Broadcast media as a community builder

Perhaps we obsess a little too readily with personalised media- the ‘information super highway right at our fingertips’… ‘twitter; the personalised newspaper’, ‘RSS feeds; the content YOU want anytime YOU want to have it’…. etc etc.

Maybe we are overlooking one of the lovely things about ‘broadcast’ media.

Because it is received in the knowledge that we weren’t the only ones to consume it at that time,  an event and a moment in time has been created we know simultaneously has been shared with others.

With this comes two things;

i) when we consume content we like, part of the enjoyment in the consumption is the receiving of the content with others, after all, we laugh more when others laugh around us. To share a conversation over something becomes part of the joy in consuming it in the first place.

ii) Secondly, and maybe slightly more overlooked, is the pleasure we take in ‘group derision’ of content; to consume content which we know isn’t meant for us but we deride it within a group. Think students watching Jeremy Kyle- you probably wouldn’t choose to watch it on your ownn but it becomes an event to watch it with others and take the piss out of the programme participants.

Not sure entirely where this post is leading suffice to say that I think the idea of broadcasting a message or piece of content, although isn’t very ‘social media’, I do believe has a role to play in combining and formulating groups of like minded individuals, in as much the same way that many social media campaign efforts seek to achieve. Although broadcast media is invariably not particularly targeted, it can on occasion have that same combining glue-like nature of people and communities akin to some of the best social media ideas out there.