[Mediaresearchhub-News] Reminder: Proposals due Oct 15 for Media / communications policy research grants

Tue Oct 9 09:54:52 EDT 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
<http://www.mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/grants>  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
<http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/grants/research-criteria>  and the "
Guide to Submitting a Proposal
<http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/grants/small-grants-project/guide-to-s
ubmitting-a-proposal-for-a-small-grant> " 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.

*               Map the people, institutions, and resources associated
with their project topic into the Resource Database.

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

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