Public service media across the world are currently facing a series of challenges. Funding is under threat, trust in institutions is declining, and organisations have to compete in a media ecosystem dominated by platforms. In parallel, research and development of future technologies demands strong streams of innovation focused on the public good. How can public service media meet these challenges? What does this mean for democracy?

Join Professor Georgina Born (UCL) and Professor Victor Pickard (University of Pennsylvania) in conversation with Professor Andrew Kenyon (University of Melbourne) as they discuss the possibilities for addressing these challenges through regulation and alternative algorithm and distribution systems.

Time: 6:00pm to 7:30pm

Date: Tuesday 10 March 2026

Location: State Library of Victoria Theatrette

About the speakers

Professor Georgina Born is Professor of Anthropology and Music in the Department of Anthropology, University College London. Prior to this, she was a Professor of Music and Anthropology in the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, and a Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music at the University of Cambridge. Professor Born’s interest in democratic public service media spans her career, from her pioneering ethnography of the BBC, published as Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke, and the Reinvention of the BBC (Vintage 2005), to her work on the transition to digital television by the BBC and the UK’s second major public service broadcaster, Channel 4. These projects let to her presenting evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on the review of the BBC’s Charter in 2005, to her 2024-2025 role as co-chair of the British Academy’s policy project “Rethinking the Principles of Public Service Media for the Digital Society.” Along with Professor Fernando Diaz (Carnegie Mellon) she has to develop alternative recommender systems based on public service media values rather than personalisation to enhance cultural citizenship. She has also written a number of articles on public service media funding and governance, AI, recommender systems, and digital music distribution. Professor Born was awarded the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association in 2007, a Fellowship of the British Academy in 2014, and an OBE ‘for services to anthropology, musicology and higher education’ in 2016. In 2024 she was awarded the Guido Adler Prize of the International Musicological Society, regarded as the ‘Nobel Prize in musicology’, for outstanding contributions to the study of music. In November 2025 Professor Born was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Lund in recognition of the innovative and influential nature of her work.

Victor Pickard is the C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. Before teaching at Penn, he taught at New York University and the University of Virginia, and has held visiting appointments at Cornell, Goldsmiths, and LSE. Previously, he worked on media policy in Washington, D.C. as a Senior Research Fellow at New America and as a Policy Fellow for Congresswoman Diane Watson. Pickard chairs the Board of Directors for the media reform organization Free Press and co-directs the annual Consortium on Media Policy Studies (COMPASS) program. His research on the history and future of journalism, the politics of media policy , and the role of public media in a democratic society has been published in dozens of scholarly journals and anthologies and he often writes for popular venues such as The Guardian, The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, Harvard Business Review, Jacobin, The Nation, and The Atlantic. He has been interviewed widely by media organizations such as NPR, Pacifica, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, The Wallstreet Journal, MSNBC, C-SPAN, the PBS News Hour, and The New York Times. Pickard has authored or edited six books, including the award-winning monographs Democracy Without Journalism? and America’s Battle for Media Democracy. Currently he is serving as a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and working on a book about the history, political economy, and democratic implications of commercial media.

Professor Andrew Kenyon is Professor of Law in the Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. He is also an Associate Investigator at the University of Melbourne node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society (ADM+S). He researches in comparative media law, including defamation, privacy, free speech and media policy. As well as legal doctrine, this work draws on a wide range of social and media studies research. Among other work, he has conducted multi-year doctrinal and empirical research into defamation law, litigation and news production practices in Australia, the UK, USA, Malaysia and Singapore, and extensive research on comparative approaches to freedom of expression. He has been a visiting professor at the University of British Columbia, London School of Economics, Queen Mary University of London, and University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne.

Contact the host of ADM+S: Public Service Media in the Platform Era – Towards Public Infrastructures