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Public service media needs better measures to capture the public value of its vital technology and innovation work. Technology and innovation play a central role in shaping our economy and, increasingly, our society. They are unlocking transformational new benefits for people and organisations. However, they are also revealing far-reaching costs that affect individuals, society and industries, such as online harassment, incitement of political violence and environmental depletion, often resulting from profit-driven business models that prioritise financial interests over social benefit.

There is a need – and an opportunity – for organisations with public missions to play a bigger role in shaping technology that maximises the benefits to society while minimising the costs. Fortunately, we have a set of institutions that have been playing this role for decades, often in the background: public service media organisations.

Where commercial firms focus on financial value, i.e. the pounds and dollars they create, public service media organisations also care about public value, i.e. their contribution to shared interests like trust, community-building and setting quality standards. Public value supports the intangible parts of life, which benefit us individually and collectively. It encompasses the social benefits that improve our lives and communities. Public value is harder to measure than financial value, which means it can be overlooked. Better measurement will help public value – and public-oriented technology and innovation – get the attention they deserve.

Why public service media has a unique role in shaping how we see and measure the public value of technology

At the Responsible Innovation Centre for Public Media Futures (RIC), we believe in technological progress that prioritises the public, and in public service media’s central role in making that happen. We recognise that public service media already plays a role in shaping technology and innovation to generate public value, and that it’s a creator of technology and not just a passive consumer. We also see its unrealised potential to do even more. We are making the case that paying more attention to key aspects of public value, such as societal value, will help achieve that potential.

Public value is integral to public service media and is what makes it special. As technology becomes more central to media, society and the lives of audiences this area of activity becomes critical for how public service media creates public value in a digital age.

If we recognise public value more directly and measure it more expansively this can improve our understanding. In turn this protects and extends the benefits it creates into the future.

Addressing the measurement gap: what our scoping research found

We identified some early insights about the challenges we face, and how we can overcome them.

First, public service media organisations struggle to measure the societal impact of their technology and innovation activities. There is a notable gap in satisfactory metrics to capture it’s value to society, whilst individual and industryvalue metrics are stronger. This limits public service media’s ability to show its distinctive contribution beyond commercial alternatives, and this could lead to it being undervalued in strategic decision-making about technology investments.

Second, public value is central to public service media, but it’s not always explicit in technical development in public service media. Teams on the ground who create public value through technology may be separate from those who have the job of measuring and reporting it. This means that public value considerations may operate more in the background, rather than being front and centre in technology processes.

Public value is a key that can unlock technology that works for society instead of against it. To do that, we have to find approaches to elevate public value considerations in relation to technology within public service media, where public value is generated, and outside, by capturing and recognising their valuable contributions to the public good.

A research road map

Our report has identified  that can improve our understanding of public value in public service media technology and innovation, and new tools to measure and integrate it into those processes. Our research agenda covers three main areas:

• Developing practical measures that are better at capturing societal value and long-term public value impacts
• Case studies of past public service media technology and innovation projects, to go deeper on the range of public value they have created, and on current projects to explore the practical challenges of measuring their public value
• Designing tools to better integrate public value into technology and innovation processes

So, what’s next?

In the coming months we will explore these critical gaps, working with public service media practitioners to delve into real examples. We will take lessons from these examples and use them to inform tools, guidance, and suggestions to support new ideas in the future.