Digital inclusion and the BBC: securing an equitable digital transition through empirically informed technology policies and strategies

In the UK and elsewhere, public service media organisations (PSMs) face a number of existential challenges. With audiences increasingly consuming news and entertainment content online and on-demand, PSMs must on the one hand compete with international streaming giants and social media companies for audience share, through the development of their own online platforms and presence. Yet they must do so currently despite long-term budgetary pressures, in many cases, and the obligation to simultaneously maintain legacy broadcast infrastructures. In anticipating the ever-greater digitalisation of our media lives over the next decade, a number of PSMs, including the BBC, have signalled their intention not only to increase investment in digital product, but to shift the locus for financial and editorial decision-making decisively away from broadcast channels, with a view to exclusive digital delivery at some unspecified point in the more distant future.
This 'digital-first' agenda is argued by its advocates to be imperative for the survival of public service media. Yet given the inequalities that exist in relation to digital technologies and the different extent to which - and ways in which - these are used, understood, perceived and experienced by different groups, there is clearly also a risk that the 'digital-first' transition will exacerbate the broader societal inequalities with which digital inequalities are inextricably interwoven. Such an outcome would risk violating the values of diversity and inclusivity that define PSMs, challenging them to achieve an equitable 'digital-first' transition. Yet what it means, and why it matters, to be excluded from PSM in a digitalised and datafied age remains an underexplored question. It follows that PSMs are likely to be insufficiently aware, at present, of the potentially important implications of digital exclusion in terms of their technology policies and design processes.
Working in partnership with the BBC, this project contributes precisely to a better understanding of the nature, extent, causes and possible solutions to digital exclusion within a PSM context, by combining qualitative data from BBC stakeholders and digitally excluded audiences with an array of quantitative secondary sources, including survey data and digital analytics. The research will help to address a notable gap within the academic literature on digital inequalities, within which public service media remains an underexplored area. Yet the knowledge produced by the research will also be geared towards much more practical purposes, as well. Accordingly, in addition to traditional academic formats, findings from the research will also be translated into documents, guidance and tools that can be adopted by BBC technology and innovation teams - and potentially other PSMs - in ways that empower them to respond to the needs and circumstances of marginalised and underserved audiences, and thus develop media and communications technologies that are inclusive, fair and socially sustainable.