This Research Round-Up presents three recent academic contributions centered around how (public) service media and journalism interact with, are dependent on or themselves form part of (critical) infrastructures, a debate gaining salience in the wake of geopolitical crises and digitial sovereignty debates.
Why infrastructures studies for journalism?
Mary Lynn Young and Alfred Hermida |
Digital Journalism, 2025
This conceptual review explores how recent journalism scholarship has engaged with infrastructural research, based around four key themes: journalism institutions, platforms and platform power, adjacent institutions and applications, and sociotechnical apparatus. The authors also provide an overview of various definitions and conceptualizations from the interdisciplinary field of infrastructure studies. They conclude that a core contribution from such approaches to journalism studies is that they help considering the changing and expanding neighbourhoods for journalism, decentering the journalist and the newsroom and taking a more holistic and timely view of the topic.
Read the article here.
Capture Beyond the Platforms: The Material and Infrastructural Conditions for Digital Journalism
Helle Sjøvaag, Raul Ferrer-Conill and Ragnhild Kr. Olsen |
Digital Journalism, 2026
The article examines the complex infrastructural dependencies that influence the creation and distribution of news under contemporary sociotechnical conditions. Moving beyond the well-researched level of platforms, the authors map several backbone infrastructures and the actors involved in the Norwegian case, drawing on document analysis. They focus on subsea cables, internet exchange points, content delivery networks, data centres and cloud services. The article concludes that most of the actors involved in these infrastructures are private and foreign. This raises questions concerning data sovereignty, distribution control, and regulatory jurisdiction.
Read the full article here.
Public service media as critical media infrastructure for the digital era
Gillian Doyle, Kenny Barr and Raymond Boyle |
Media, Culture and Society, 2025
This article sets out from the question of the extent to which critical infrastructure sectors like rail, aviation and heathcare can serve as “role models” for PSM. According to the authors, this refers to the importance of accurate news for everyday life, democracy and national security. To this end, they analyzed documentary sources and interviewed decision-makers from UK critical infrastructure sectors. The authors suggest that, rather than merely responding to crises, PSM organizations should take a proactive, integrated approach to identifying risks, protecting their services, and adapting to technological and industrial change. Studying how other infrastructure sectors prioritize resilience could provide valuable guidance for PSM organisations.
Read the full article here.
This Research Round-up presents recent academic contributions centered around how (public) service media and journalism interact with, are dependent on or themselves form part of (critical) infrastructures, a debate gaining salience in the wake of geopolitical crises and digitial sovereignty debates.
Public service media: funding and governance options
Georgina Born and Justin Lewis (Ed.) |
The British Academy, 2025
This international comparison, which is intended to inform the current BBC Charter renewal process, collects policy briefs on public service media (PSM) funding and governance mechanisms in ten countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Authored by media scholars from these countries, the volume provides a valuable insight in the current state of PSM funding in these countries. Through its country collection, the volume also sheds light on the broader trend of abandoning the traditional device-based licence fee in favour of funding PSM through general taxation, as in the Nordic countries, or via a household levy, as in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Finally, the report sets out potential avenues for a future BBC funding model based on the lessons learned from the international comparison.
Read the volume here.
Understanding the willingness to pay for public service media: Testing the role of socio-political trust and partisan selective exposure
Marína Urbániková, Manuel Goyanes and Klára Smejkal |
Journalism, 2026
This study analyzes the factors that determine Czech citizens’ willingness to pay (WTP) for public service media. It takes into account indicators such as media consumption and expenditure, sociopolitical trust, and partisan selective exposure. Based on a representative survey, the authors demonstrate that people who spend money on news and entertainment services generally also showed a greater willingness to pay for public radio and TV. In this vein, the article emphasizes that PSM and commercial media are not opposed forces with regard to paying for media content. Additionally, the study found a positive relationship between sociopolitical trust and WTP. Furthermore, women, younger individuals, and frequent users of PSM services were found to be willing to invest more money in PSM.
Read the full article here.
Who is Crowding Out Whom? The Impact of Public Service Media in the Swiss German Online News Market
Lukas Erbrich, Manuel Puppis, Sina Blassnig, Christian Zabel and Frank Lobigs |
International Journal on Media Management, 2026
Adding evidence to the policy debate about whether PSM online news distorts competition and harms domestic commercial operators, this study examines the Swiss German online news market. By analyzing the impact of SRF News, the authors demonstrate that dismantling the PSM digital news service would offer only marginal benefits to subscription-based commercial media, while free, advertising-funded news sites would reap the greatest rewards. In fact, use of SRF News was positively associated with willingness to pay for digital journalism and current payment behaviour. The authors conclude that restricting the online news remit of PSM would result in lower news reach, particularly among households with low incomes, lower levels of education and lower journalistic media use.
Read the full article here.
Public Service Media as Critical Infrastructure:
Briefing Report
This report by Gillian Doyle and Raymond Boyle, commissioned by the Global Task Force for Public Media, focuses on the practical implications of PSM’s infrastructural role, including its funding, independence and relationship with the state. Based on a survey and interviews with representatives from PSM organizations and the UK Economic & Social Research Council Project PSM and the Digital Challenge: Purpose, Value and Funding by Doyle, Boyle and Kenny Barr, the report outlines reccomendations for PSM organizations.
Read the full report here.