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

在英国和其他地方，公共服务媒体组织(PSM)面临着许多事关生死存亡的挑战。随着受众越来越多地在线和点播消费新闻和娱乐内容，PSM一方面必须通过发展自己的在线平台和存在，与国际流媒体巨头和社交媒体公司争夺受众份额。然而，它们目前必须这样做，尽管在许多情况下，它们面临长期的预算压力，并且有义务同时维护遗留的广播基础设施。预计未来十年，我们的媒体生活将越来越数字化，包括BBC在内的一些PSM已经表示，他们不仅打算增加对数字产品的投资，而且要果断地将金融和编辑决策的地点从广播频道转移到更遥远的未来某个未指明的时间点上，以期实现独家数字交付。其倡导者认为，对于公共服务媒体的生存来说，这是至关重要的数字优先议程。然而，鉴于数字技术方面存在的不平等，以及不同群体对数字技术的使用、理解、感知和体验的不同程度和方式，显然也存在这样一种风险，即“数字优先”转型将加剧与数字不平等密不可分的更广泛的社会不平等。这样的结果可能会违反定义PSM的多样性和包容性的价值观，挑战它们实现公平的“数字优先”过渡。然而，在一个数字化和数据化的时代，被排除在PSM之外意味着什么，为什么重要，仍然是一个未被探索的问题。由此得出的结论是，目前，私营军事公司可能没有充分认识到数字排斥在其技术政策和设计过程中的潜在重要影响。该项目与英国广播公司合作，通过将来自英国广播公司利益攸关方和被数字排斥的受众的定性数据与包括调查数据和数字分析在内的一系列量化二级来源相结合，恰恰有助于更好地了解私营部门管理背景下数字排斥的性质、程度、原因和可能的解决方案。这项研究将有助于解决学术文献中关于数字不平等的一个显著差距，在这一领域，公共服务媒体仍然是一个未被探索的领域。然而，这项研究产生的知识也将用于更实际的目的。因此，除了传统的学术形式外，研究结果还将被转化为文件、指导和工具，供BBC技术和创新团队--可能还有其他PSM--采用，使他们能够对被边缘化和服务不足的受众的需求和情况做出反应，从而开发包容、公平和社会可持续的媒体和通信技术。

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.