Public service media are going through dramatic transformations as a result of technological developments, policy changes, market pressures and changes in media consumption. A significant part of this transformation is connected to the enhanced and novel roles of audience initiative to use and generate content. The scale and significance of the changes are still contested and the future of the provisions remains unclear. This book synthesises current debates on public service media and provides analysis of the key issues from an international perspective. It brings together leading researchers in the field and offers case studies from different countries. The book explores two main areas: legacy public service broadcasters in the digital age and new forms of public service media. Chapters in this collection address such fundamental questions about the future of public service media as: are the public ready to take on genuinely participatory roles? Do public service media organisations and professionals seriously consider shifting to a radically more demand-oriented production? How would changes in public service media impact political discourses and landscapes?

This book presents the collectively authored Public Service Media and Public Service Internet Manifesto and accompanying materials.The Internet and the media landscape are broken. The dominant commercial Internet platforms endanger democracy. They have created a communications landscape overwhelmed by surveillance, advertising, fake news, hate speech, conspiracy theories, and algorithmic politics. Commercial Internet platforms have harmed citizens, users, everyday life, and society. Democracy and digital democracy require Public Service Media. A democracy-enhancing Internet requires Public Service Media becoming Public Service Internet platforms - an Internet of the public, by the public, and for the public; an Internet that advances instead of threatens democracy and the public sphere. The Public Service Internet is based on Internet platforms operated by a variety of Public Service Media, taking the public service remit into the digital age. The Public Service Internet provides opportunities for public debate, participation, and the advancement of social cohesion. Accompanying the Manifesto are materials that informed its creation: Christian Fuchs' report of the results of the Public Service Media/Internet Survey, the written version of Graham Murdock's online talk on public service media today, and a summary of an ecomitee.com discussion of the Manifesto's foundations.

Digital technologies have fundamentally altered the nature and function of media in our society. This book critically examines digital innovations and their positive and negative implications.

The digital media environment is characterized by an abundance and diversity of content, a multiplicity of platforms, new modes of content production, distribution and access, and changed patterns of consumer and business behaviour. This has challenged the traditional model of public service broadcasting (PSB) in diverse ways. This book explores whether and how PSB should adapt to reflect the conditions of the digital media space so that it can effectively and efficiently continue to serve its public mandate. Drawing on literature on media governance in media and communication science, public international law as well as discussions on cyberlaw, Mira Burri maps and critically analyses existing policy and scholarly debates on PSB transformation. She challenges some of conventional rationales for reform, identifies new ones, as well as exposes the limitations placed upon existing and future policy solutions by global media governance arrangements, especially in the fields of trade, copyright and Internet governance. The book goes on to advance a future-oriented model of Public Service Media, which is capable of matching an environment of technological and of governance complexity. As a work that explores how public interest objectives can be pursued efficiently and sustainably in the digital media ecology, this book will be of great interest and use to students and researchers in media law, information technology law, and broadcast media studies, as well as to policy-makers.

This book shows how disinformation spread by partisan organizations and media platforms undermines institutional legitimacy on which authoritative information depends.

The Media Welfare State: Nordic Media in the Digital Era comprehensively addresses the central dynamics of the digitalization of the media industry in the Nordic countries—Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland—and the ways media organizations there are transforming to address the new digital environment. Taking a comparative approach, the authors provide an overview of media institutions, content, use, and policy throughout the region, focusing on the impact of information and communication technology/internet and digitalization on the Nordic media sector. Illustrating the shifting media landscape the authors draw on a wide range of cases, including developments in the press, television, the public service media institutions, and telecommunication.

Who controls the media today? There are many media systems across the globe that claim to be free yet whose independence has been eroded. As demagogues rise, independent voices have been squeezed out. Corporate-owned media companies that act in the service of power increasingly exercise soft censorship. Tech giants such as Facebook and Google have dramatically changed how people access information, with consequences that are only beginning to be felt. This book features pathbreaking analysis from journalists and academics of the changing nature and peril of media capture—how formerly independent institutions fall under the sway of governments, plutocrats, and corporations. Contributors including Emily Bell, Felix Salmon, Joshua Marshall, Joel Simon, and Nikki Usher analyze diverse cases of media capture worldwide—from the United Kingdom to Turkey to India and beyond—many drawn from firsthand experience. They examine the role played by new media companies and funders, showing how the confluence of the growth of big tech and falling revenues for legacy media has led to new forms of control. Contributions also shed light on how the rise of right-wing populists has catalyzed the crisis of global media. They also chart a way forward, exploring the growing need for a policy response and sustainable models for public-interest investigative journalism. Providing valuable insight into today’s urgent threats to media independence, Media Capture is essential reading for anyone concerned with defending press freedom in the digital age.