Polis is LSE's media think-tank, based in the Department of Media and Communications and aimed at working journalists, people in public life and students in the UK and around the world. Polis is the place where journalists and the wider world can examine and discuss the media and its impact on society. Polis has a dual mission to:
- provide a forum for public debate and policy intervention on key issues of news journalism
- produce outstanding research on the impact of mediation and journalism in our societies
To this end, Polis' commitment is two-fold. It is committed to promoting open and substantial dialogue on the changing structures, policies and practices of journalism, inviting diverse stakeholders to reflect on the dilemmas that journalism faces today.
At the same time, Polis is committed to enabling high quality, interdisciplinary research on the emerging challenges posed by formal networks and informal trajectories of news production and circulation. This is how the world is made available to us as a political, cultural and ethical reality.
Polis is thus a hub of people and ideas which regards journalism not simply as a practical skill, but also as a historical-political practice to be situated within broader changes in public life. It is also a theoretical project to be approached in the light of social and cultural theory and political philosophy.
In bridging the applied with the theoretical, Polis is uniquely positioned to engage with journalism at once as a set of contemporary challenges, around topical issues of professional sustainability, impartiality or democratic transparency, and as a set of long-standing ethical and philosophical questions about the very nature of technology, public communication and social change.
Regular guest speakers, the annual Polis conference, research studies and published reports ensure current and lively debates around the most topical issues in media and journalism.
You can also check out Polis on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and on our blog for the most current Polis updates.
Prof Charlie Beckett
Polis Director
Prof Charlie Beckett is the director of Polis. He has 20 years of experience with LWT, BBC and ITN's Channel 4 News. He broadcasts and writes regularly on media and political affairs and is the author of SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World (Blackwell, 2008) and more recently, 'WikiLeaks: News In The Networked Era' (Polity, 2012). He teaches at the LSE. He is also a trustee of the European Journalism Centre.
Joy London
Polis Manager
Joy manages the day-to-day running of Polis, overseeing Polis social media and editing Polis blog postings and research reports.
JournalismAI reports
September 2023
In this second JournalismAI global survey, more than 120 editors, journalists, technologies and mediamakers from 105 small and large newsrooms across 46 countries share their learnings on the use of AI and genAI. The report addresses the quality and sustainability of journalism.
Read the report
November 2019
The JournalismAI report is based on a survey of 71 news organisations in 32 different countries regarding artificial intelligence and associated technologies. A wide range of journalists working with AI answered questions about their understanding of AI, how it was used in their newsrooms, and their views on the wider potential and risks for the news industry.
Read the report
LSE Truth, Trust and Technology Commission
November 2018
The LSE Truth, Trust and Technology (T3) Commission deals with the crisis in public information. We have been working with experts, practitioners and the public to identify structural causes of media misinformation and set out a new framework for strategic policy in our report. Funded by the LSE Knowledge Exchange & Impact Fund.
Visit website here
Polis/Yle fellowship
October 2018
Mattias Erkkilä, managing editor at Svenska Yle, part of Finland’s public service broadcaster Yle looked at how traditional media companies, public and commercial, could benefit from blockchain and communicate this insight to media professionals not familiar with blockchain.
Read the report
Polis/Journalistfonden Fellowship
June 2018
Swedish journalist Carina Tenor on the state of the UK Hyperlocal News sector, including some comparisons with models in Sweden. In partnership with Journalistfonden.
Download the full report here