Branded Content Research Hub (BCRH)

Description

The Branded Content Research Hub (BCRH) explores content that is funded or produced by marketers. It is a network-based facility for research and exchange. Members investigate how media and advertising are merging, and they moreover consider how the industries involved should be regulated. The hub examines branded content practices and regulations, engaging international academics, industry practitioners and civil society. The Hub hosts a international research project, the Branded Content Governance Project, 2022-2025, funded by UKRI (ESRC/AHRC ES/W007991/1).

Based within the Media School at London College of Communication, UAL, BCRH brings together:

• academics from UAL;
• leading scholars and researchers from UK universities and worldwide;
• industry practitioners;
• professional bodies and regulators;
• policy stakeholders;
• and those with civil society interests.

Some of their key activities include:

• surveying the state of the professions;
• reviewing branded content regulation and governance;
• identifying, supporting and advancing research needs across industry and academia;
• mapping education and training needs and provision.

The hub's main objectives are to:

• Determine the current regulation and governance arrangements for branded content through systematic cross-national comparison.
• Assess the key agencies and processes involved in the new media-marketing ecology, including automation and AI.
• Identify how industry practitioners and policy actors assess the suitability, ethics and governance of branded content practices to inform recommendations.
• Report on media coverage and public mediated discussion of branded content governance and assess the implications for stakeholder and public understanding.
• Produce and disseminate recommendations on branded content, including digital/media literacy, online safety and marketing-media governance.
• Facilitate networking and exchange between academics, industry practitioners, policy actors, civil society groups and other stakeholders to support hub outputs.

Offers funding

Yes, this infrastructure provides funding in the following categories:

Founding year

2021

Contact details

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Categorisation

Type

Project Tags

University affiliation(s)

University of the Arts London
London

Partner Universities

University of Stirling

Additional Partnerships

Complutense University of Madrid