Host institution: University of Warsaw (UW) 🇵🇱
Supervisors: Prof. Michał Głowacki (UW) and Prof. Sergio Sparviero (PLUS)
Academic secondment: Paris Lodron University Salzburg (PLUS) 🇦🇹
Industrial secondment: JournalismFundEurope 🇧🇪
PhD duration: 3 years
The PhD project is titled: Public support for non-Public Service Media organisations.
The project seeks to investigate a wide range of organisational models beyond traditional Public Service Media delivery. The overall goal is to look at alternative forms for public interest content, focusing on social media, user-generated content and other media-like forms for public good, sustainability and social cohesion, something of potential value to draw on future scenarios and policy recommendations. On the surface, the project will explore both organisational (ownership, governance, transparency) and funding strategies alongside multilayered collaboration with the critical role of independent producers, community media, NGOs and others.
Among the salient questions to be addressed are:
- Which of these new providers are currently or should be funded, and on the basis of which criteria?
- Should they be regulated with traditional Public Service Media-regulation or just as media companies?
- How to understand the relation between public service values in general and actual activism?
- Where is the border between traditional public media values and activism? And, last but not least, how to evaluate their effectiveness?
Methdologies could include qualitative and quantitative methods, mixed approaches as well as ethnography (via visits, joint training and PhD secondments):
- Extensive desk research and mapping of Public Interest Media research, with the specific focus on organisational change and funding models;
- Fieldwork consisting of expert interviews, complemented by ethnography and/or on-site participatory observations at public media institutions;
- Data analysis and comparative case study analyses;
- Scenario-building and drawing on policy recommendations.