Gripsrud, Jostein and Hallvard Moe (Eds.). The Digital Public Sphere: Challenges for Media Policy. Göteborg, Sweden: Nordicom, 2010.
Current European headlines scream about the economic woes of Greece and the ghastly actions of a home-grown Norwegian terrorist. Thus, we don’t regularly reflect on the fact that every moment of every day the economic, political and cultural realities in Europe depend upon “the digital public square” and the media policies affecting it.
This volume provides a very useful guide to this basic aspect of those everyday realities.
The book offers both rich theoretical reflections and specific practical case studies, always with the focus on how public policies can support citizen participation while encouraging growth and diversity in both public and private communication sectors. Numerous European Union policy documents and white papers are analyzed.
The authors – six from Norway, and one each from Belgium, Slovenia and the United States – are affiliated with the research project Democracy and the Digitization of Audiovisual Culture at the University of Bergen, Norway. The authors use varied research techniques to strengthen their reflections and conclusions. The volume is one of a number of research publications of NORDICOM (www.nordicom.gu.se), all linking the research community, media companies, politicians, regulators, as well as teachers and librarians around the world.
Before exploring the layout and chapter content of the book, here are some overarching themes and topics throughout the studies:
The challenge of transferring Public Service Broadcasting to Public Service Media;
How globalization, convergence and marketization impact the public sphere concept;
Limits on interactivity or how top-down structures limit grassroots empowerment; and
Specific challenges presented by net neutrality and copyright.
The European Commission on Information Society and Media recently published a document on the achievement of their policies. This paper notes that Europe has become “the worldwide leader in broadband Internet use,” that it is the “world leader in the use of mobile phones,” and that the European research and manufacturing market has significant success in micro- and nano-electronics. These encouraging signs are the direct result, the Commission suggests, of the large investments it has made in these areas (over €1 billion), along with its strategic planning and policy leadership.
The serious conceptual reflections and specific factual information in this NORDICOM volume provide valuable data for EU policy development, especially since changes are occurring so rapidly and (as the Arab Spring has shown) social movements are adept at social media.
The book’s introduction, by the editors, provides an overview of the volume’s structure and specifies how the digital public sphere challenges media policy. Chapter 1 is especially valuable in providing serious reflections on how “the public” is now transnational and traces conceptual shifts in the concept of the public sphere in the twentieth century.
Part II of the book specifies changes underway. Chapter 2 discusses the difficulties European producers and policymakers have in adapting to global copyright law. The case of TVkaista is detailed. This was a small Finnish company that started a service to enable anybody to have access to all Finnish free-to-air television channels via an Internet broadband connection.
The next chapter deals with the movements underway in many nations to digitize their national archives, moving these cultural resources into the public domain. Chapter 4 presents another specific case study – News Corporation’s MySpace and its attempt to deal with audiovisual regulations. The Net Neutrality “Tussle” in Norway is covered in chapter 5.
Part III deals with what the editors call “fundamentals”: how varied notions of “the public” should influence public service broadcasting policy; an analysis of EU state aid control; and the rule of law and legal globalization on the Internet.
One of the most sensitive issues, this book notes over and over again, is to prevent “the public” from being marginalized as the Web heats up. As many observers have noted, not all Web use is truly interactive. Huge market opportunities have brought players into this arena and policymakers are challenged to represent citizens with integrity.
Mobile growth is not covered in this volume specifically, but this growing market and technological reality deserves extensive policy study, especially since the mobile will, more and more, be the computer used most by the poor globally. There are many technologies and markets flowering; it is a challenge for global policymakers to remain current and to represent public interests.
Many scholars experience this: your doctoral studies and early academic research efforts may later seem somewhat quaint. This happens most, I suppose, to researchers who try to ride the technology tiger.
In the 1990s, while teaching for a term in London, a research grant enabled me to interview (with a colleague) each of the telecom ministers of the European Union. Government telecom systems were being privatized at that time. The market was entering the system and I had the opportunity to discuss strategic planning issues. The ministers welcomed this dialogue and we were, quite literally, exploring media public policy options together.
How far all that seems from today’s teeming digital communications public sphere!