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Public media 2.0: dynamic, engaged publics

Enhancing public engagement in public media 2.0

Authors: J. Clark; P. Aufderheide
Publisher: The Center for Social Media, 2009

Full text of document

Public broadcasting, newspapers, magazines, and network newscasts have all played a central role in  democracy, informing citizens and guiding public conversation. But the top-down dissemination technologies that supported them are being supplanted by an open, many-to-many networked media environment. This white paper presents an vision for “public media 2.0” that places engaged publics at its core.

The paper argues that a multiplatform, participatory, and digital, public media 2.0 will be an essential feature of truly democratic public life and it’ll be media both for and by the public. If multi-platform, participatory, and digital, public media 2.0 is to contribute to a vibrant democratic culture, it must be planned for, tried out, its importance demonstrated, and investment sought. The paper suggests that there is a need to:

  • embrace its participatory nature
  • develop standards and metrics to define truly meaningful participation in media for public life
  • develop policies, initiatives, and sustainable financial models that can turn today’s assets and experiments into tomorrow’s tried-and-true public media
The paper highlights the different opportunities facing stakeholders, including:
  • public media institutions and makers need to develop a participatory national network and platform; to cross cultural, social, economic, ethnic, and political divides; to collaborate; and to learn from others’ examples, including their mistakes
  • policymakers need to create structures and funding to support national coordination of public media networks and funding for production, curation, and archiving; to use universal design principles in communications infrastructure policy and universal service values in constructing and supporting infrastructure; to support lifelong education that helps everyone be media makers; and to build grassroots participation into public policy processes using social media tools.
  • funders can invest in media projects that build democratic publics; in setting norms, standardisation of reliability tools, and impact metrics; and in experiments in media making, media organisations, and media tools, especially among disenfranchised communities