We live in a world of global communication where the news media can inform us about anything happening anywhere. From the early ‘famine images’ of emaciated children dying in Ethiopia to the recent proliferation of celebrity activism, humanitarian communication keeps raising pertinent questions on how our culture encounters distant suffering and how we are invited to care about it. But how does the public react to the messages about suffering, conflict or disaster in another part of the planet? What moral, practical or political role does the journalist have in communicating between different peoples? How can the news media promote democracy and development?

Led by Polis Research Director Prof. Professor Lilie Chouliaraki, Media and Communications Department, LSE and Charlie Beckett, POLIS Director, LSE, these are some of the critical questions that Polis will be addressing in a new programme of seminars, conferences, research and publication.
This series of POLIS debates brings together NGO communications experts, humanitarian activists, journalists and philosophy and ethics scholars to debate key aspects of the political and moral implications of humanitarian communication in a global media age.

This work will bring fresh critical thinking and academic research to a vital area of intellectual inquiry. It will also engage with practitioners to promote best practice and policy-making for humanitarian and development communications work.

There will be five key elements to this project.

A series of academic seminars and a symposium in autum. Please click here for more details.
A long-term major research proposal in 2008
Public and Practitioner Engagement Programme – a series of events for NGOs, journalists, policy-makers and researchers
Further topical and customised research projects with NGOs, media and governments
Polis Humanitarian Research Fellowships

We are looking for financial support for this programme:

For publications to disseminate debates and research findings
To fund Research Fellows and Scholarships
To create a programme of events for NGOs, media and policy-makers
To support specific research projects

For more information about this project, please click through on the links above or contact us at polis@lse.ac.uk.

This work builds on the Polis conference on Development, Governance and the Media. You can see the conference report here.

This autumn the LSE Media and Communications Department launches its new Media, Communication and Development Msc.

POLIS is a joint initiative of LSE’s Department of Media and Communications and the London College of Communication, which brings together a broad range of stakeholders with the dual mission to:

• produce outstanding research on the impact of mediation and journalism in our societies
• provide a forum for public debate and policy intervention on key issues of news journalists

POLIS commissions research by students, academics, working journalists and anyone else with an interest in journalism and society. Our current research interests span across citizenship, globalisation and the impact of new technologies. Specific topics include African media development, journalism and public security, reporting terror, free speech in the Balkans and financial journalism. POLIS has outlined its intellectual agenda in detail with a paper outlining the purpose of the unit and its research and teaching aims. Click here for a full description.

The POLIS Research Director is the LSE's Chair in Media & Communications, Professor Lilie Chouliaraki. Professor Chouliaraki's personal research interest is media ethics, and in particular the mediation of suffering. For more on Lilie, click here

Led by Dr Damian Tambini of the LSE Media and Communication Department, POLIS/LSE’s Financial Journalism research project has been set up to look at the ethical and professional issues raised in the new environment of market, regulatory and technological changes. The project will conduct a detailed study of the changing practices of financial journalism, and the changing habits of financial information users (different types of investors). Based on fieldwork research, we plan to compare London, New York and Hong Kong as major financial markets. The project, which has the support of LSE director Howard Davies, aims to research the following issues:

• What are the patterns of current information use by investors? How are they changing with regard to blogs, global media and new information sources?
  
• What are the emerging business models for financial news and what are their implications?
• What laws and codes apply to financial and business journalism?
• How do journalists in the various media sectors – including online - understand their own legal and ethical responsibilities, and how does this vary by country?
  
• How do these laws and codes impact on journalistic practice, and how does this vary by sector?

 Read more about the project at the dedicated POLIS section on Financial Journalism.

POLIS invites applications from practising journalists for POLIS Research Fellowships. We provide research support and facilities and editorial guidance for journalists to produce short research papers on an aspect of their work. These will be published and taken into other POLIS public events and academic activities.

This award is for an international journalist , or foreign student froma  developing country currently rnolled ina  post-grauduate degree at the LSE studying an aspect of global journalism. The recipient will contribute to the work of Polis and publish a short paper based on their work. They will also contribute to teaching and other Polis activities including the Polis Summer School.

The first recipient in 2007/8, Nina Bigalke, conducted a research project on the new international news channel Al Jazeera English. She will be examining its production methods and editorial policies and investigating the role of channels like AJE in the changing global communications culture. Next year Nina will be contributing to a public Polis seminar on Al Jazeera English, details of which will follow in the New Year.

The Silverstone scholarship was founded in the memory of the late Professor Roger Silverstone, Head of the Media and Communications Department at LSE and the moving spirit behind the creation of Polis. His last book 'Media and Morality: On The Rise Of The Mediapolis' is a call for a better understanding of the importance of global news.

POLIS invites applications from anyone interested in researching and teaching journalism and society to apply for (unpaid) Fellowships at the LSE/London College of Communications which will provide an opportunity for a sustained period of research, teaching and publication.

Research at POLIS is supported by the Silverstone Fund, set up to honour Professor Roger Silverstone, the former convenor of the Media and Communications Department at the LSE, who died unexpectedly in summer 2006. We are delighted to announce that the Silverstone Fund has been given a starting gift of £100,000 by the London School of Economics. POLIS is looking for a Silverstone scholar for the 2008/9 academic year. For more information please click here.

We would are very grateful for donations to the Silverstone Fund, and you can contribute here.

Contact Charlie Beckett at with short or long-term research ideas.