The inconvenient public interest: Policy challenges in the age of information

Does Interactivity Serve the Public Interest?

“…This tension may be operationalized as the balance between "what the public is interested in" and "what is in the public interest." Political communication in the media is primarily designed to serve the latter goal of "public interest," which has been used synonymously with terms like "nation's interest" (Staats, 1988), "public good" or "public service" (Hagins, 1996;Rowland, 1997aRowland, , 1997b) and, at a most basic level, "common good." From this perspective, the term simply refers to what is good for the individual and is good for all (Easterlin & Crimmins, 1991;Martinson, 1995;Smith, 1960).…”

“…The promise that anyone can engage at any time makes the Internet the ideal stage for the practice of deliberative democracy. Even in the early DOI: 10.4018/ijicst.2011010101 days of the World Wide Web, Hagins (1996) underscored the democratic potential of the Internet because of its ability to offer "public access to information as a fundamental American right along with freedom of expression and the open marketplace of ideas" (p. 91). Often called "cyber-democracy," the interactivity offered by the Internet is the catalyst for citizens to exercise their "right of expression" and become vendors in the "open marketplace of ideas" in the political process (Dahlgren, 2005;Johnson & Kaye, 2003;Rosenberry, 2005;Jang, 2005).…”

Media Policy, Audiences, and Social Demand

“…Communication policy studies are concerned with directing academic labor toward useful intervention into the institutions and industries that articulate the field of communications and culture-what Tony Bennett referred to as "the need for intellectual work to be conducted in a manner such that, in both its substance and its style, it can be calculated to influence or service the conduct of identifiable agents within the region of culture concerned" (1992, 23;cf. inter alia Gomery 1993;McQuail 1994;Hagins 1996;McQuail and Siune 1998).…”