Edited by: Hanne Bruun, Catherine Johnson, Tim Raats and Vilde Schanke Sundet

Over the past decade, the growth of global platforms has led to the rise of ‘platformisation’: the ‘penetration of infrastructures, economic processes and governmental frameworks of digital platforms in different economic sectors and spheres of life, as well as the reorganisation of cultural practices and imaginations around these platforms’ (Poell et al. 2019:1). This has specific implications for public service media (PSM), which now operate within a platform ecosystem in which a small number of largely US platforms determine the rules of the game (van Dijck et al., 2018). Platformisation has created the conditions for the emergence of global streaming services, such as Netflix, Disney+, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video, with which PSM compete for audiences, revenue and talent. These new forms of on-demand, data-driven video streaming services challenge the dominance that many PSM organisations once had as the principal providers of domestic audiovisual culture. For PSM organisations this is a double bind: as they have lost audiences to streaming services and platforms, they have also had to develop new on-demand services and online content that can only be delivered through the infrastructures owned by global platforms. Yet the way in which these challenges play out for PSM are context specific. Despite large-scale studies focused on comparing systemic political and economic factors, there are relatively few comparative studies of the organisational practices and cultural outputs of PSM organisations. This is a significant omission because a growing body of work argues that it is precisely in the areas of organisational practice and cultural output that the impact of platformisation on PSM is most keenly felt (see, for example, D’Arma et al., 2021; Iordache et al., 2024; Lassen, 2025).

In response, this special issue asks: How might a comparative approach help us to better understand PSM in the age of platforms? Comparison here could be across different ‘levels of influence’ (Havens and Lotz, 2016) within the media industries, such as comparing policy/regulation and organisational practices, or comparing organisational practices with cultural outputs. In this sense, we particularly welcome articles that take a mixed method approach, combining (for example) document analysis, interviews and/or analysis of texts. Or it could be comparison across different platforms and/or contexts. We particularly welcome studies that compare across more than two contexts and studies that look beyond the Western contexts that have dominated studies of PSM.

Indicative topics include, but are not restricted to:

• Comparative analysis of the changing organisational cultures of PSM
• Comparative analysis of PSM commissioning, publishing and/or distribution practices
• Comparative analysis of PSM programming/content
• Novel methodological approaches to studying PSM in a comparative context
• Comparative analysis of the values underpinning PSM organisations
• Mixed method approaches that compare across policy, production and/or texts
• Theoretical approaches to comparative media systems analysis

Please submit a 500-750 word abstract that includes a short statement outlining how your proposed article aligns with the special issue’s aims to PSMspecialissue@leeds.ac.uk email by 4 April 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be circulated by 5 May 2025, with full length articles to be submitted by 22 September 2025.

An excellent second edition of the workshop on “Television Strategies in an On-Demand Driven Media Culture: Content production, audience considerations and publishing practices” took place this week at Aarhus University. The event was organised by Hanne Bruun and Julie Mejse Münter Lassen, under the umbrella of the research project Re-scheduling Public Service in the Digital Era.

The event brought together media scholars and practitioners from DR and TV 2 in a knowledge exchange workshop focused on how on-demand driven media culture is currently changing the television industry. On the occasion, members of the PSM-AP team presented ongoing research across different work packages:

• Balancing the scales between public service algorithms and editorial curation. The cases of Belgium and the UK was presented by Catalina Iordache and Catherine Johnson.
• This is not HBO – this is Television. PSM VoDs and personalisation practices by Hanne Bruun.
• “Television is about change”: A production study of DR’s digital transition by Julie Mejse Münter Lassen
• Measuring discoverability and prominence of European and domestic works: presenting a methodological toolbox by Tim Raats.
  

Last week, on January 26^th, 2024, we successfully organised our first Knowledge Exchange Workshop, kindly hosted by the VRT in Brussels. We would like to thank all of our speakers and participants for their valuable contributions and their openness to discussing VoD strategies, research, personalisation practices, and the development of public service algorithms. We’ve learned a lot and hope to have opened new opportunities for dialogue and future collaboration between researchers, policymakers, and the industry.

The full-day programme included:

🔎 A series of presentations on the PSM-AP project and the work done in WP1 on Policy and Regulation and WP3 on Personalisation. This included an overview of the PSM-AP project by project leader Catherine Johnson, a talk by postdoctoral researcher Catalina Iordache titled ‘Towards future-proof Public Service Media?’, and a presentation on due prominence and public service media by principal investigator Tim Raats.

🎤 A very interesting discussion panel on the topical issue of Due Prominence of PSM and Public Interest Content. The four panelists included PSM representatives Karen Donders (VRT) and Thomas Granryd (SR), as well as researchers María Trinidad García Leiva (University Carlos III of Madrid) and Michèle Ledger (University of Namur). The panel was moderated by our project leader Catherine Johnson.

📊 A highly engaging afternoon session discussing personalisation and public service algorithms with PSM representatives from multiple European countries. Public broadcasters in attendance included VRT (Belgium), RTBF (Belgium), BBC (UK), Channel 4 (UK), NPO (Netherlands), YLE (Finland), SR (Sweden), ZDF (Germany), and RAI (Italy).

📖 The launch of our first Policy Brief entitled: ‘Towards Future-Proof Public Service Media? Lessons from a comparative analysis in seven media markets’, which is co-authored by Tim Raats, Catalina Iordache and Catherine Johnson. The brief is available for download here: https://smit.vub.ac.be/policy-brief-72-towards-a-future-proof-public-service-media-lessons-from-a-comparative-analysis-in-seven-media-markets

This June, half of the PSM-AP team enjoyed the Danish sun in Aarhus ☀️🇩🇰

At the invitation of Hanne Bruun and Julie Mejse Münter Lassen, we took part in a workshop entitled Television Publishing Strategies in an On-Demand Driven Media Culture: Content production, audience considerations and scheduling practices. We presented some of our work, including preliminary results from WP1 on Policy & Regulation, the project’s conceptual and methodological considerations, and the challenges we are facing in conducting online comparative research.

We’re excited to share more of our work soon, but also to spend more time together at future events. If you want to see what we have coming up, watch our future events space.

The CHANSE Kick-off Conference in Tallinn was a success, with our team members Catherine Johnson, Michał Głowacki, Massimo Scaglioni and Julie Mejse Münter Lassen in attendance. The conference, titled ‘Transformations – Social and Cultural Dynamics in the Digital Age’, brought together CHANSE funded project teams from across Europe for a two-day conference, with keynotes, workshops, and panel sessions. On the second day our project leader, Catherine Johnson, presented the PSM-AP project, providing an overview of the project and what’s to come.

In addition, the team was able to meet with project partner Sasha Scott from the European Broadcast Union.