Public Service Media in Challenging Times: Connectivity, Climate and Corona

A talk by Graham Murdock, hosted and organised by InnoPSM: AHRC Research Network on Innovation in Public Service Media Policies.

Respondents: Alessandro d’Arma, University of Westminster; Minna Aslama Horowitz, University of Helsinki; Klaus Unterberger, Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) Public Value; Christian Fuchs, University of Westminster

In this talk, Prof Graham Murdock will analyse public service media in the challenging times we live in.

The institutions and animating ideals of public service broadcasting have been under continuous pressure for the last four decades. Advocates of marketisation have argued long and hard that they are no longer relevant or needed in a world of digital abundance and infinite choice, pointing to the increasing migration of young people to on-line platforms. These arguments continue to gain traction. A new proposal for an alternative future must place relations between broadcasting and the internet at the centre of argument. Discussions around how these relations might be organised has been underway for some time but recent developments have invested them with new relevance and urgency.

2020 was marked by a global pandemic, an accelerating climate crisis, and an explosion of direct action across the political spectrum. The processes driving these events are still unfolding presenting Public Service Media with both new challenges and new opportunities. The talk will open a conversation of how we might respond.

About InnoPSM: InnoPSM – Innovation in Public Service Media Policies is an AHRC reserch network that facilitate exchange between academic experts and key PSM stakeholders and develop a research agenda across national and disciplinary boundaries with a view to advancing our thinking about innovative policy solutions and strategies to respond to the major digital challenges confronting PSM. This talk is part of InnoPSM’s focus on Envisioning Public Service Media Utopias.

About our speaker:

Graham Murdock is Emeritus Professor of Culture and Economy at Loughborough University. He has written extensively on the political economy of broadcasting, the idea of a digital commons, and on the politics of risk, most recently in relation to the climate emergency. He has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Auckland, California at San Diego, Mexico City, Curtin, Bergen, the Free University of Brussels, and Stockholm and taught widely across China. His work has been translated into 21 languages. His more than 300 works include, for example, as co-editor, Money Talks: Media, Markets, Crisis (2015); New Media and Metropolitan Life: Connecting, Consuming, Creating (in Chinese, 2015); Carbon Capitalism and Communication: Confronting Climate Change (2017, co-editor); Researching Communications (third edition 2021, co-author); The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications (2011, co-editor); Digital Dynamics (2011, co-editor); The Idea of the Public Sphere (2010, co-editor); Media in the Age of Marketization (2007, co-editor); Television Across Europe (2000, co-editor); The Political Economy of the Media (1997, co-editor); Communicating Politics: Mass Communications and the Political Process (1986, co-editor); Televising Terrorism: Political Violence in Popular Culture (1984, co-author); Mass Media and the Secondary School (1973, co-author).

Recommended reading in the context of this event:

Graham Murdock, 2005. Building the Digital Commons: Public Broadcasting in the Age of the Internet. In Cultural Dilemmas in Public Service Broadcasting, ed. Gregory Ferrell Lowe and Per Jauert, 213-230. Gothenburg: Nordicom. Access

About the respondents:

Alessandro d’Arma is a Reader at the University of Westminster’s Communication and Media Research Institute. He is the principal investigator of InnoPSM: AHRC Research Network on Innovation in Public Service Media Policies.

Minna Aslama Horowitz is a Docent at the University of Helsinki, Fellow at St John’s University in New York, and expert on advocacy and digital rights at Central European University. She is co-investigator of InnoPSM: AHRC Research Network on Innovation in Public Service Media Policies.

Klaus Unterberger is the head of the Public Value Department of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, Austria’s public service broadcaster. This department focuses on public service media’s mission, remit, quality control, communications and international corporation.

Christian Fuchs is a professor at the University of Westminster where he is the director of the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI).

Moderation: Michael-Bernhard Zita is a public service media expert and a PhD student at the Technical University of Munich.