New Public Media Networks

23rd March 2011

We created this video to explore ways in which people are using and conceptualizing public media networks—involving both traditional public broadcasters and new public media players. It’s a first effort to depict emerging systems of creation, curation and connection as they might operate in the life of a single fictional family.

The video is based on the work we have done in the fields of media and law with support from the Ford Foundation, critically examining the meaning, value and appropriate structures of emerging public media networks in the digital age.

Join the Conversation

We hope the video will spur discussion—both online and face-to-face. (See the #pubmedia tag on Twitter for an ongoing dialogue.) Please distribute and use it freely for noncommercial purposes and with attribution. Also available are related handouts on public media functions and the imagined family featured in the video. Or make your own videos about how public media works and how it should evolve to serve you.

In addition, there are many different courses of action that people can take with respect to public media, including:

Defending public broadcasting funding against proposed cuts in Congress—for more information see the 170 Million Americans campaign
Pressing for reform of public media law and policy at the national level—for one proposal, see this article from the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology
Holding local public media outlets to higher performance standards—to find local public stations, see this map from the National Center for Media Engagement
Producing their own public media through some of the networked platforms we’ve highlighted—for example, see the Public Radio Exchange

Questions? Post them here.

Thanks for watching, and for spreading the word.

—Jessica Clark, Center for Social Media, American University
—Ellen Goodman, Institute for Information Policy & Law, Rutgers—Camden