The Future of Public Service Media and the Internet

2015

The future of public service broadcasting (PSB), or public service media (PSM) as it has come to be known with the increasing use of multimedia platforms, is more uncertain, and unchartered, than perhaps ever before. With the emergence of networked issue communities, citizen journalist blogs, non- profit news sites, and the spontaneous viral sharing of information and campaigns, one could claim that there already exists public media de facto, complementing and perhaps even duplicating some functions of institutional public media de jure. In many mature PSM countries, the debate about public service media entails claims how those institutions now distort free media markets. In addition, the commercialization of the legacy and online media landscape is diminishing the original public service ethos of serving the citizens. And yet, given the viral disinformation, as well as both government and corporate control of the media, it would seem that the role of public service media is ever m...

This is an introduction article - Editors' Note to special issue of "Medijske studije" (Media Studies) journal vol. 6, issue 12, December 2015.

2018

The ‘networked society’ has become a popular idea in national media policy and cor-porate strategy, including for public service media at national and European levels. It is equally notable in acad ...

Palgrave Global Media Policy and Business, 2021

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

Policy makers, media practitioners and scholars gathered together in the city of Warsaw, Poland (12-14 May, 2013) to discuss the challenges faced by public service media (PSM) leaders and managers as the media and communication technologies evolve. The Exploratory Workshop, entitled "Public Service Media Management – In Search for New Models for Public Service Media in the Era of Social Change and New Technologies" was funded by the European Science Foundation to support the evolution of public service media management.

TripleC, 2024

Manifesto (2021), edited by Christian Fuchs and Klaus Unterberger, and Jürgen Habermas' A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics (2023). They condemn the commercial Internet as a deformation of the public sphere and conclude that it needs to be fundamentally restructured. Interestingly, both texts propose to restructure it after the template of broadcasting media. We seek to challenge this approach from a media-political perspective, arguing that it revives an elapsed version of democracy by rekindling the mass media paradigm to which it was bound. Both texts are implicitly based on the assumption that a technology that emerged in capitalism can be used for different, even contradictory, purposes. But what if the media structure of digital communication, irrespective of who owns or controls it, denies its democratic instrumentalisation?

Public Service Media Renewal. Adaptation to Digital Network Challenges, 2017

This paper discusses the current condition of public service media (PSM) as the network society and the emerging digital culture are changing the values traditionally embedded in the concept of PSM and the nature of media audiences. In doing so, the study takes the holistic view on several challenges that contemporary PSM have to face. Since its establishment, PSM have never been under as much pressure as with today's ongoing financial, economic and political crises, as well as other global socioeconomic challenges. The paper argues that in order to understand the current necessary shifts in PSM one needs to take into account current PSM funding models, discussing both their advantages and weaknesses under the light of the changing media ecosystems. Finally, it addresses a need for participatory turn that advocates for a change in the way PSM have framed the audience's participation: from user-generated content to more structural participation.

Despite the ongoing transition from public service broadcasting (PSB) towards public service media (PSM), the traditional values and basic principles of public service in media – especially including services that nurture and facilitate democracy , support and cultivate domestic culture, and ensuring universal access – have been resilient and remarkably persistent. An enduring goal of media policy in Europe has been making sure domestic PSB providers have the required resources to fulfill their remits. After 20 years of continuing growth in web traffic, and given increasing economic pressures to develop fixed and mobile networks as well as the number and scope of new services, continuation is increasingly tenuous. It is uncertain if public service principles can be maintained in an evolving media environment dominated by network communications. Broadcasting has already lost the normative hegemonic position it enjoyed for decades. An increasing number of governments are reducing funding for PSB, and there is a growing pressure to reallocate more spectrum space to mobile industries. At the same time, public broadcasters are intentionally shifting their shrinking resources from broadcasting to online services they hope will appeal to younger audiences who are more interested in 'new media' and 'social media' as quality content on 'old media' platform doesn't seem to be enough. It is understandable that PSB providers are worried about the consequences of failing to make the leap to new personalized, mobile and networked media. They should also be worried about challenges and problems they will face in an increasing dependency on non-broadcast platforms. Moving public service operations into the networked domain is not about replacing a previous technology with a new one with the idea of replicating the fit. The medium matters because the concept of public service with its traditional humanistic values and democratic principles has been defined purely in terms of the broadcast domain. This special issue focuses on the mismatch and potential contradictions between public service values and the affordances of networked and mobile communication. The idea was partly originated in Tokyo in RIPE@2014 conference discourse about crossing borders and boundaries in PSM. A large part of the empirical work, including a 6-month research period at the University of Leeds in the UK, was funded by the Academy of Finland in a project about Broadcasting in the Post

Comunicação e Sociedade, 2016

Especially in a European context the temptation to look at any point in the recent past as a less critical moment in the life of public service media (PSM) exists but it is not appropriate (Lowe, Goodwin & Yamamoto, 2015, p. 11). Such a path normally leads us to less sustained considerations about possible exceptionalities of the present moment. That being said, traditionally sensitive issues such as funding, regulation, interaction with other partners in the market or the mission and supply of content are now under discussion in a particularly fragile territory-given the challenges of operating in digital contexts-and under the pressure of greater citizen participation demands. At a time marked by visible media supply fragmentation and by permanent content flows mixing and remixing those products with content generated by the "people previously known as the audience" (Rosen, 2006) two particular questions gain relevance: for whom is and with whom is PSM to be made? (D'Haenens, Sousa & Hultén, 2011, p. 214). In a text with a significant title, "Public Service Broadcasting in the 21st Century-what a chance for a new beginning?", Karol Jakubowicz suggests that this challenge-that of PSM's renewed self definition in relation to citizens-can be overcome with a six step strategy: removing ideological objections to its existence; providing proof that PSM is still needed; replacing the B (for Broadcast) by either a M (for Media) or a C (for Content); reaffirming and enhancing the S (as service rendered to the community); decisively dealing with funding issues; and redefining the P (the Public has changed enormously and so have changed its expectations) (Jakubowicz, 2007, p. 30). Organized under the project "Communication Policies, Public Broadcasting and Citizenship: Subsidies for Socio-Cultural Development in Portugal and Brazil", financed by FCT (Portugal) and Capes (Brazil), this special issue of Comunicação & Sociedade is dedicated to the problematization of the concept of Public Media Service (PSM) and to the new challenges created by constant technological innovation, especially regarding those related to participatory communication. Perceived as an inherent obligation of public service operations, the promotion of participation needs to be equated as a prerequisite for social and cultural development and, at the same time, for the emancipation of communities. Over the last twenty years, the possibilities for participatory communication have increased in the face of technologically induced complex dynamics and have affected the production, transmission, consumption, and sharing of media contents, especially with the popularization of mobility access. In a time of apparent ubiquity, in which networked devices integrate community routines and individuals in such a naturalized fashion, PSM needs to reinvent itself to meet the competition challenges of new and more dispersed operators offering content and online entertainment, and also to promote the provision of a distinct service, in a universal way, through different platforms.