Documents

Public Broadcasting and Public Affairs:
Opportunities and Challenges for Public Broadcasting’s Role in Provisioning the Public with News and Public Affairs

In this paper, commissioned as part of the Berkman Center's Media Re:Public project, CSM's Pat Aufderheide and Jessica Clark describe the complex system of U.S. public broadcasting, the many exciting experiments that are underway and the barriers to creating a truly public media.

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public_broadcasting_and_public_affairs_mr.pdf

This research analyzes responses from the general public to the news that a series featuring independent filmmakers’ documentaries, Independent Lens, had been dropped from PBS’ core schedule.  Viewers offer a range of responses, which share a common implication: there is currently untapped support, both financial and political, for public television, among viewers who feel themselves underserved by public television’s lighter fare.

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pbs_and_viewers_april_9_-_final.pdf

Billed by bloggers as 'geeks meet wonks,' Beyond Broadcast was a public conference to explore how traditional public media face a critical and unique opportunity to embrace participatory, web-based media models, such as podcasting, video blogs and social software.

While social networks and virtual worlds have largely been used for entertainment and personal interaction, they have at times demonstrated the potential to serve as powerful platforms for public media. This field report assesses a project that involved the use of a commercial virtual world, Second Life, and a niche nonprofit social network, OneClimate.net, by a nonprofit media producer, OneWorld UK. By operating a public forum from the 2007 U.N. Climate Change Conference via these platforms, OneWorld was able to expand participation in the conference and create an ongoing conversation among members of a global public interested in environmental issues. While the number of online participants was limited, this experiment drew significant press attention and served as a benchmark for nonprofit and public media uses of these online tools. The OneWorld organizers noted some skepticism on the part of both reporters and other advocacy groups, but hope their example will break down barriers as they continue to use these platforms at subsequent U.N. gatherings. Questions of scale, budget and digital divides still remain.