Public deliberation and the justification of public service media

Abstract

Any debate about the future of public media must include the public, but how the public is engaged matters. While public input is elicited by those making governance decisions about public service media, the methods of public engagement used tend to be non-deliberative and so do not provide opportunities for members of the public to discuss and reflect on relevant issues together. We argue that public deliberation is necessary to facilitate a collective public voice that can better justify governance decisions about public service media. To illustrate our argument, we analyse public discussions within an online deliberative assembly about the future of the public service media in the UK. We show not only how assembly participants reflected on and evaluated justifications of public service media in diverse ways, but also the role deliberation played in weeding out unjustifiable claims and facilitating a form of mutual justification among a heterogeneous public.