Public Service Broadcasting - Using Technology for Democracy

This blog from Sanjana Hattotuwa, discusses how traditional media - print, television and radio - need to look at technology to improve their relationship with and responsibility to the public. It argues that new media and technology can be used to promote the voices of people in support of democracy and peace.

The author explains that new technologies can enable anyone with access to a mobile phone or the internet, to feed into discussion on issues flagged by mainstream media, creating a responsive dialogue between the mainstream media and consumers. New Media also allows for the creation of entirely different media such as podcasts with a community focus that are available for download after airing on community radio stations, mobile phone blogs that capture the daily challenges 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.

The author proposes that the opportunities for dialogue and increasing access to media can help promote democracy and peace in conflict situations, including using the internet to encourage dialogue.
Some ideas related to this include:

• 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;

The author proposes that these new opportunities will mean that 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 shift 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.