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not append comments to news stories. However, it does provide a UGC portal where more directed discussion takes place and users are encouraged to comment on issues of the day.13
While there is not room here to detail the interactive functionality at every national broadcaster, it is clear that the CBC has what can be considered an ambitious outlook when it comes to issues of interactive functionality and design. The CBC rarely closes a story to comments. It tends to happen only in highly controversial situations and situations where the CBC is obliged to withhold some information from publication, such as when a child is involved in a crime. This ambitious approach is laudable, but the CBC must remain vigilant to ensure that its online design and functionality do not eclipse its goals and/or the needs of the market. Bracken and Balfour (2004) make similar observations about the BBC‟s online activities, arguing that public broadcasters are often tempted to do things online simply because they can, and that they should instead rationally justify and intentionally design their interactive functions.
Along with issues of design, human nature and moderation the CBC is also faced with a mandate and corporate organization that is twenty years behind the fast-changing times. In order to allow it to make the transition online the CBC needs to know what the public expects its role to be in the new media environment. Subsequent to an updated mandate, the CBC needs a budget to support its online activities. For fifteen years the CBC has been funneling funds from other budget areas to pay for cbc.ca. The time has come for both the CBC and its government overseers to concede that times have changed and that – along with radio and television operating funds – the CBC requires new media funding.
New Media versus Old Media
Audience participation and interaction is not something that magically appeared when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. It has existed at least as long as an institutional news media have. The World Wide Web has simply changed the mechanics. That said, changing mechanics can have a great impact on content.
Each media has its own form of engagement and offers its own potential for interaction. Thus, different types of channels have different strengths and weaknesses. For
13 See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/default.stm
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easily listened to in groups and subsequently commented upon amongst group members.In terms of narrative format, newspapers are perhaps the traditional media format most similar to the news stories at CBC.CA. Indeed, the CBC draws much of its online content from the Canadian Press wire service, in the same way many print publications do. The traditional letters to the editor page is Newspaper‟s principle institutionalized channel for interaction and feedback. In some ways it is similar to the commenting function at cbc.ca.
Both formats tend to focus on user opinions about current affairs. That said, demands of the medium require newspaper‟s to publish only a very few comments. This can be seen as both a strength and a weakness. Because editors typically receive far more letters than they can print, they are forced to select a few of those that they judge the best. This cuts down on both repetition and tangential shifts of topic. However, this same strength is also a limitation.
Those whose comments are not published may feel as if the interactivity available in a newspaper‟s context does not serve their needs. Commenting at cbc.ca on the other hand is almost instantaneous, allowing any interested user to feel as if his or her opinion has been represented.Television has a similarly low level of mediated audience participation. There is a degree of content interactivity, but almost no communicative interactivity. That said, users are of course free to interact with one another as they watch TV.
Online interactivity like that at CBC.CA can be seen as a new way of mediating interaction that wasto an extent already possible and expanding its potential exposure to a much wider audience. Where most television viewers and radio listeners were limited to commenting on the news to those in their immediate surroundings, websites like the CBC.CA make it easy for them to share their opinions and allow their comments to be displayed for an unlimited length of time and viewed by an unlimited number of people. In this regard, online interactivity is much more efficient. However, the potential for new media to act as a game changer has often been commented upon both by the popular press and by academics. While efficiency is to be lauded, new media functionality can certainly strive to improve the quality of discourse it facilitates.
One of the most important elements that new media designers, like those who have created the CBC website, need to take into account is the function served by the interaction by
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both the sender and the receiver. Certainly, the ability readers now have to so easily leave their comments and have them exposed to so many others,is a benefit for senders. However, the benefit to receivers is somewhat more difficult to determine. I and millions of others have for years already been subject to expressive comments about the news from a disembodied voice emanating from behind a newspaper at the breakfast table. Adding the voices of thousands of strangers and their own opinions on the news is of questionable benefit.
Limitations
This study is limited by a number of factors. Chief amongst these is the issue of language.
As a study focusing on only English language CBC content, the entire French operation of the CBC has been left out of the analysis. The CBC‟s French operation uses www.radio-canada.ca as its online portal. The CBC‟s English and French websites use starkly different web designs, cater to different audiences and feature different content. Judging by the Google trends data, the English language service has been much more successful in attracting readers.
A cursory judgment suggests that the level of commenting at radio-canada.ca is much lower than that at cbc.ca.14
The other chief limiting factor of this study is the issue of sample size. As mentioned above, the CBC draws thousands upon thousands of comments every day. Sometimes a single story is controversial enough to attract in the range of 2000 comments. As such, tracking the conversations which take place within those threads and establishing a representative sample would require a substantial amount of research resources. Because of its relatively small sample size, this study‟s sample cannot be considered truly representative of the comments at cbc.ca. That said, there is no reason to believe that the trends observed within these 11 stories do not also play out in most other stories at cbc.ca. Indeed my informal observations at the CBC website suggest that they do. There seems to be an overall lack of meaningful conversation and a preponderance of low-exchange expressive interactivity and contrarian commenting.
14 For instance, at the time of writing the 2010 federal budget had recently been announced. The top story at cbc.ca regarding the budget had received 736 comments while the top budget story at radio-canada.ca had attracted only 39 comments.
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