Simon DAWES, British Broadcasting and the Public-Private Dichotomy : Neoliberalism, Citizenship and the Public Sphere, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, xiv-239 p. Tom MILLS, The BBC : Myth of a Public Service, London, Verso, 2016, 266 p.

Réseaux ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol N°223 (5) ◽  
pp. 189
Author(s):  
Gaël Villeneuve
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Don't Talk Back!

2017 ◽  
pp. 85-104
Author(s):  
Edorodion Agbon Osa
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
The State ◽  
Community Level ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
The Public Sphere

Founded on the philosophy of advancing the course of democracy and acting as a stimulus for socio-cultural transformation at the community level, community broadcasting provides access to the public sphere by making its audience the main characters in the production and dissemination of its messages thus serving as a platform for the expression of the divergent views and opinions that exist at the community level. But almost a century after broadcasting was introduced to Nigeria as part of British imperialism, this grassroots form of broadcasting is yet to fully take off. Starting with a broad examination of public service broadcasting, this chapter discusses the state of community broadcasting in Nigeria, using Habermas' concept of the public sphere, and recommends its improvement given the crucial roles of community broadcasting in the society.

scholarly journals PUBLIC SPHERE DISRUPTION: PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING AND THE CBC AT THE DIGITAL CROSSROADS

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott William Baird
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Public Broadcasting ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Media ◽  
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ◽  
Canadian Context ◽  
Public Broadcaster ◽  
The Public Sphere

Public broadcasting is traditionally thought to be an essential element to public spheres. This paper charts how this relationship is formed, and then demonstrates how it is threatened in the Canadian context. Canada’s public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, has digital policies like Strategy 2020: A Space for Us All which suggests CBC is pivoting away from its relationship with the public sphere, and in some ways weakening the Canadian public sphere. Accordingly, this paper looks at the claims charged about this policy, particularly from Taylor (2016), and considers how it and similar digital policies affect the CBC as an element of the Canadian public sphere. While the paper finds CBC digital policies benefit the public sphere, the majority put into action hinder CBC’s relationship to the Canadian public sphere. Overall, this MRP highlights the importance of considering the philosophy of the public sphere when developing public media policy.

scholarly journals Public Service Media for Critical Times: Connectivity, Climate, and Corona

2021 ◽  
pp. 69-111
Author(s):  
Graham Murdock
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Advance Information ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Communication Approach ◽  
Climate Crisis

In this chapter, Graham Murdock analyses the role of public service media in the contemporary times of crisis that have been shaped by connectivity, the climate crisis, and the COVID-19 crisis. Using lots of examples, the political economy of communication approach, and Habermas’s concept of the public sphere, the chapter points out that Public Service Media is not something of the past, but is needed for guaranteeing a vivid and democratic public sphere in the digital age. The chapter points out the potentials of public service media for creating and maintaining digital public spaces that advance information, education, entertainment, and participation. This chapter is a written and amended version of a talk by Graham Murdock that he gave on 15 February 2021 at a webinar that was part of the AHRC project “Innovation in Public Service Media Policy” (https://innopsm.net/) and its research focus on “Envisioning Public Service Media Utopias”. A video of the talk is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4dJSzyW_GM.

I'm Not Watching I'm Waiting: the Construction of Visual Codes about Womens' Role as Spectators in the Trial in Nineteenth Century England

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Mulcahy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
Productive Labour ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Many

AbstractAccounts of the interface between law, gender and modernity have tended to stress the many ways in which women experienced the metropolis differently from men in the nineteenth century. Considerable attention has been paid to the notion of separate spheres and to the ways in which the public realm came to be closely associated with the masculine worlds of productive labour, politics, law and public service. Much art of the period draws our attention to the symbiotic relationship between representations of gender and prevailing notions of their place. Drawing on well known depictions of women onlookers in the trial in fine art, this essay by Linda Mulcahy explores the ways in which this genre contributed to the disciplining of women in the public sphere and encouraged them to go no further than the margins of the law court.

scholarly journals Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Christian Fuchs ◽  
Klaus Unterberger
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Dominant Form ◽  
The Public ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter introduces the book’s context. It describes the process that led to the creation of the Public Service Media and Public Service Internet Manifesto. The basic starting point was the insight that the survival of public service media is in danger, that the dominant form of the Internet and Internet platforms undermines the democratic public sphere, and that we need new forms of the Internet and the media in order to safeguard and renew democracy and the public sphere.

scholarly journals The Legitimacy of Public Service Broadcasting in the 21st Century: The Case of Scandinavia

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Håkon Larsen
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The Public Sphere

Abstract The present paper examines the debate on the future of public service broadcasting (PSB) in Norway and Sweden in the 2000s. I have analysed the discourses on PSB that dominate the public debate in the two countries, the cultural policy related to PSB, as well as the legitimizing rhetoric of the Norwegian public service broadcaster Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK) and that of the Swedish public service broadcaster Sveriges Television (SVT). Theoretically, the analysis draws on normative theories on the role of PSB in promoting democracy, culture and a well-functioning public sphere, as well as theories on democracy and the public sphere per se.

scholarly journals Social Media and the Public Sphere

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The Public ◽  
Inaugural Lecture ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The University

Social media has become a key term in Media and Communication Studies and public discourse for characterising platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Wordpress, Blogspot, Weibo, Pinterest, Foursquare and Tumblr. This paper discusses the role of the concept of the public sphere for understanding social media critically. It argues against an idealistic interpretation of Habermas and for a cultural-materialist understanding of the public sphere concept that is grounded in political economy. It sets out that Habermas’ original notion should best be understood as a method of immanent critique that critically scrutinises limits of the media and culture grounded in power relations and political economy. The paper introduces a theoretical model of public service media that it uses as foundation for identifying three antagonisms of the contemporary social media sphere in the realms of the economy, the state and civil society. It concludes that these limits can only be overcome if the colonisation of the social media lifeworld is countered politically so that social media and the Internet become public service and commons-based media.Acknowledgement: This paper is the extended version of Christian Fuchs’ inaugural lecture for his professorship of social media at the University of Westminster that he took up on February 1st, 2013. He gave the lecture on February 19th, 2014, at the University of Westminster.The video version of the inaugural lecture is available at:https://vimeo.com/97173645

Accumulation by symbolic dispossession: the Digital Terrestrial Television transition in South Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 611-629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Duncan
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Television System ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Diversity ◽  
Symbolic Resources ◽  
Digital Terrestrial Television ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Analogue To Digital

Using a critical political economy perspective, this article focusses on the migration from analogue to Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) in South Africa. Drawing on relevant international examples, it explores whether South Africa’s regulator is realising one of the major promises of the DTT transition, namely, to create more media diversity in the television sector. It analyses decisions taken by the communications regulator in allocating the digital multiplexes and whether these are contributing to broadening the public sphere. Sadly, in spite of the promise that the transition held, there are signs of it leading to reduced diversity and an upward redistribution of spectrum to upper-income brackets. Commercial broadcasting has become even more dominant than it was in the analogue space, which has intensified what Robert Horwitz has called a ‘commercialising juggernaut’ in television. These developments risk turning the country’s policy of three tiers of broadcasting – already under strain – into a policy in name only. Working class audiences that rely on public service television especially are being dispossessed of spectrum, depriving them of the resources necessary to speak to and be heard by mass audiences. The article asks why the DTT transition has come to this, and in attempting to answer this question, it critiques dominant theories of regulatory behaviour (including critical ones) as being overly structuralist in approach and not taking sufficient account of the agency needed to bring about a decommodified television system where the power to make symbolic resources is not determined by wealth.

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