Governance, Regulation, Innovation and Emerging Social Conventions in Changing Media Environments

Long-term collaboration between the Hans Bredow Institute, Hamburg, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI), Brisbane, is financed by the German Research Funding Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)

Ongoing media change and associated shifts in the wider media ecologies require us to rethink current media governance and regulation frameworks; the development of new social conventions by user communities within specific media environments especially in new and social media must be recognised in this process, and media policy must begin to engage with the social conventions established by users themselves, but also with the structuring power that is inherent in the “technological architecture” of hardware and software configurations, the code. This is also a question of media innovation – in collaboration between media organisations, technology developers, regulatory bodies, and the user communities themselves. Today, the governance and regulation of digital media requires inter¬national and interdisciplinary collaboration, which is what this project will deliver. Through this collaboration, we aim to develop models for the governance of self-organising and adaptive open systems.

The project consists of two bilateral workshops which will pursue these issues. To be held in Brisbane, Australia (end 2011/beginning 2012) and Hamburg (mid 2012), these workshops are designed to further strengthen the emerging long-term collaboration between the Hans Bredow Institute (HBI), Hamburg, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI), Brisbane, both of which are recognised as the leading centres for media and communication research in their respective countries.

The partners have agreed to follow two trains of thought for further corporation. The first one revolves around innovation in internet content. The partners are interested in the regulatory structures which promote innovation in this field. The second line focuses on governance structures in social media. Both topics tie in with current research done at both ends and have come up in joint activities. The two proposed workshops will deepen these scholarly and interpersonal ties, and enable a greater number of researchers from both institutions to participate in academic exchange. The workshops will present current work by participating researchers, and enable the development of further major collaborative research projects, leading to project applications to the DFG and its Australian counterpart, the ARC.