“Tools for Citizenship?” Public Service Media as a Site for Civic Engagement

Abstract

Innovation is blooming among public service broadcasters across the world, with the term public service media (PSM) now in common parlance as services are extended across “new” media platforms and experiments undertaken into new interactive content forms. Driven by both an institutional instinct for survival and a traditional remit to innovate, the new phenomenon of PSM invariably entails risks for publicly funded media, provoking increased hostility from commercial rivals, new and old, and invoking new regulatory hurdles and benchmarks for proving public value. Exploring how one incidence of PSM innovation is endeavoring to address “balance” and accountability and to provide a broader scope for viewer participation and interaction in political public discourse, integrating multiple media platforms, this article discusses the potential implications of such ventures for the public service remit.