[Commlist] cfp: Public Service Media for Innovation and Sustainability / RIPE@2024 Conference

Public Service Media for Innovation and Sustainability

Call for Paper Proposals

RIPE@2024 Conference

16-18 of May, 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal

Abstracts are due 25 February 2024.

We are delighted to announce the forthcoming RIPE@2024 conference in 
Lisbon, Portugal. Our 12th biennial conference is produced as a 
collaborarion between three of Portugal’s most influential schools for 
media research and education, the Faculty of Social Sciences and 
Humanities at Nova University, Porto University, and Santiago of 
Compustela University in partnership with Rádio e Televisão de Portugal 
(RTP), the national public service provider.

Conference Motivation and Theme

Digital technologies have caused enormous disruptions and high 
instability for media systems and companies around the world, ushering 
in consequential shifts in economic and political power. More media of 
more types are motivated by commercial imperatives than ever before, 
while the editorial function has become increasingly precarious and 
endangered. Online platforms are socially influential and used as 
primary sources of news and information, although in many cases without 
clear editorial responsibility over the content and without providing a 
comprehensive service. Most are social media platforms that define 
themselves as tech companies rather than media companies to avoid 
editorial responsibilities. The digital majors are big data corporations 
with substantial influence on the substance and tenor of public 
communications.

While national PSM providers remain important in principle and often in 
policy, as well, they are not strongly supported in practice in many 
countries and most are struggling to cope with competitive disadvantages 
that are too often severe.  These especially include constraints on and 
cuts in funding, uncertain and wavering political support, growing 
pressure from commercial lobbies, the scope and scale of growing global 
competition, and fragmentation as well as growing polarization of publics.

Scholars and practitioners alike are all too familiar with confounding 
problems for societies caused by the proliferation of fake news, mis- 
and disinformation campaigns that have propagandistic intentions, echo 
chambers and filter bubbles, and emerging concerns related to the use of 
generative artificial intelligence to produce increasingly sophisticated 
‘deep fake’ content.  The collapse of editorial responsibility combined 
with efforts to undermine the public service orientation and 
organizations mandated to enact it has created systemic conditions that 
are characterized by non transparency and unaccountability, predatory 
media strategies, pseudo-realistic news content, partisan news as 
 business strategy, all of which has fueled a widespread and increasing 
lack of public trust in news media.

The current situation poses grave dangers to the health and vitality of 
the public sphere in democratic societies, and greatly complicates 
efforts to develop a public service orientation in media where the 
public service ethos has not been historically characteristic. This 
orientation and ethos are being undermined to an alarming degree in both 
institutional and operational aspects. The implications are more 
troubling still in the environmental context of rapid global warming. 
Trust in truthful reporting and accurate information undermines efforts 
to address existential threats; historic disregard for the health of the 
planet presents a set of problems that are existential threats in the 
natural ecology. Young people everywhere are increasingly anxious, 
dissatisfied, and in too many cases angry or depressed.

PSM can play a role of pivotal importance in redressing imbalances in 
the news and media ecology, fairly reporting factual realities, and 
facilitating political and social discourse that is necessary to enact 
solutions that require significant change in individual and organization 
behaviors. Achieving this will require further development changes in 
PSM internal priorities, activities and structures to develop 
sustainable practices, and effective communications with external 
stakeholders in political and popular markets to continually secure the 
support needed to perform this role.  PSM can and should be an important 
part of strategies and practices to encourage greater respect for the 
fragility of our natural ecosystem and in providing valued services for 
people as a global community with diverse cultures, political systems, 
and socio-economic conditions.

As a consequence of global warming, inequities in the global economic 
system, and problems rooted in violence and conflict both within and 
between nations, wealthy societies are struggling to cope with mass 
migration while economically disadvantaged populations in the Global 
South are struggling to cope with environmental degradation and 
potentially cataclysmic disruptions in political and economic life. 
Societies everywhere are struggling to strengthen and maintain cohesion 
as nationalism and protectionism are on the rise, as renewed imperial 
ambitions are causing tremendous loss of life, as xenophobic politics 
and radical populism grow throughout the West, and as sophisticated 
forms of clandestine propaganda employ cyber-strategies with the 
strategic intent of undermining democracies in both principle and 
practice and to foment civil unrest.

The socio-economic and political context begs serious efforts to address 
a range of crucial questions for PSM organizations today:  What are the 
roles and functions of the public service sector in addressing such a 
broad and complex range of challenges? How can PSM mitigate and even 
help to resolve the damaging consequences of predatory 
pseudo-journalism? What can PSM do to shore up political and popular 
support not merely for organizational self-interests but in pursuit of a 
genuine contemporary mission to help ensure development and 
sustainability? What can PSM do to counter and remedy the negative 
externalities of commercial, state and clandestine media systems that 
have undermined the social responsibility ethos and editorial 
independence? How can national PSM organizations effectively compete 
with international digital media giants that refuse editorial 
responsibilities to be a counterbalance and potential antidote? How can 
PSM resist the alarming constellation of pressures that prioritize goals 
that have nothing to do with serving the public and develop convincing 
answers to strengthen public and political support? What can PSM do to 
safeguard independence and restore trust in the media? How can and 
should PSM organizations, managers and workers support and facilitate 
achieving sustainability goals that matter for everyone in every society?

Research Priorities and Topics

The RIPE@2024 conference organizers invite paper proposals that will 
address topics and issues of pointed relevance to the conference theme. 
Submitted abstracts will be peer reviewed by a scientific committee as 
the basis for acceptance.  Empirical and comparative research is 
especially appreciated.  The workgroup structure for conference 
proceedings will be based on the following broad areas of general 
interest and concern:

1. Efforts to improve PSM  organizations, governance and practices to 
support environmental sustainability in the media ecology as well as the 
natural ecology.

2. Projects working to restore public trust in news media and address 
the crisis of pseudo-journalism, intentional partisanship, fake news, 
and clandestine propaganda.

3. Projects and achievements in pursuit of innovations that are 
pertinent to the focus of the conference being produced in, by or in 
partnership with PSM organizations.

4. Research on efforts and strategies to develop contemporary business 
models and funding streams that are appropropriate for the public 
service orientation.

5. Research and practices focused on the role and functions of PSM 
organizations in efforts to serve historic and contemporary diaspora 
populations.

6. Strategies and projects to strengthen the beneficial externalities of 
PSM and offset the negative externalities that are undermining public 
trust in media.

Submission Requirements

Paper proposals can be submitted using the conference website: 
https://www.ripepsm.org <https://www.ripepsm.org> . Abstracts are due 25 
February 2024.  Submitters will be informed of acceptance by 6 March 
2024.  Full papers are due 5 May 2024. Please provide the following 
information:

• A working title for the paper

• An abstract describing the paper and main argument that does not 
exceed 1,000 words

• Specify two of the topics from the 6 listed above the paper can 
contribute to addressing

Submissions will be peer-reviewed (double-blind) by a scientific 
committee. The evaluation criteria are:

1. Relevance to the conference theme and topics of specified interest 
(other topics are fine, but the proposal should be relevant to at least 
one of those listed above)

2. Originality of the research (empirical) or essay (philosophical), 
i.e. its contribution to improving knowledge and/or theory building

3. Quality and importance of study and/or concept the paper will address

4. Research methods and design (for empirical papers)

5. Key findings and implications for developing PSM theory in relation 
to the conference theme

6. Relevance of the findings / concept for PSM management and practice

Empirical research is highly valued but the organizers also welcome 
insightful philosophical, critical and theory-driven papers. Comparative 
research is especially appreciated.

RIPE conferences focus on substance, dialogue and results. We therefore 
limit acceptance to about 60 papers and each paper is assigned to one of 
several workgroups that are based on the list of 6 broad topics provided 
above.

The official language of the conference is English. There will be a 
session on Public Media Service in the Ibero-American Space in which 
presentations can be given in Portuguese or Spanish.

The conference happens over 2.5 days with a welcoming reception the 
Wednesday evening before the first day on Thursday. The conference will 
end at lunch time on Saturday and will be immediately followed by a 
General Assembly organized and chaired by the leadership team of 
International Association of Public Media Researchers (IAPMR)

Conference Fee

The early bird registration fee is €325 euros (until the 15 th of 
March). The fee for later registrations is €375 euros (until 15 th of 
April).

A reduced registration fee of €175 euros is available for students and 
junior academic researchers (less than 3 years after completing the PhD 
degree.

The conference fee pays for meals (2 dinners including the gala, 2 
lunches, 6 coffee breaks) and all conference events and materials. It 
does not pay for hotel accommodation or travel costs.

Based on the level of interest, a non-obligatory social programme might 
be planned for Sunday following the conference at an additional cost for 
those interested to participate.

Neither the RIPE conference  or any of the partner organizations can 
supplement personal travel costs.

No payment from the authors will be required.

Contacts:

For more information about the conference, please consult our website 
https://www.ripepsm.org <https://www.ripepsm.org>

For answers to questions related to logistics or other practical matters 
not addressed on the website, you can send email to either of these two 
options:

• The conference email address: (Ripe.lisbon /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(Ripe.lisbon /at/ gmail.com)>

• Dr. Paulo Faustino: (faustino.paulo /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(faustino.paulo /at/ gmail.com)>

For information about RIPE or to contact the IAPMR leadership team, 
please email Gregory Lowe Gregory Ferrell Lowe: 
(gregory.lowe /at/ northwestern.edu) <mailto:(gregory.lowe /at/ northwestern.edu)>

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