About
The goal of the Shorenstein Center’s Documentary Film in the Public Interest Initiative (DFPI) is to inspire new research, analysis, innovation, and provocation around core issues facing the documentary field.
The Initiative’s activities are designed to cross bridges between thinking and acting. We bring together practitioners and researchers, journalists and documentary filmmakers, in a shared project to build a stronger, more resilient field.
Documentary films play a vital role in our civic culture by investigating injustices, unearthing forgotten histories, connecting to new perspectives, and speaking truth to power. Its technologies, methods, creative approaches, institutional infrastructures, and ethical practices have greatly evolved over time. However, within the last five years, both the rate and kinds of change have been radical and destabilizing.
The Initiative examines the challenges facing the field through these major research areas and programs:
- Distribution Systems, Infrastructure, and Audience
- Ethical Practice and Journalistic Standards
- Generative AI, ChatGPT, and New Technologies
- Public Policy
Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School
At this moment of division and distrust, our broken news environment poses a threat to the public good. Every pressing public policy concern is affected by the flows and flaws in information. The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is a Harvard Kennedy School research center dedicated to addressing this challenge at its root by examining how essential information is created, conveyed and consumed. We believe that improving the quality of public information and expanding access to it will bring about healthier, stronger, more peaceful societies.
The center was founded in 1986 to allow journalists to engage with public policy students and faculty at Harvard Kennedy School. In the past two decades it has expanded its mission to advance research across multiple disciplines into the forces and factors that shape our broader media environment.
Today, the Shorenstein Center pursues its core mission through original research, convening leaders in practice and scholarship, providing trainings and educational opportunities for students and media practitioners, and highlighting best practices across the fields of media and content production.
For more information, contact us at docfilm@hks.harvard.edu.