Public Service Media in Northern Ireland: Prominence and Vulnerability in a Small Media System

Abstract

Public Service Media remains at the centre of the public sphere in Northern Ireland. Public Service Media organisations such as the BBC broadcast in a society that remains politically and culturally divided. This has been the case for decades, even if the worst of the violence in Northern Ireland has now dissipated. The Northern Ireland media system includes local media provision, along with provision from the rest of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. This article identifies Northern Ireland’s media system as sharing characteristics with what Puppis (2009) defines as a small media system, under slightly different conditions. This article takes a Critical Political Economy approach to Public Service Media organisations operating in Northern Ireland, in order to argue that while there is prominence in the place of PSM in the media system, there is also vulnerability inherent.

KEYWORDS:

• media policy
• media governance
• public service media
• small media systems
• political-economy of media and communication
• Northern Ireland

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This article specifically addresses PSM and wider broadcasting, but doesn’t place a focus on NI’s newspaper market.

2 Survey population and question: “Online adults/teens aged 13+, Northern Ireland. Question: Q1a. Can you tell us which of the following services you have personally used to watch programmes, films or other video content in the past 3 months?” (Ofcom 2023b, 16).

3 Calculation derived from ONS (2022). Nations' Populations: NI—1.9 m; Scotland—5.5 m; Wales—3.1m: Total: 10.5 m.

4 The NI population of 1.9 m people as a proportion of the UK population of 67 m (ONS 2022).

5 Stephen Nolan also has a national presence on the BBC through his broadcasts on BBC Radio 5 Live.

6 Writing in The Sun, Noa Hoffman (2023) called the television licence fee a “controversial fee,” where a government source was quoted as saying that “The licence fee model is becoming unsustainable.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Phil Ramsey

Phil Ramsey (corresponding author) is a Lecturer in the School of Communication and Media and a member of the Centre for Communication, Media and Cultural Studies, at Ulster University, UK.