IDEA research seminar: Public Broadcast and the Informational Environment of Democracies in the Age of Social Media

Democracy is seen as a morally special form of government that has decisive advantages over competitors.

Speaker: Merten Reglitz (Birmingham)

At the core of democratic governance are public debate and justification, reason giving, and contestation. The internet has changed the informational environment in which these democratic core features take place. Fear of manipulation and disinformation has caused a loss of trust of citizens in their political institutions, news media, and each other. In our digital age, states have a moral obligation to provide and protect independent public service broadcasters. These are structurally the only way to ensure public trust and a sufficiently overlapping worldview among citizens that are necessary conditions of democratic rule. Today, public service broadcast is as central to the survival of democracies as national defence and ecological sustainability.

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