Election Night Broadcasts and the Hybrid Media System: A Case Study of Australia

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of broadcast election night coverage, contemporaneous social media data, and semi-structured interviews focused on the 2018 Victorian state election to assess the extent and nature of media hybridity that occurred. This work contributes to the field by providing the first analysis of the hybrid media system using a case study event in Australia, the first study of a second-order election, and by focusing in detail on how journalistic processes and decisions shape hybridity and how these are, themselves, shaped by hybrid logics. It finds some evidence of hybrid norms and actions, but in other ways coverage followed traditional media logics.