Public Service Media in Challenging Times: Connectivity, Climate and 
Corona. A talk by Graham Murdock

hosted and organised by InnoPSM: AHRC Research Network on Innovation in 
Public Service Media Policies (https://innopsm.net/) and its event- and 
work-stream on Envisioning Public Service Media Utopias

Date: Monday, 15 February 2021
Time: 16:00-18:00 (British Time)
Where? Zoom (you will receive a Zoom link plus access data at latest one 
day before the event per e-mail)

Registration via Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/public-service-media-in-challenging-times-connectivity-climate-and-corona-tickets-137997106059

In this talk, Prof Graham Murdock will analyse public service media in 
the challenging times we live in.
The institutions and animating ideals of public service broadcasting 
have been under continuous pressure for the last four decades. Advocates 
of marketisation have argued long and hard that they are no longer 
relevant or needed in a world of digital abundance and infinite choice, 
pointing to the increasing migration of young people to on-line 
platforms. These arguments continue to gain traction. A new proposal for 
an alternative future must place relations between broadcasting and the 
internet at the centre of argument. Discussions around how these 
relations might be organised has been underway for some time but recent 
developments have invested them with new relevance and urgency.
2020 was marked by a global pandemic, an accelerating climate crisis, 
and an explosion of direct action across the political spectrum. The 
processes driving these events are still unfolding presenting Public 
Service Media with both new challenges and new opportunities. The talk 
will open a conversation of how we might respond.

About our speaker:
Graham Murdock is Emeritus Professor of Culture and Economy at 
Loughborough University. He has written extensively on the political 
economy of broadcasting, the idea of a digital commons, and on the 
politics of risk, most recently in relation to the climate emergency. He 
has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Auckland, 
California at San Diego, Mexico City, Curtin, Bergen, the Free 
University of Brussels, and Stockholm and taught widely across China. 
His work has been translated into 21 languages.

Respondents: Alessandro d’Arma, University of Westminster; Minna Aslama 
Horowitz, University of Helsinki; Klaus Unterberger, Austrian 
Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) Public Value; Christian Fuchs, University 
of Westminster