Date:	8 September 2010 12.00am - 11 September 2010 12.00am

Public Service Media After the Recession

Fifth bi-annual RIPE conference, organised by the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), in partnership with the BBC and the Office of Communications (Ofcom).

RIPE 2010 website

This year's RIPE conference will take place 8-11 September. Comprehensive information about this year's event including accommodation options can be found on the conference website.

Registration for the RIPE@2010 conference is now open and will continue until 13 August.

The registration process is being handled by Helen Cohen (H.Cohen02@westminster.ac.uk).

If you are already included as an author with an accepted paper, a keynote speaker, or other participant as earlier agreed with the organisers, you should have by now received a registration form sent by Ms. Cohen as an email attachment.

If you are planning to attend the conference but have not received an email with the registration form attachment, please contact Helen Cohen and also notify the two co-ordinators, Jeanette Steemers (J.Steemers@westminster.ac.uk) and Gregory F. Lowe (glowe@pp.inet.fi).

The conference registration fee is £250 for authors. The fee includes lunches, two evening meals and conference materials. For those attending but not presenting, the registration fee is £350 and space is limited. The RIPE conference does not have funds to pay personal travel costs or hotel accommodation except for invited keynote speakers. Details of accommodation with special rates will be provided when registration opens. A select number of doctoral students can be included and the fee in these cases will be £180.

Conference Theme

The recession is feeding trends and conditions that have long been festering but are now coming to a head for Public Service Broadcasting, and impacting transition to Public Service Media. Although better times are coming, and may already be appearing as 'green shoots', the consequences of changes in media policy, corporate strategy and industrial arrangements being pursued in response to the recession are likely to have longer-term implications. As deficits mount along with rising unemployment and shrinking tax revenues, governments seem to have less flexibility to support the public sector in media. As advertising revenue declines sharply commercial firms are lobbying more aggressively for a share of public funding to offset losses, threatening to end their unprofitable areas of service provision, and arguing more strenuously that PSM ought to be restricted to PSB. A public stressed by economic hardship, unemployment and financial losses are worried about mounting deficits may be less willing to pay for PSM. Thus, in the recessionary context challenges that have been simmering for years are coming to a boil. Media policy, corporate strategy and societal infrastructure are all in play as a consequence. This conference will focus on the implications in topical areas of particular importance:

1. Changing Conceptions and Practices in Journalism

• Dynamics and conditions that challenge professional journalism
• Citizen journalism, networked journalism and ‘journalism as conversation’
• Notions that PSM should be less a producer and more a news curator or aggregator
• Trends in blogging, crowd sourcing and wiki practices in information production
• Unique attributes and barriers in PSB news provision
  
  

2. Changing Patterns of Media Use and Engagement

• What is changing and for whom – and what is not changing?
• Consumer experiences and expectations of media
• What advertisers understand about audiences, behaviours and media consumption that public broadcasters need to understand
• New models of audience – emerging ways to understand what media users are, and why and how this matters 

3. Changing Strategies, Business Models and Sustainability

• Challenges in implementing new strategies and the structural and organisational consequences of altered strategic directions
• Comparing modes of funding for PSM and evidence of impact on content and service
• Pros and cons of alternative arrangements for allocating public funding
• Understanding the economic foundations of PSB as a financial organisation, especially economic analyses of these companies
• Viability of varied options for financing in different platforms and genres
• Pay-for media online – where is it working, how is it working, and why 

4. PSM and pressures for Localism and Community Services

• The continuing importance of geographic communities for democracy and industry
• Identities beyond geographic communities and implications for democracies and economies
• Changes in targeting strategies and characteristic modes of address
• The complex balance between cohesion and diversity
• Experiments and experiences in public media for local and regional government
• Patterns of investment in content, of what kinds and for which groups, and why
• The challenges and opportunities of community media specifically relevant to PSM 

5. Assessments of PSB / PSM Performance

• The extent to which criticisms of PSB /PSM companies withstand empirical scrutiny
• Organisational and operational performance indicators and results
• Competition in public service media provision – how it works and with what results
• Analyses of new instrumentation for governing PSB (e.g. public value test, service contracts, contestable funding, external governing boards, etc)
  
  

6. Media Policy and Discourse about PSM

• Assessment of public discourses about PSB / PSM, especially comparative research
• The case for and against the historic status quo
• The debate on state aid and evidence related to that
• PSM’s proper place in the media market today
• Debate over who gets to be a public service provider
• Who deserves to receive public funding, why and on what basis?
• Can societies afford plurality in public service players and contents?