Is This Social TV 3.0? On Funk and Social Media Policy in German Public Post-television Content Production

This article investigates how social media affects German public television. Due to recent dynamics in the field of social TV, notions of social TV as basically “tweeting while watching TV,” or as an “additional function” of television, need to be revised. As an addition to existing ideas of “Social TV 1.0” and “Social TV 2.0” and other characterizations, I refer here to “Social TV 3.0.” Current social TV features need to be characterized in the light of a “network of content” that combines the “media logic of television” and the “logic of social media” by means of their dynamic, flexible, and horizontal integration into the “matrix-media strategy” of TV executives impelled by a social media policy. By taking the content network funk (“a consortium of public broadcasters” ARD and “Second German Television” ZDF) as a prime example of social TV 3.0 in Germany, I analyze the merging of television and social media.