Social Science Research Council

Bridging Media Research, Media Reform, and Media Justice 

Changes in media technologies and industry structure affect not only the ways in which media content is delivered, but more fundamentally the ways in which we understand the world, communicate with each other, and participate in public discourse. New digital technologies, the concentration of media ownership, the privatization of communications infrastructures, and the expansion of intellectual property regimes are both causes and effects of this transformation--and global in reach.

Public-interest advocacy on these issues has grown in recent years, and begun to renew concepts of the public good appropriate to the new media environment. This program is premised on the belief that advancing public-interest agendas requires not just the scaling up of political activity, but also a more robust and better-integrated process of knowledge production in and around issues of media, communications policy, and the public sphere.

A robust knowledge infrastructure in this area has three broad qualities: 

• It permits actors to produce, find, and mobilize relevant research and data.
• It facilitates the ongoing analysis of reform activities and strategies;
• And it supports the articulation of broader conceptual frameworks and linkages between issues.

This program works to build a culture of collaboration between researchers, advocates, and activists that can strengthen that knowledge infrastructure. Its primary activities includes 'collaborative grants' for research/advocacy partnerships, a Data Consortium for improving access to media and communications datasets, and a range of other facilitation services.   The program is built around an online 'Media Research Hub' that brokers connections between researchers and other constituencies. 

The program continues a long investment by the SSRC in knowledge building at the intersection of new technologies and processes of social and political change--most notably the recently-concluded 'Information Technology and International Cooperation' program.  It also intersects and draws on related work on cultural production and media ecologies in the 'Culture, Creativity, and Information Technology' program.

This work is supported by a grant from the 'Knowledge, Creativity, and Freedom' program of the Ford Foundation.