[Mediaresearchhub-News] REMINDER: Letters of Inquiry due April 22 for Grants for Research in Media & Communications

Thu Apr 12 11:56:56 EDT 2007

Please find below our
announcement of SSRC’s large grants for collaborative research in media
and communications. Please note that the deadline for letters of inquiry is next Sunday, April 22. 

We have updated our web services at SSRC, and as a result you can now
find us on the web at http://programs.ssrc.org/media/
. Please
revise your bookmarks and visit our re-vamped site!

The Team at the Necessary Knowledge for
a Democratic Public Sphere

mediahub at ssrc.org

  Collaborative
  Grants in Media and Communications

  2007-2008 Large Grants Competition

Letters of
Inquiry Due April 22, 2007 

The SSRC is pleased to
offer two types of ‘Collaborative Grants’ in 2007 for
academic-advocacy partnerships in media and communications.

Small
Grants provide up
to $7500 for short-term academic research in support 
of advocacy and activism in media and communications. The next application
deadline is April 4, 2007 with subsequent competitions held at roughly 4-month
intervals.  For application procedures, criteria, past recipients, and
other details, see http://programs.ssrc.org/media/ .

Large
Grants provide up
to $30,000 in support for
academic-advocacy research collaborations designed to change media / telecommunications infrastructure, practices, or policies.  General
areas of interest for the program include:

 Measuring the success or failure of mainstream
     media in advancing different public interest goals or values.  
 Measuring the impact of existing alternative or
     community media systems on communities, public discourse, or democratic
     processes. 
 Developing better, actionable accounts of the
     role of ‘new media’ in people’s lives.   
 Analyzing policymaking and/or regulatory systems. 
 Analyzing emerging systems, frameworks, or models
     of media and communications that transcend the current regulatory
     framework. 
 Analyzing economic models, industry structure,
     markets, or audiences for different kinds of media 
 Creating analytical tools or research resources
     for use by advocates, communities, or the public. 
 Documenting or evaluating advocacy or organizing
     strategies around communications and media issues. 

Both large and small
grants are awarded through competitive application processes, with recipients
selected by an independent committee of researchers and advocates.

Grants are expected to
fund up to 1 year of work.  

Grant recipients will be
part of a cohort that meets and communicates over the course of the program.

The Large Grants Competition: Process 

Application for the Large
Grants Competition consists of two stages: 

 A
     ‘Letter of Inquiry’ of less than 1,000 words outlining the
     proposed project, partners, and goals.  Entries will be vetted by
     program staff in order to help applicants navigate the challenges of
     building effective collaborations in this area.  More substantial
     proposals will then be requested from those LOIs that meet the program
     criteria.  The LOI must be submitted by April 22, 2007.   
 A more
     detailed proposal describing the research, the partners, budget, timeline,
     and proposed outcomes. 

The LOI must be submitted
via email to mediahub @ssrc.org 
with subject line “Collaborative Grant Letter of Inquiry.”

Applicant Criteria 

Projects must involve
substantive collaboration between:

A researcher based at a university, college, or other
academically-oriented research institution.  Advanced graduate students
are eligible.  A US-based non-profit advocacy, organizing or
community group working on media and/or telecommunications issues.  

Letters of interest and proposals
must be submitted by the person primarily responsible for conducting the
proposed research.

Other
Conditions:

 Public-interest groups with unusual financial
     status (e.g., non-profit fiscal sponsorship or non-commercial for-profit
     status) should contact SSRC program staff.   
 The academic research partner cannot be a paid
     staff member of the partnering nonprofit organization.   
 International proposals will be solicited from
     SSRC partner organizations. 
 There are no citizenship requirements for participation
     in the program.   
 Applicants may apply for both small grants and
     large grants.  Applicants with current SSRC collaborative grant
     funding should explain how the new proposal builds on completed work from
     that grant. 

Project Criteria 

All
projects must:

 Be strategically useful in their proposed
     advocacy and/or organizing context. 
 Produce scholarship that meets academic
     standards.  
 Have a realistic workflow, budget, and timeframe. 

Collaborations
will be evaluated in part on whether they meet some or all of the following
criteria: 

 Have a clear plan for the application of research
     findings in policy-making processes or advocacy campaigns.  Research
     that facilitates field-building (i.e. curriculum development,
     tool-building, analysis of best practice) is also eligible. 
 Are useful for organizations, communities, and
     advocacy efforts beyond the partner organization. 
 Build new capacity—skills, tools,
     experience, access to data sets—within the "user"
     organization and/or community.  
 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. 
 Use methods or models of research that have
     proved effective in analogous contexts. 
 Address issues of disparate impact on communities
     on the basis of race, class, gender, ethnicity, age or other
     identity/status category.  
 Reflect diversity in the staff or group involved
     with the project.  

Letters of inquiry not
exceeding 1,000 words should include the following: 

 Name or topic
     of the proposed research project; 
 A brief
     statement (two or three sentences) of the purpose and nature of the
     proposed study; 
 The significance
     of the issue addressed by the project; 
 How the
     research will address the issue; 
 How the issue
     relates to the applying organization, and why the organization is
     qualified to undertake the project; 
 Novelty and
     utility of the project vis à vis existing research; 
 Geographic
     area or country where the work will take place; 
 Time period
     for which funding is requested; 
 Information
     about those who will be helped by and interested in the work and how you
     will communicate with them; 
 Amount and breakdown
     of the funding requested (estimates are acceptable). 
 SSRC staff
     will respond to letters of inquiry within three weeks. 

Contact
Information

In order to expedite a
letter of inquiry, the applicant must provide the following contact information
in a separate memorandum:

 Name, address
     (and postal address if different), phone number, and fax number of
     principal researcher; 
 Name of the
     partnering organization; 
 Organization’s
     address (and postal address if different), phone number, fax number, e-mail
     address and web address, if any; 
 Name of the
     partnering organization’s chief executive officer or equivalent; 
 Name and
     title of the main project contact person at the organization, if different
     from the above; 
 Address (and
     postal address if different), phone number, fax number and e-mail address
     of main contact. 

Program 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 the Center for International Media Action and the McGannon 
 Center for Communications Research at
 Fordham
 University . The program is funded by the
Knowledge, Creativity, and Freedom program of the Ford Foundation.

For more information on
the program, see http://programs.ssrc.org/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
.

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