Call for Candidates - S&WG Head elections 2021

Public Service Media Policies Working Group

The Public Service Media Policies Working Group (PSM) will be holding online elections for two co-Chair  and one Vice-chair positions, for the term 2021 - 2025.

The elections will be held online from 16 June until 14 September using the SurveyMonkey platform. Individual members and representatives of institutional members who are also registered as members of the PSM working group are eligible to stand for a position and to vote.

Interested candidates must send their name, institutional position, a statement of no more than 500 words and a photograph to elections [at] iamcr.org with a copy to the PSM working group’s current officers, Alessandro D’Arma (A.Darma [at] westminster.ac.uk) and Yik-Chan Chin (yik-chan.chin [at] xjtlu.edu.cn), no later than 16 May.

All candidates must be current members of IAMCR, and of the PSM working group. To verify if you are a member of the working group, log in to your IAMCR account and select “My Sections and Working Groups” from the menu.

You can find the election rules at: https://iamcr.org/governance/swg-rules

Read about the Public Service Media Policies Working Group

Candidates

Co-chair

  • Fiona Martin (University of Sydney, Australia)
  • Anis Rahman (University of Washington, USA)

Vice-chair

  • Yik Chan Chin (Beijing Normal University, China)

Statements

Co-chair

Fiona MartinFiona Martin (University of Sydney, Australia)

I wish to nominate for the Co-Chair position, of the IAMCR Public Service Media Policies Working Group. I first attended IAMCR in 2008, the year my PhD was awarded for a thesis on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s digital transformation. In the years since I have regularly attended this conference, collaborated with IAMCR members and now serve on the International Council. I am a member of the International Association of Public Service Media Researchers/IAPMR and have contributed to the conference organizing committee of the RIPE public service media research group, hosting the first RIPE conference outside Europe, in Sydney Australia 2012, and acting as co-editor and author, with Dr Greg F. Lowe, of The Value of Public Service Media, the then best-selling book of the pivotal Nordicom RIPE reader series on PSM. I have published journal articles and book chapters on the ABC’s digital development and policy challenges, work on mobile media and universalism, and more recently government submissions and other public commentary on public service media funding, competitive neutrality, and public service social media.

My current research <https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/about/our-people/academic-staff/fiona-martin.html> draws on my expertise in digital journalism and social media regulation, and includes an Australian Research Council grant to study platform governance, with in a media industry regulatory framework, and research into combatting online violence against women journalists and mitigating hate speech on social media in the Asia Pacific. In 2020, I established a final year undergraduate work-integrated learning unit, the ABC Innovation Research unit, which sees University of Sydney students working with PSM staff to research core audience, programming, operational or policy innovation challenges using human-centered design principles.

As co-Chair of the Working Group I wish to drive research into similar models for collaborative innovation research between students, academics and PSM companies, in order to harness the scope of universities’ intellectual resources to help investigate local PSM challenges. I also wish to support cooperative research into the future of public service social media and the internet as public infrastructure, with a view to exploring how public access/public service network capacity and platform initiatives are emerging internationally, and how they are central to questions of social justice, political participation, communicative and educational equity. If elected as Co-Chair I would work with my fellow chair to:

  • expand the working group membership, liaising with key PSM research groups.
  • explore mentoring relationships for early career researchers.
  • organize an annual pre or post conference, and encourage regional events.
  • commission and edit a journal or edited collection based on working group research.
  • promote working group activities via key research networks and communities.

RahmanAnis Rahman (University of Washington, USA)

I would like to seek nomination for the Co-Chair position of the Public Service Media Policies Working Group at the IAMCR. I have been attending IAMCR conferences since 2008 establishing productive networks amongst scholars from the global south. In recent years I have collaborated with these networks and media professionals in the field of public service, state-administered and community media enterprises. In 2016, I led a collaborative research task exploring the political and cultural transformations of public media in seven countries, culminated in an open access book Public Service Media Initiatives in the Global South, which I co-edited with Dr. Gregory F. Lowe. I have published a range of research papers as I work to critique and readapt theories of the global North to strive for epistemic and social justice in the global South and my home country of Bangladesh. I draw interest in public media policies from my experience of working as a journalist, as a media advocacy project manager, and as a communication generalist with a growing expertise in geopolitics of digital platforms. To learn more about my relevant publications and recent research projects, please visit here https://com.uw.edu/people/faculty/anis-rahman/

As a Co-Chair of the group, I would be interested in exploring the prospects of Internet as a public utility tool and as a PSM infrastructure—owned, operated, and regulated by the public and at the service of the public. I firmly hold that as a Working Group within the IAMCR, we should leverage the intellectual networks of other Sections and Working Groups (such as, Political Economy, International Communication, Communication Policy & Technology, Community Communication and Alternative Media, Global Media Policy) to forge an intersectional alliance for studying and mapping the possibilities of public service, community, and non-profit Internet and platform initiatives and innovations at international, national, and community levels. I also believe that we should engage and accommodate more research and diverse voices coming from the margin of the PSM studies, especially from the emerging scholars of the global South.

If elected as a Co-Chair, with the support of the group’s membership, I would propose some ideas for the next four years. These include:

  • Recruiting more members going beyond academia and expanding the networks into public service, state-administered and community media practitioners, and selective policy thinktanks.
  • Forging collaboration with the well-established international players in the field of PSM policies and practices, including Public Media Alliance, RIPE+, Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union.
  • Establishing networking and event sharing partnership with the Global PSM Experts Network and InnoPSM.
  • Reaching out to relevant sections and working groups at the IAMCR to forge a coalition for mapping Public Service and Community Internet and platform initiatives.
  • Consulting with membership to organize, at minimum, one pre-conference or a networking meeting each year.
  • Soliciting submissions for edited books or journal special issues based on the presentations made at the annual meetings of the working group.

I would like to sincerely thank the current Co-Chairs Drs. Alessandro D’Arma and Yik-Chan Chin for their leadership and guidance. Also, thanks to Dr. Minna Aslama Horowitz for her incredible support with bridging my PSM networks between the global South and North.

Vice-chair

Yik ChanYik Chan Chin (Beijing Normal University, China)

I wish to nominate for the Vice-Chair position of the IAMCR Public Service Media Policies Working Group. As the outgoing co-chair of the PSM working group with Dr. Alessandro D'Arma in the last few years, I thank you very much for all of your support to the working group and to all our events in the past. During our four years’ term, Alessandro and I have organised the working group’s programmes at each IAMCR’s annual conferences, and the PSM pre-conference “Public Service Media in a Time of Global Reordering: Sustainability, Reinvention and Extension” at the 2018: Eugene, Oregon (USA) annual conference (https://oregon2018.iamcr.org/PSM.html). We have team up with Dr. Minna Horowitz and edited a special issue “Advocating for public service media: Scholarship and praxis” based on papers presented at the pre-conference to advocate for the reflections of PSM’s theories and practices (https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/iscc/2020/00000011/00000002)

The working group has also welcomed new members outside the PSM heartland, especially new members from Asian economies including Malaysia, Bangladesh, China and Taiwan. I enjoyed the work of PSM working group and the collaboration and friendship with colleagues and members.

In this year’s election, the working group has new candidates standing for the co-chairs positions, and I am happy to work with the new candidates and to support their works as vice-chair. Based on my experiences as co-chair of the PSM, the steering committee member of the Giganet, MSG of the Asian Pacific Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) and China IGF, and the At-large member of the ICANN, I would propose to work with the new co-chairs and vice-chair in the following areas in the forthcoming term: 1) to refine the current remit and scope of the working group based on our pervious discussions and the future consultation with our members. This is potential necessary partly because of the prominent role of Internet platforms and the heated debates on the public service function the digital platforms need to service. 2) to continue strengthening our membership in the underrepresented regions, including Asia and Africa. 3) to organize activities and special publications for our members in order to encourage interactions and debates. 4) to have more collaborations with external partners such as RIPE and the Giganet to broaden the debate and enhance the working group’s impact.

I hope you can support my nomination and my work. Thank you!

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