Obsolescence.

Of the many reasons why traditional media, print, television and radio, need to look at technology to improve their relationship with and responsibility to the public, this is the most important one. Traditional media, if it does not embrace the rich potential of technology to engage with a public bombarded with information from a media explosion through the internet, web, mobile and offline, will simply die.

The Voices of Reconciliation project in Sri Lanka was in part begun to explore the ways through which Public Service Media could aid in the strengthening democracy and peace in Sri Lanka. Fundamental, I believe, to PSM in the information age, is the ability to transcend regimes of control and parochial regulation by the use of new media and technology to promote the voices of people in support of democracy and peace. In earlier posts (Defeating Repressive Regimes & Defeating Repressive Regimes – Take 2 ) I’ve explored how technologies can promote democracy in authoritarian regimes.This post however looks specifically at the role of New Media and Technology, through values of Public Service Media, in processes of democratic reform and peacebuilding.

A very interesting report released recently looks at PSM in the information age and states that PSM is important because:

modern society is in need of some kind of forces or instruments to further social, political and cultural cohesion,

the mainstream supply of media by the commercial media market is incapable of meeting these needs both in terms of the nature and quality of the media offering.

Although the report is largely euro-centric, many points, observations and recommendations it makes regarding the importance of PSM in the information age make useful reading for those interesting in the role of media in peacebuilding in the information age. Interesting in this light are the extremely rich discussions and ideas from the Beyond Broadcast 2006: Re-inventing Public Media in a Participatory Culture conference:

As the founder of the Berkman Center, Nesson urges, optimistically, as we live in a time where extant businesses are trying to find their place in a new, more open medium, one that inherently inspires collaboration and the free flow of knowledge, one that is by design antagonistic to many of the core values of the old business models, that we find a way to retain our human values and ensure that they always be present in this new technological world. Again, of itself, this is not a difficult task, but we must require that the laws also reflect these values and provide a fair balance of common wealth knowledge and not just protection. (Excerpt from speech of Charles Nesson)

Essentially, the arguments made here mirror those that I explored in an article I wrote for Ravaya, a widely known alternative Sinhala newspaper in Sri Lanka:


Whereas Old Media generally produced content from a single source (media organization), New Media enables the diffusion of producers amongst the general public. Anyone with access to a mobile phone, or has internet access, become a potential producer of content that can feed into discussion on issues flagged by mainstream media. New Media also allows for the creation of entirely different media in relation to mainstream media – podcasts with a community focus, that are available for download after airing on community radio stations, mobile phone blogs that capture the daily travails of a tsunami affected community, blogs that detail the life of individuals facing the trauma of war and websites that highlight the vision and initiatives in support of a just peace and democracy need to be seen as parts of a larger meta-framework of dialogues that are supported by web and communications technologies. Plugging into such dialogues allows an alternative newspaper such as Ravaya both insight into the viewpoints of the general public in near real time, but also affords it the unique opportunity to tailor its reporting to meet the issues that crop up from the grassroots. This responsiveness is not possible with traditional print media. Though caution is called for in the promotion of reporting without reflection, Ravaya’s established strengths as a media organization uniquely place it to take advantage of new media to augment its reporting.

Today, there are many examples of community media that uses technology to highlight voices with views oftentimes inimical to the parochial interests of media owners and editors. Examples such as Listen Up! in the US show just how powerful the web can be in the promotion of the voices of youth through new media. There are article on how to use Skype for community media, which I’ve written about here as well. As the authors of We Media make clear, there are many potential benefits to media companies and businesses that adopt participatory journalism in meaningful ways:

Possible examples include enabling editors and reporters to publish a weblog about the subjects they cover; hosting, moderating and participating in discussion forums or groups about news; encouraging audience contribution of editorial content for distribution on a Web site or in a traditional media product; enabling your readers to purchase online advertising through affordable text ads. The possibilities are limitless, as long as it includes an effort to engage the audience in an authentic conversation and collaboration. (Excerpt from Chapter 6: Potential benefits of We Media)

Why is is New Media founded on PSB principles so important to democracy?

While many in the Global North carry on discussions on ICT and democracy in a manner that is blissfully ignorant of post-conflict realities, the burning question for societies embroiled in trauma and yearning for hope and peace is how technology can help better their lives. The travails of the use of New Media in peacebuilding are far more complex, giving rise to new power centres, new elites, new gatekeepers and new spoilers – ICT & New Media must navigate a careful and principled path in order to avoid becoming a tool in the service of stakeholders determined to upset the peace process.

A discussion on Communication Technology and Social Policy in the Digital Age is one that hasn’t, as yet, global appeal. Billions of people exist without any awareness of the internet or its potential for social change. There are more pressing social issues in some regions than the digital divide – polio, HIV / AIDS, poverty and ethnic conflict continue to take their toll on mankind. Corruption and authoritarian governments worsen the situation. The exceptional nature of academic conferences that discuss the pros and cons of the digital age and ICT is made acute when juxtaposed with the strife of those living in conflict zones and far removed from the promise of ICT and new media.

However, the terrains of violence and conflict also hold within them the possibilities of democratic dialogue mediated through the internet. Some ideas such possibilities are;

  • Defining requirements and systems that enable community participation in policy making on the expression of needs by the community itself and not by national level politicians, traditional power-centres or the social elite;
  • Creating New Media based initiatives that amplify community aspirations for peace while at the same time sensitive to the fragile and complex web of socio-political relations in the context of on-going peace processes;
  • Expanding a community’s social capital through enhanced access to the internet, while eschewing the facile notion that access to the internet based information itself is indicative of community empowerment;
  • Using the internet and web to devise communities of practice that transform information to trusted knowledge that aids purposes of grassroots conflict transformation within and between communities;

Animating the potential of new media and the internet is the existence of a vibrant democracy. A vibrant democracy in turn is nourished by a culture of open discussion on core issues of governance and as they are felt by citizens in all regions of a country. This symbiosis between democracy and dialogue, between new media and its influence on progressive social policy, between the promise of the internet to empower communities and the appropriation of ICT by communities to strengthen their engagements with justice and peace, is a qualitative and quantitative measurement of the health of a nation.

Excerpt from Thoughts on Democracy, New Media and the Internet – Working Draft

In a sense, media is leaving one to many modes of content production and dissemination and moving into the facilitation of many to many dialogues – framing, editorialising, contextualising and helping the public understand their own views and aspirations through the mediation of dialogues that involve even those hitherto left out of mainstream media. We are, in sum, on the cusp of a social revolution championed by a revolution in media production itself – where the traditional consumer is no longer a passive recipient of news, but an active critic and producer of alternatives frames of opinion with as much influence as the by-lines of old media.

Such a revolution calls for a significant overhaul of spectrum management, broadcasting rights and media ownership rights, including necessary revisions to copyright on media productions to make content more open and accessible, for the least cost, to the public. Technically then, such revisions would call for an unprecedented revolution in the way we archive, produce and disseminate content – to keep apace with developments in Web 2.0 and mobile technologies so as to use them as platform for the empowerment of citizen journalists.

Public Service Broadcasting and Media in this respect gain added significance in our information age – to create pervasive information access and production architectures for those already familiar with media, but more importantly, to create ways through which the marginalised, disenfranchised and disempowered voices of peoples hidden in the hinterlands of our digital age make their voices heard in polity and society.

Related links I found really interesting: