Public service in the age of social network media

by Stig Hjarvard, University of Copenhagen

Abstract

Public service broadcasting has for almost a century held a very strong position in the Scandinavian countries and they have been considered vital for the production and distribution of quality programming and for upholding a public sphere in service of democratic institutions and cultural enlightenment. Recently, however, social network media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have become important vehicles for citizens’ engagement with public issues and they have been both praised and criticized for the ways they circulate (dis)information and allow citizens to engage in discussions about both private and public affairs. In this talk I will discuss how and to what extent public service institutions may redefine their activities and facilitate information flows and public deliberations through social network media to remedy democratic deficiencies of the new media environment. In particular, three public service functions should be extended to the realm of social network media: curation, moderation, and monitoring.

Stig Hjarvard, University of Copenhagen

Stig Hjarvard is Professor and PhD in media studies at Department of Media, Cognition and Communication at the University of Copenhagen. His main research areas include news media, journalism, mediatization theory, media history, digital media and social interaction. He is also Professor II at the University of Bergen in the comparative research project “The Immigration Issue in Scandinavian public spheres 1970-2015”. Central publications include “The Mediatization of Culture and Society” (Routledge, 2013) and “Mediatization and the changing authority of religion” (SAGE, 2016).