Crossing borders and boundaries in public service media

The seventh RIPE Reader investigates cross-boundary influences affecting public service media. PSM institutions remain domestically grounded and orientated, but must cope with international influences and the impact of globalisation. This presents significant environmental challenges keyed to policies that support networked communications which have important implications for the future of broadcasting. Meanwhile, internal institutional boundaries pose challenges to internal collaboration and synergy, and to achieving greater openness and cultivating public participation in PSM. Traditional boundaries between professional and non-professional production are often problematic, as well, for external collaboration. And there are enormous challenges in efforts to bridge boundaries between PSM and other public institutions (public sector), social movements (civil and volunteer sector) and companies (private sector). Cross-boundary phenomena offer tremendous opportunities for ensuring public service provision in the emerging media ecology, but managers and policy-makers must grapple with a range of dualities that require critical examination: public / private, national / international, broadcast / print, linear / non-linear, audience / user, production / distribution, citizen / consumer, and market / society. The scholarly contributions in this volume address issues that are relevant for improved understandings about Public Service Media Across Borders and Boundaries – a contemporary topic of keen theoretical and strategic importance.