Host institution: Paris Lodron University Salzburg (PLUS) 🇦🇹
Supervisors: Prof. Sergio Sparviero (PLUS) and Prof. Tim Raats (VUB)
Academic secondment: Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) 🇧🇪
Industrial secondment: Mediahuis 🇧🇪
PhD duration: 3 years
The PhD project is titled: Developing and transforming sustainability requirements for Public Interest Media.
The PhD project investigates how Public Interest Media integrate sustainability into their organisational structures, policies, and production processes, and how these orientations influence decisions on content and distribution. It explores the intersection between sustainability, corporate responsibility, and media policy, analysing both internal governance and the wider contribution of media organisations to social and environmental goals.
Public Interest Media—generally speaking, private non-profit and public service organisations—are central to democratic communication. They provide citizens with trustworthy information, cultural diversity, and opportunities for participation, while facing increasing pressures from technological transformation, market competition, and changing societal expectations. Benefiting from comparatively high levels of public trust, these media possess a unique capacity to influence public attitudes and behaviours. By informing and engaging audiences, they can raise awareness of ecological, social, and economic challenges and thus play a pivotal role in helping societies achieve their sustainability goals. In this sense, sustainability emerges as a multidimensional concept encompassing responsibilities toward society, the environment, and future generations.
Theoretically, the project builds on the distinction between Sustainability—understood as a set of terminal values such as equality, harmony, and self-determination—and Sustainable Development—the more practical processes and strategies that aim to realise these values. It examines how Public Interest Media interpret and prioritise these two concepts, identifying the diverse values, worldviews, and organisational cultures that underpin their understanding. Hence, the project generates knowledge on how different media organisations translate abstract visions and principles of sustainability and sustainable development into concrete practices.
Empirically, the research examines organisational strategies and frameworks that promote sustainability within Public Interest Media, paying particular attention to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies, governance mechanisms, and initiatives advancing social inclusion, environmental responsibility, and ethical accountability. It also investigates how these organisational commitments are reflected in media content, analysing how sustainability values influence editorial decisions, reporting practices, and production processes.
Methodologically, the project adopts a qualitative and mixed-methods design. A comprehensive literature review will establish the theoretical and conceptual foundations of sustainability, sustainable development, and news media framing of these concepts. Qualitative content and thematic analyses — supported where appropriate by Artificial Intelligence tools — will be applied to organisational reports and media outputs to examine how sustainability and CSR-related discourses are articulated. Expert interviews with media professionals, policymakers, and sustainability officers will complement these analyses, offering insights into institutional interpretations of sustainability and the values that guide them.
Expected outcomes include a categorisation of Public Interest Media outlets based on their sustainability views and approaches, an analysis of organisational strategies and CSR frameworks, and a conceptual model explaining how value orientations influence news content and sustainable transformation. Ultimately, the project aims to offer both scholarly and practical contributions to aligning media governance with the universal values of sustainability and the broader goals of sustainable development.