Help! What is the value of social media to public service journalism?

Added value for society is generally speaking what public service journalism aims for. But what’s the public value of a tweet? How should public service journalists use Twitter and the rest of social media to produce public value

How dangerous is your life? Personalising Government open crime data

This paper discusses the use of Government Open Data and how public services based on this data can and should encourage data personalisation. We present our case study Fearsquare, an application that allows people to interact with public UK crime statistics in a way that is specific to their own, individual, everyday life by leveraging the popular social media service FourSquare. This service is used as an example of how Open Data can be tailored for used in the field of personal informatics. Results suggest that the ability to personalise Government Open Crime Data using Foursquare user location history data provides an added value to an already publically available dataset

PUBLIC VALUE CREATION USING SOCIAL MEDIA APPLICATIONS FOR THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT CONTEXT

In recent years, the use of various social media applications has received growing attention from local government agencies. This is because social media applications have the potential to offer public value to those agencies as well as citizens through enhancing public engagement and public services innovation. Despite the growth in the literature on social media, there is still a limited understanding of how the key stakeholders of local government agencies, around the world in general and Saudi Arabia in particular, can receive public value created through us-ing various social media applications. To address this concern, this proposed study is initiated to develop a model for investigating public value creation using social media applications. The model is influenced by multiple theoretical lenses (e.g. trust in social media, social media capability, public engagement, public services innovation, public value theory, and stakeholder theory). This proposed research is based on a qualitative methodology with several phases of research (e.g. pilot study, multiple-case study and domain expert panel) for the Saudi Arabian local government context. The expected contribution of this research is a model with constructive associations between several variables identified from multiple streams of literature (e.g. social media, information systems literature and public administration literature). Furthermore, a classification of public services innovation associated with four types of public value are proposed. The findings of the study are expected to benefit public managers as well as citizens to better utilise social media for public value creation. Keywords: Trust in social media, social media capability, public engagement, public service innovation, public value, stakeholder theory

The public value notion in UK public service broadcasting: an analysis of the ideological justification of public service broadcasting in the context of evolving media policy paradigms

The thesis investigates the application of the public value notion in UK public service broadcasting (PSB). In the context of technological change from analogue to digital broadcasting and the reduction of applicable market failures, the notion has been used to describe the remit and assess the performance of PSB, thus providing sustained justification of PSB in the digital age. The overall research interest is to investigate the public value notion in the context of evolving media policy paradigms to examine whether its institutionalisation represents a paradigm shift in the ideological justification of PSB. The ideological justification is investigated in the form of economic and noneconomic regulatory rationales as different academic approaches to market intervention and public service provision. As a fundamental type of policy change, the paradigm shift concept is operationalised by devising an analytical framework that consists of two analytical strands; an ideological shift and a policy process analysis. Based on a case study approach of the notion’s application at the BBC and Channel 4, the research design employs interpretative textual analysis of documents and expert interviews to investigate the ideological composition of the public value notion and its wider policy process. The research finds that no paradigm shift has taken place in the justification of PSB as the public value notion continues the overall more economic than non-economic focus of the incumbent media policy paradigm. These findings contribute to media and public policy studies with regard to the understanding and classification of (media policy) paradigm shifts as a fundamental type of policy change and the use of economic and non-economic rationales as different ideologies in informing policy ideas and decisions-making in media policy

Trends of Media Productions Commercialization and Factors of Information Allotment in developing Countries

The public service media (PSM) theory differs from the commercial theory by its inclusiveness of ‘public interest’ in addition to media sustainability for both public and private media. In public goods theory, the nature of media economics is far reaching. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate factors that determine healthy media development of Ethiopia on account of its fast economic growth. About 10 media houses were purposively selected. The selection merits of media study for content analysis relay on media categorical share (print, broadcast), circulation and area coverage. The study applies primary and secondary data collection. Descriptive statistics and multiple regressions are taken as an analytical tool. The study finds out that news has scale effect on public service media at every unit analysis of media strata. As air time/column space changes by unit measurement, news package information delivery for poverty alleviation had an increase changing pattern. Moreover, the tendency of media capital formation (private, public) development of media in the country shows strong positive relation with the public service media value. Finally, public media exposure which stands at 30% is below the minimum requirement compared to speed of radio coverage which stands at 85% for the country in the study year. The promising news information delivery in poverty alleviation should be kept by reinforcing editorial policy and strictly implementing the law that prohibits advertisement on news package. Promotion of circulation and program rating, standardization and modernization of program differentiation are vital to improve Advertisements/Sponsorship expediency and enhancing variety of programs/ editorials for poverty alleviation respectively

Book Reviews

Gregory Ferrell Lowe and Fiona Martin (eds), The Value of Public Service Media; Des Freedman, The Contradictions of Media Power; Ulrik Haagerup, Constructive News; Chin-Chuan Lee (ed.) Internationalizing International Communication; Maria Edström and Ragnhild Mølster (eds), Making Change. Nordic Examples of Workig Towards Gender Equality in the Media; Open Society Foundations, Mapping Digital Media: Global Findings. Digital Journalism: Making News, Breaking New

Book Reviews

Gregory Ferrell Lowe and Fiona Martin (eds), The Value of Public Service Media; Des Freedman, The Contradictions of Media Power; Ulrik Haagerup, Constructive News; Chin-Chuan Lee (ed.) Internationalizing International Communication; Maria Edström and Ragnhild Mølster (eds), Making Change. Nordic Examples of Workig Towards Gender Equality in the Media; Open Society Foundations, Mapping Digital Media: Global Findings. Digital Journalism: Making News, Breaking New

What it’s like to tell a story without social media and why I will never do so again (Guest blog)

Imagine doing your journalism without any social media. Imagine your newsroom is actually restricted by law in what social media it can use. That was the situation for Austrian radio correspondent Nadja Hahn who has spent the last month at Polis, LSE researching the value of social media for public service journalism. Here is her valedictory post. Download her research report her

Boundaries of Logics in Municipality Communicators’ Facebook Practice: Towards a New Public Service Competence

With an increased use of external online platforms, digital government logics are gradually intertwined with external, algorithmic, crowd-influenced value logics of social media platforms. This new scene especially affects administration, which can no longer neutrally deliver public service, but becomes involved in processes of consideration and judging what rules and traditions seem most appropriate in the situation. Through deep interviews and workshops with municipal communicators, we examine this balancing act when communicators use social media for external communication. We use a practice perspective to characterize and conceptualize an emerging approach to public service

Latvian public service broadcasting (PSB) at a media policy crossroads on the path to public service media (PSM)

This paper critically examines Latvian media policy from the point of view of public value theory, regarding the management of public service media. Since 1992, Latvian Television (LTV, 1954) and Latvian Radio (LR, 1925) officially, i.e. according to law, are independent public service media organisations, and consequently two legal entities. In fact LTV and LR are two state enterprises with one supervising council (five members) elected by parliament according to political proportionality – National Electronic Mass Media Council (the NEPLP). Since 2011, the Latvian government has been slowly deciding plans for the reform and creation of a unified PSM corporation, not just a PSB, i.e. including not only radio and TV broadcasting but a multimedia approach, especially on the Internet platform, due to media convergence. Political decisions of government and parliament for the above-mentioned intent are still wanted. Also, an initiative by LTV and NEPLP to establish a Russian language TV channel was not taken further by decision makers