Abstract
The paper questions the role of public service media in the digital era. The Internet has in fact disrupted previous patterns of production, distribution and consumption of information. Concerns arose on social media effects on well-being and how mainstream platforms design affects information consumption. The paper is an interdisciplinary contribution structured as follows. Firstly, it critically analyses the risks resulting from social media’s usage, with a special focus on personalization practices. Then, it explores the development of Public Service Broadcasting and questions the role that Public Service Media (PSM) has to sustain media quality, information diversity and, more generally, its traditional values. Thus, arguments in favor of a renovated and proactive role of Public Service Media are provided. In particular, an agonistic approach to social media, an ‘architecture for serendipity’ and the role of attention management are advocated. Finally, drawing from information architecture and nudging theory, the paper introduces the concept of ‘meta-design’ as the ability to re-shape a digital environment by browser extensions in order to change design choices as well as to inform and educate users. The conclusion is that improving user experience by meta-design can actually represent a novel experimental role for PSM and, eventually, a soft regulatory tool for sustaining individuals and the general public interest.
Keywords
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
EBU is an alliance of public service media (PSM) organizations, established on 12 February 1950, made up of 72 members in 56 countries, yet unrelated to European Institutions. Its main objective is to assist its Members in this period of unprecedented technological changes.
- 2.
Splichal [27] gives a concise definition of PSM: “In normative terms, public service media must be a service of the public, by the public, and for the public. It is a service of the public because it is financed by it and should be owned by it. It ought to be a service by the public – not only financed and controlled, but also produced by it. It must be a service for the public – but also for the government and other powers acting in the public sphere. In sum, public service media ought to become ‘a cornerstone of democracy” (p. 255).
- 3.
This selection was not an easy task. Unfortunately, there is no specific tag to collect those that might have been interesting to analyze. There are already hundreds of browser extensions inherent education in browser stores. As a consequence, the choice was to take most of them from an article review role on online media consumption. Others, instead, were collected from personal experience and online search. As such, the selection is limited yet sufficient to show the main features of the tools.
- 4.
Other similar news aggregators are Newsbird, Allside, News 360, Digg and Flipboard [see 18].
- 5.
Building on the work of sociologist Hirshman, Harambam et al. [18] intend ‘voice’ as “the possibility to exert control over the data-driven processes that shape news provision”.
References
Zuboff, S.: Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. J. Inf. Technol. 30(1), 75–89 (2015)
Bárd, P., Bayer, J.: A Comparative Analysis of Media Freedom and Pluralism in the EU Member States (2016)
Sunstein, C.R.: #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media. Princeton University Press, Princeton (2017)
Pariser, E.: The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web is Changing What We Read and How We Think. Penguin, New York (2011)
Bozdag, E., van den Hoven, J.: Breaking the filter bubble: democracy and design. Ethics Inf. Technol. 17(4), 249–265 (2015)
Yeung, K.: ‘Hypernudge’: big data as a mode of regulation by design. Inf. Commun. Soc. 20(1), 118–136 (2017)
Verduyn, P., Ybarra, O., Résibois, M., Jonides, J., Kross, E.: Do social network sites enhance or undermine subjective well-being? A critical review. Soc. Issues Policy Rev. 11(1), 274–302 (2017)
Zuiderveen Borgesius, F.J., Trilling, D., Moeller, J., Bodó, B., de Vreese, C.H., Helberger, N.: Should we worry about filter bubbles? Internet Policy Rev. 5, 1–16 (2016). https://doi.org/10.14763/2016.1.401
Bodo, B., et al.: Tackling the algorithmic control crisis-the technical, legal, and ethical challenges of research into algorithmic agents. Yale JL & Tech. 19, 133–182 (2017)
Bardoel, J., d’Haenens, L.: Reinventing public service broadcasting in Europe: prospects, promises and problems. Media Cult. Soc. 30(3), 337–355 (2008)
Gulyás, Á., Hammer, F. (eds.): Public Service Media in the Digital Age: International Perspectives. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cambridge (2014)
Helberger, N.: Public service media, merely facilitating or actively stimulating diverse media choices? Public service media at the crossroad. Int. J. Commun. 9, 17 (2015)
Horowitz, M.A., Nieminen, H.: Diversity and rights. Connecting media reform and public service media. IC-Rev. Científica Inf. Comun. 14, 99–119 (2017)
Burri, M.: Public Service Broadcasting 3.0: Legal Design for the Digital Present. Routledge, London (2015)
van Es, K.F.: An Impending Crisis of Imagination: Data‐Driven Personalization in Public Service Broadcasters. Media@ LSE Working Paper Series (43), pp. 1–18 (2017)
Pentina, I., Tarafdar, M.: From “information” to “knowing”: exploring the role of social media in contemporary news consumption. Comput. Hum. Behav. 35, 211–223 (2014)
Thurman, N., Schifferes, S.: The future of personalization at news websites: lessons from a longitudinal study. J. Stud. 13(5–6), 775–790 (2012)
Harambam, J., Helberger, N., van Hoboken, J.: Democratizing algorithmic news recommenders: how to materialize voice in a technologically saturated media ecosystem. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 376(2133), 20180088 (2018)
Tucker, J., et al.: Social Media, Political Polarization, and Political Disinformation: A Review of the Scientific Literature (2018)
Dubois, E., Blank, G.: The echo chamber is overstated: the moderating effect of political interest and diverse media. Inf. Commun. Soc. 21(5), 729–745 (2018)
Recommendation CM/Rec(2018)1[1] of the Committee of Ministers to member States on media pluralism and transparency of media ownership (2018)
European Commission: In Media pluralism in the member states of the European Union, Brussels, Belgium, pp. 1–91 (2007)
Born, G., Prosser, T.: Culture and consumerism: citizenship, public service broadcasting and the BBC’s fair trading obligations. Mod. Law Rev. 64(5), 657–687 (2001)
Picard, G., Pickard, V.: Essential Principles for Contemporary Media and Communications Policymaking. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. University of Oxford (2017)
Van Cuilenburg, J., McQuail, D.: Media policy paradigm shifts: towards a new communications policy paradigm. Eur. J. Commun. 18(2), 181–207 (2003)
EBU Digital Strategy Group: Media with a Purpose: Public Service Broadcasting in the Digital Age. EBU, Geneva (2002)
Splichal, S.: Does history matter? Grasping the idea of public service at its roots. In: Lowe, G.F., Bardoel, J. (eds.) From Public Service Broadcasting to Public Service Media. RIPE@2007, pp. 237–256. Nordicom, Gothenburg (2007)
Fuchs, C.: Towards the public service internet as alternative to the commercial internet. ORF Texte 20, 43–50 (2017)
Bennett, J.: Public service algorithms. In: Freedman, D., Goblet, V. (eds.) A Future for Public Service TV, pp. 112–120. University of Goldsmith Press, London (2018)
Napoli, P.M.: Social media and the public interest: governance of news platforms in the realm of individual and algorithmic gatekeepers. Telecommun. Policy 39(9), 751–760 (2015)
Helberger, N., Pierson, J., Poell, T.: Governing online platforms: from contested to cooperative responsibility. Inf. Soc. 34(1), 1–14 (2018)
Hoffmann, C.P., Lutz, C., Meckel, M., Ranzini, G.: Diversity by choice: applying a social cognitive perspective to the role of public service media in the digital age. Int. J. Commun. 9(1), 1360–1381 (2015)
Rauch, J.: Slow Media: Why Slow is Satisfying, Sustainable, and Smart. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2018)
Karppinen, K.: Media and the paradoxes of pluralism. In: The Media and Social Theory, pp. 27–42 (2008)
Reviglio, U.: Serendipity as an emerging design principle of the infosphere: challenges and opportunities. Ethics Inf. Technol. 21(2), 151–166 (2019)
Yadamsuren, B., Erdelez, S.: Incidental exposure to online news. Synth. Lect. Inf. Concepts Retr. Serv. 8(5), i73 (2016)
Fletcher, R., Nielsen, R.K.: Are people incidentally exposed to news on social media? A comparative analysis. New Media Soc. 20(7), 2450–2468 (2018)
Davenport, T.H., Beck, J.C.: The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business. Harvard Business Press, Boston (2001)
Floridi, L. (ed.): The Onlife Manifesto: Being Human in a Hyperconnected Era. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04093-6
Carson, A.B.: Public discourse in the age of personalization: psychological explanations and political implications of search engine bias and the filter bubble. J. Sci. Policy Gov. 7(1), 1–13 (2015)
Resmini, A. (ed.): Reframing Information Architecture. HCIS. Springer, Cham (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06492-5
Thaler, R.H., Sunstein, C.R.: Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Penguin, New York (2009)
Helberger, N., Karppinen, K., D’Acunto, L.: Exposure diversity as a design principle for recommender systems. Inf. Commun. Soc. 21(2), 191–207 (2016)
Floridi, L.: Tolerant paternalism: pro-ethical design as a resolution of the dilemma of toleration. Sci. Eng. Ethics 22(6), 1669–1688 (2016)
Van den Bulck, H., Moe, H.: Public service media, universality and personalisation through algorithms: mapping strategies and exploring dilemmas. Media Cult. Soc. 40(6), 875–892 (2017)
EBU: Big Data Initiative: Time to Invest. Le Grand‐Saconnex (2017)
Nagulendra, S., Vassileva, J.: Providing awareness, explanation and control of personalized filtering in a social networking site. Inf. Syst. Front. 18(1), 145–158 (2016)
Gollub, T., Potthast, M., Stein, B.: Shaping the information nutrition label. In: Proceedings of the NewsIR 2018 Workshop at ECIR (2018)
Milano, S., Taddeo, M., Floridi, L.: Recommender Systems and their Ethical Challenges (2019). Available at SSRN 3378581
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Reviglio, U. (2019). Improving User Experience by Browser Extensions: A New Role of Public Service Media?. In: El Yacoubi, S., Bagnoli, F., Pacini, G. (eds) Internet Science. INSCI 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11938. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34770-3_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34770-3_20
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-34769-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-34770-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)