Building Desirable and Resilient Public Media Futures: Establishing the Centre for Public Values, Technology & Society

现在比以往任何时候都更重要的是，我们必须了解数据和技术对媒体、社会和民主构成的挑战，因为我们如何建设技术对我们的数字未来至关重要。虽然对这些挑战的研究越来越多，但令人惊讶的是，公共服务媒体背景几乎没有受到关注。Rhianne Jones博士将领导英国广播公司公共价值、技术和社会中心，由UKRI未来领袖奖学金支持，以应对这些重要挑战，并推动公共和更广泛媒体部门负责任的、以社会为中心的创新。琼斯博士位于英国广播公司研发中心，其职责是开发符合公众利益的技术。琼斯博士将领导该中心及其专家合作伙伴网络，促进对健康未来数字英国社会所需问题和应对措施的了解。我们的数字世界建立在数据驱动的技术之上。这些技术在日常生活中发挥着不可或缺的作用，以不同的方式影响着我们获取信息、体验和社会的途径。关于个人、群体和系统的数据被大量收集和分析，并使用越来越复杂的算法进行分析，以便做出能够决定我们生活重要领域结果的决定。这些技术不再局限于在线空间，越来越多地出现在我们周围，它们为人们、社区和社会带来了巨大利益和风险的潜力。在民主国家，媒体和创意产业在我们的个人、文化和集体生活中发挥着至关重要的作用，但在数据驱动和人工智能系统的支撑下，在线、移动和互联媒体的快速进步正在迅速改变格局。从个性化内容到新的合成媒体形式，社会对这些技术的理解绝不能落后于这种技术发展。为了应对这些挑战，媒体组织必须具备利用和贡献最先进的基础研究的能力，以便为技术创新提供信息，并最大限度地转移和影响社会有益的目的。公共服务媒体的存在是为了向公众提供公正可信的内容，但数字版图的发展带来的新挑战可能会破坏信任和普遍性等基本公共价值观的稳定，我们需要新的方式来理解、阐明和设想理想的公共媒体未来。公共资助的媒体具有特别重要的公共服务职能，并通过政策和法规与政府联系在一起。因此，它们提供了利用数据和数字服务进行研究和创新的宝贵而独特的机会，有可能通过作为案例研究在整个行业产生更广泛的影响，从而带来直接好处。琼斯博士的中心将通过加强社会科学和人文科学的应用，利用不断变化的公共服务媒体、其提供和使用这一重要视角，从根本上丰富创新的跨学科方法，以解决数据驱动的社会面临的重要问题。通过特别关注与媒体提供有关的公共服务价值和创造公共价值，中心的工作将通过卓越的研究促进对社会负责的创新，并提高未来公共服务提供的可靠性和有效性，从而改善英国和世界各地的数字生活质量。2022年，BBC迎来了公共服务广播100周年；当我们反思它在塑造定义我们公共领域的技术和通信方面所发挥的作用时，我们现在必须转向一个重要的问题，即如何为我们未来的数字社会构建一个健康的媒体生态系统。

Now more than ever it matters that we understand the challenges posed by data and technology for media, society, and democracy because how we build technology deeply matters for our digital futures. While a growing body of research exists into these challenges, the public service media context has received surprisingly little attention. Dr Rhianne Jones will lead the BBC Centre for Public Values, Technology & Society, supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to address these important challenges and advance responsible, society-centred innovation in the public and wider media sector. Located in BBC Research and Development, with its remit to develop technologies in the public interest, Dr Jones will lead the Centre and its expert partner network to advance understanding of issues and responses needed for a healthy future digital UK society.Our digital world has been built on data-driven technologies. These technologies play an integral role in everyday life, impacting our access to information, experiences and society in different ways. Data about individuals, groups and systems are collected and analysed in vast quantities, and with increasingly sophisticated algorithms in order to make decisions that can determine outcomes in important areas of our lives. No longer confined to online spaces, these technologies are increasingly all around us and they bring with them the potential for both enormous benefit and risks for people, communities, and society. The media and creative industries play a fundamental role in our individual, cultural, and collective lives in a democracy but rapid advancements in online, mobile and connected media, underpinned by data-driven and AI systems are transforming the landscape at pace. From personalised content through to new synthetic forms of media, societal understanding of these technologies must not fall behind this technological development. To meet these challenges, media organisations must be equipped to draw from and contribute to state-of-the-art foundational research to inform technical innovation and maximise transfer and impact for socially beneficial ends. Public service media exists to serve the public with impartial and trusted content but emerging challenges stemming from developments in the digital landscape threaten to destabilise foundational public values such as trust and universality and we need new ways to understand, articulate and envision desirable public media futures. Publicly funded media have an especially important public service function and are connected, via policy and regulation, into government. As such, they provide a valuable and distinctive opportunity to research and innovate with data and digital services with the potential to deliver direct benefits by acting as a case study for more general impact across the industry. Dr Jones' Centre will radically enrich interdisciplinary approaches to innovation by enhancing the application of the social sciences and humanities to address important issues facing a data-driven society, using the important lens of changing public service media, its provision and its use. Through its specific focus on public service values and the creation of public value in relation to media provision, the work of the Centre will foster socially responsible innovation through research excellence and enhance the future reliance and effectiveness of public service provision, thus improving the quality of digital life in the UK and worldwide. In 2022, the BBC marked 100 years of public service broadcasting; as we reflect on its role in shaping the technologies and communications that defined our public sphere, we must now turn to the important question of how to build a healthy media ecosystem for our future digital society.