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Public Service Media in the Platform Era – Towards Public Digital Infrastructures

3-4 September 2026

The British Academy, Carlton House Terrace

Invitation only

Photo credit: Abdullah Serbest via Shutterstock

Conference aims

This conference addresses the acute challenges posed to public service media in the UK and worldwide by the global technology companies’ dominance in the media ecosystem. This dominance in infrastructure, distribution platforms, algorithms and social media creates serious difficulties of dependency, exacerbated by lack of transparency and accountability.

The conference aims to share evidence-based perspectives and case studies showing how these challenges might be addressed in the UK and internationally. Central questions will include how to sustain democratic public spheres, information security and cultural sovereignty.

Guiding principles to be debated by the conference:

  • That international collaboration is essential to build sufficient resources to support the development of non-commercial, public-interest-driven technologies at scale.
  • That such work is both feasible and underway.
  • That the creation of public service-driven technologies in areas such as distribution, algorithms and social media has the potential to bring significant economic benefits, including for the wider creative economies of the countries involved.

The conference will host discussion of these ideas with the public service media industry, politicians, and the relevant policy and academic communities, and lay the groundwork for coordinated international action.

It will showcase speakers from international public service media and academia who are engaged in innovative research and experimentation, and who can speak to what is possible in practice.

Organised by

The summit is hosted by the UK's British Academy in London, and is organised by Georgina Born OBE FBA (UCL), Justin Lewis FBA (Cardiff), Robin Mansell FBA (LSE),Victor Pickard (Annenberg) and Mark Andrejevic (Monash), with the support of the Australian Research Council’s Centre for Automated Decision-Making and Society, the UKRI’s BBC-linked Responsible Innovation Centre, and the European Research Council-funded UCL ‘MusAI’ research programme. Support is also provided by the Public Media Alliance

The British Academy logo in black
UCL logo in purple

See more of our work on the future of Public Service Media

The BBC’s Charter is up for renewal in 2027. To coincide with the start of the renewal process in late 2025, the British Academy commissioned this collection of 12 policy briefs to help inform decisions around the future funding and governance of the BBC. (Image: Eric Johnson Photography via Shutterstock)

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