook, I identify tensions concerning users as the locus of ‘live’, which I relate to several debates: that about sticky and spreadable media, about the transition from normative filtering of the broadcast era to statistical filtering through algorithms in social media, and finally, that about the emerging Like economy of the Web. In the conclusion I relay the paradox of liveness to what Michael Schudson (1987) has called “the ideal of conversation” and revisit the reflection on broadcast media and social media.

Seeing the Bigger Picture examines the diffusion process of high definition television in the Netherlands between 2006 and 2010. By combining research traditions of institutional decision-making and end-user adoption in a multi-method empirical approach, this study answers the question how processes on institutional commercialization and end-user adoption are related to each other. The diffusion process of HDTV in the Netherlands, but also of new media technologies in general, should not be understood as a linear process, but as a dynamic process of constant negotiation, in which the decisions of institutions and end-users are influenced by a great number of external factors as well as the expectations of each others’ actions. This study forms a valuable step in closing a gap in academic diffusion research, in which institutions and end-users are often researched separately