For twenty years, RIPE has been the prime conference for scholars interested in public service media. The conference offers opportunities for an interchange of ideas between practitioners and academics.
“We are very excited to celebrate the RIPE initiative’s anniversary with this year’s conference”, says Manuel Puppis, Professor of Media Structures and Governance at the University of Fribourg and one of the organisers behind the conference.
“Public Service Media’s Contribution to Society”
The theme of this year’s conference is “Public Service Media’s Contribution to Society”. Public Service Media (PSM) organisations across Europe and beyond are increasingly under pressure. Media use is changing rapidly, with streaming services and online platforms gaining in importance and making it harder for legacy media to hold their ground.
“Contribution to society” has become an important instrument for public service media across Europe and beyond to prove their public value. The RIPE@2021 conference allows for scrutinising the value of the concept itself. Is it merely a strategic instrument for organisations increasingly under pressure? Or does it actually help public service media to serve the public interest?
“We are convinced that RIPE@2021 will offer important insights for communication research and public service media organisations alike”, says Puppis.
A virtual event
The conference will take place as a virtual event on Monday, 27 September 2021, in the afternoon, and Tuesday, 28 September in the morning (CET). As a positive side effect of the virtual format, all interested scholars may participate free of charge and all presentations will be pre-recorded.
“While we would have loved to welcome the RIPE community to Switzerland, the virtual format offers key benefits. Since all presentations will be pre-recorded, we will not only have more time for discussion, but participants will have the unique opportunity to watch all the presentations – something that is usually not possible at conferences with several sessions taking place at the same time. And the virtual format also allows more scholars and practitioners to attend RIPE than ever before”, says Puppis.
A selection of the papers is planned to be included in a peer-reviewed anthology published by Nordicom in 2022.
Mia Jonsson Lindell