[Air-L] Media / communications policy research grants available - proposals due October 15

Rik Panganiban panganiban at ssrc.org
Mon Sep 17 08:39:09 PDT 2007


COLLABORATIVE GRANTS IN MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS

Proposals Due October 15, 2007

Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere Program 

http://www.ssrc.org/programs/media 	http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org

 
WHAT

The SSRC is pleased to announce a new round of small grants for
academic-advocacy collaboration in the media and communications field.
This project will provide grants of up to $7,500 for research that
supports efforts to change the media / telecommunications
infrastructure, practices, policies or content. The grants are intended
for short-term work, completable and usable by advocacy partners within
the next 4-12 months. Proposals for this round must be submitted online
by October 15, 2007 by 5PM EST in order to be eligible for funding.
Grant recipients will be announced by November 16, 2007.  
 

WHO

Proposals must be:

(1)        Submitted by a US-based nonprofit advocacy, organizing or
community group working on media and/or telecommunications issues.
Groups with nonprofit fiscal sponsorship are also eligible. (A limited
number of international non-profit organizations will be solicited by
invitation only.)

(2)        Structured as a partnership with an academic researcher based
at a university, college or other research institution. This can include
advanced graduate students.  

There are no citizenship requirements for participants in these
projects.  

 

CRITERIA

Please review the list of criteria and the "Guide to Submitting a
Proposal" posted online carefully before preparing your proposal. 

 

All projects must:
* Be strategically useful in their proposed advocacy and/or organizing
context.
* Produce scholarship that meets academic standards.
* Have a realistic workflow and timeframe.

 The selection committee will also favor proposals that: 

*           Address issues of disparate impact on communities on the
basis of race, class, gender, ethnicity, age or other identity/status
category. 

*           Have a clear plan for the application of the findings of the
research in policy-making processes or advocacy campaigns to change the
media / telecommunications infrastructure, practices, policies or
content. Scholarship that facilitates field-building (i.e. curriculum
development, tool-building, analysis of best practice) will also be
considered.

*           Be useful for organizations, communities, and advocacy
efforts beyond the applicant organization.

*           Build capacity-skills, tools, experience, access to data
sets-within the "user" organization and/or community. 

*           Use methods or models of research that have proved effective
in similar contexts.

*           Reflect diversity in the staff or group involved with the
project. 

*           The committee will seek to fund a diverse mix of projects,
including consideration of regional diversity, issue-area, scope (local,
state-wide, national, etc), type of organization (national lobbying,
grassroots community, transnational, etc.) and goals and methods (e.g.,
capacity-building, policy interventions, project or movement analysis,
surveys and/or data collection, etc.)

 

Bonus points for proposals that:

*           Involve collaboration between two or more advocacy/community
groups in the project design and the plan of use for the research.

*           Use participatory methods to engage community and/or
advocacy group members in framing the questions, data collection, and/or
analysis.

*           Are related to issues of telephony, publishing, privacy,
intellectual property, independent media, or spectrum.

 

PROPOSAL STRUCTURE

Please submit proposals via the online submission form at
http://www.mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/grants.  The online proposal
includes the following fields:

*           A short description (max. 100 words) of how the research
will be used to advance public-interest change in the
media/communications arena.

*           A general description of the research project (max. 1000
words). Please address the following:

*           What is the political/social change this project aims to
achieve and how will it accomplish that aim?

*           What is the collaborative process and who are the people
involved: at what stages, in what ways will they participate?

*           How is this project needed/innovative in relation to the
existing/previous research and advocacy on the issue?

*           What is the timeline for project activities?

*           What is the final project you will share with SSRC upon
completion of the study?

*           How will you assess and evaluate the process and success of
this project?

*           How do you see other organizations potentially using the
findings and products of the research project?

*           A description of the proposing organization (max. 200
words), including mission, constituency, geographical scope of work, and
annual budget. 

*           The name, institutional affiliation(s), research experience
and CV of the academic partner.

*           A project timeline.

*           A budget of up to $7500, with itemized major expenditures.
Budget items should include:

*           Other funding support - amount and source, including in-kind
contributions

*           Personnel and consultants costs

*           Relevant travel

*           Relevant advocacy group costs

*           Dissemination, outreach costs

 

PREVIOUSLY FUNDED PROJECTS

You can find listings of other research projects that have been funded
by the program online:

*           First Round of Small Grant Recipients
http://programs.ssrc.org/media/collaborative_grants/smallgrants0806/

*           Second Round of Small Grant Recipients
http://programs.ssrc.org/media/collaborative_grants/smallgrants1206/

*           Third Round of Small Grant Recipients
http://programs.ssrc.org/media/collaborative_grants/smallgrants0507/

 

 

BACKGROUND

The Collaborative Grants project is part of the Necessary Knowledge for
a Democratic Public Sphere (NKDPS) Program of the Social Science
Research Council, working in partnership with CIMA: Center for
International Media Action and the McGannon Center for Communications
Research at Fordham University. The program is funded by the Media, Arts
and Culture program of the Ford Foundation.

The NKDPS program is launching a series of funding opportunities to help
increase the production, use and capacity for research to serve
public-interest advocacy and organizing around media and communications.
These mini-grants for collaborative advocacy- academic partnerships have
been initiated to meet the short-term research needs of advocacy and
policy actors.  

Past submissions that were approved in previous rounds can be viewed
online at: http://www.ssrc.org/programs/media/collaborative_grants/ .
Note that new applications do not have to work within the exact same
range of topics as we encourage a diversity of issues that relate to the
media and communications field.   

Several other funding projects will be launched in the next months,
including a "Research Bounties" project that place prizes on
advocacy-defined research and a larger program to support longer-term
advocacy-academic research partnerships and training.

For more information on the program, see
http://www.ssrc.org/programs/media.  For all program-related inquiries,
please write to mediahub at ssrc.org . Subscribe to MediaResearchHub-News
for program updates, research funding opportunities, and conference
information at
http://listserve.ssrc.org/mailman/listinfo/mediaresearchhub-news





More information about the Air-L mailing list