PSM and the Digital Challenge: Purpose, Value and Funding

The UK is home to a unique and diverse system of PSM whose success in serving audiences and supporting the UK's creative economy is widely lauded but whose future is now under threat due to a changing economic and competitive media landscape, new audience habits and concerns about PSM funding mechanisms. This project investigates the purpose, public value and funding of PSM. At a time when changes in distribution and in the economics of the media industry have fueled consolidation and rise of powerful global competitors, it examines the challenges faced by PSM in the UK and how they deliver public value. New functions such as countering online mis and disinformation are not merely additions but rather they re-position PSM as elements of 'critical media infrastructure' which is a focus for this project. This study examines how PSM may now be seen as critical resources whose healthy functioning, as they underpin daily cultural life, democracy and the creative economy, is highly consequential for society. Informed by analysis of how public value is generated and measured in critical infrastructure sectors other than media, it will construct a novel transferable model for investigating and evaluating how PSM delivers benefits and value to society and the economy in the UK.

At a time of increased threat posed by, for example, the disruptive influence of big tech platforms, public health crises and orchestrated campaigns of fake news, this project also investigates the resilience of PSM organisations in the UK. It breaks new ground by applying resilience frameworks, focusing on technical, organisational, economic and political threats, and by drawing on cross-sectoral and international approaches to protection of critical assets to examine how levels of resilience amongst PSMs may be strengthened.

Central to the remit that PSM can perform, their adaptability and strategic choices is the question of funding. This project will conduct in-depth quantitative and socio-political analysis, in the UK context, of alternative funding models for PSM - mainly the licence fee, a household levy, centrally administered taxation, hybrid commercial models, voluntary subscriptions, and state grants - and it assesses crucial trade-offs between differing models.

Using key case studies, the scope of the investigation will cover:
- the changing functions and purposes of PSM organisations in the digital era;
- how the value that PSM generates for society can be modelled, evaluated and measured;
- how the ability of systems of PSM to withstand, adapt to changing conditions and recover positively from stresses can be protected and improved;
- quantitative and qualitative analysis of the efficacy of alternative funding models for PSM in the UK;
- implications for public policy.

At a time of concern about how PSM can adjust successfully to technical, organisational, economic and political threats and about how systems of funding for PSM ought to change to ensure that they continue to flourish in the global arena, this project and its outputs are intended to deepen and enhance public understanding of the changing role and value of PSM in the context of a rapidly evolving media ecology. By engaging the concept of critical infrastructure and applying resilience frameworks in the context of PSM for the first time, it will break new ground theoretically and extend inter-disciplinary understanding of management of critical infrastructure organisations in the digital environment. In addition, by providing a pioneering new means of assessing the value of PSM, delivering insights into how to build the resilience of PSM and conducting comprehensive analysis of contemporary funding options, this project will significantly improve strategic knowledge on the part of PSMs in the UK and support media policy-makers in deciding how better to sustain and promote PSM objectives in the 21st century, thus contributing societal impact.