Reinventing Public Service Communication

These essays address one of the most challenging debates in contemporary European media studies: the transition of the traditional Public Service Broadcasters into Public Service Media, as they widen their remit to produce and distribute public service content across more delivery platforms to meet the requirements of the digital age.

In this enterprising new text, Ted Glenn equips fledgling public sector communications professionals with the information they need to be successful in their new roles. Leveraging his years of experience in this growing field, Glenn discusses how to present policy goals to different audiences and tailor messages to their needs, write gripping speeches, and use digital media in a world where one ill-phrased tweet can sink a career. Chapters are enriched with activities that walk students through the many responsibilities of public service professionals and encourage them to think strategically in quickly evolving situations. Professional Communications in the Public Sector is indispensable reading for students of public administration, communications, policy studies, media studies, and advertising.

Conventional wisdom views globalization as a process that heralds the diminishing role or even 'death' of the state and the rise of transnational media and transnational consumption. Global Media and National Policies questions those assumptions and shows not only that the nation-state never left but that it is still a force to be reckoned with. With contributions that look at global developments and developments in specific parts of the world, it demonstrates how nation-states have adapted to globalization and how they still retain key policy instruments to achieve many of their policy objectives. This book argues that the phenomenon of media globalization has been overstated, and that national governments remain key players in shaping the media environment, with media corporations responding to the legal and policy frameworks they deal with at a national level.

This book examines the evolution of national Arab media and its interplay with political change, particularly in emerging democracies in the context of the Arab uprisings. Investigated from a journalistic perspective, this research addresses the role played by traditional national media in consolidating emerging democracies or in exacerbating their fragility within new political contexts. Also analyzed are the ways journalists report about politics and transformations of these media industries, drawing on the international experiences of media in transitional societies. This study builds on a field investigation led by the author and conducted within the project “Arab Revolutions: Media Revolutions,” covering Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt.

Public service media (PSM) have been the mainstay of Western European broadcasting for a number of decades. Yet despite a general political consensus in favour of PSM, recent technological, economic and political changes have led to a questioning of their value. This new collection of essays explores the history of PSM in selected European countries, from their early establishment as the main media in many countries to charting their transformation and evolution in recent years. The contributions consider the political, economic and market-integration issues that impact PSM, while also highlighting the importance of the ideology that originally accompanied PSM in its initial years, to see how relevant they are in the contemporary world. The book consists of two complementary parts: Part I: Theoretical Aspects and Global Influences on Public Service Media in Europe Part II: A Comparative Analysis of Public Service Media across Europe With contributions from leading experts, the first part offers a thorough examination of the current concepts and conditions that influence PSM in Europe. The second offers a comparative study of PSM in several European countries including France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden. Offering the most comprehensive study of the field to date, Public Service Media in Europe will be useful for students and researchers in public media, political communication, international and comparative media.

Social media is said to radically change the way in which public communication takes place: information diffuses faster and can reach a large number of people, but what makes the process so novel is that online networks can empower people to compete with traditional broadcasters or public figures. This book critically interrogates the contemporary relevance of social networks as a set of economic, cultural and political enterprises and as a public sphere in which a variety of political and socio-cultural demands can be met. It examines policy, regulatory and socio-cultural issues arising from the transformation of communication to a multi-layered sphere of online and social networks. The central theme of the book is to address the following questions: Are online and social networks an unstoppable democratizing and mobilizing force? Is there a need for policy and intervention to ensure the development of comprehensive and inclusive social networking frameworks? Social media are viewed both as a tool that allows citizens to influence policymaking, and as an object of new policies and regulations, such as data retention, privacy and copyright laws, around which citizens are mobilizing.

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.

By analyzing a turn-of-the-century model of urban reform that depicts this relationship between citizens and government, Schachter shows how reinvigorating an active public is essential to increasing agency efficiency and responsiveness. She offers two strategies for moving toward active citizenship: better citizenship education, including service learning, and public agencies' provision of better-focused information for their owners.