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Rather than privatizing public service media, we should be expanding it online (June 2021)

Nieman Lab – CHRISTIAN FUCHS

Imagine an advertising-free, non-commercial, not-for-profit internet, with digital archives of public service content available to everyone for an unlimited period from anywhere at any time.

Internet Universality Indicators: UNESCO Invites Media Development Stakeholders and Journalists to Help Develop New Indicators (2017)

UNESCO – XIANHONG HU

While the emerging digital environment offers new opportunities for journalists to investigate and report information in the public interest, it also poses particular challenges regarding privacy, access to information, source protection, freedom of expression and participation. In this emerging digital environment, UNESCO believes that all stakeholders – including individual users, companies and governments, as well as journalists and media development stakeholders – should take part in the framing of values and norms that could apply to all and be a positive force in shaping Internet development.

In this context, UNESCO launched last April, in partnership with the Association for Progressive Communication, the project called “Defining Internet Universality Indicators”. The outcome of this project will include both quantitative and qualitative indicators, enabling a comprehensive view of national Internet developments, as well as recognizing the different experiences and characteristics between countries.

Status Code 451: An Internet Governance Standard to Expose Censorship (2017)

Center for International Media Assistance – CORRINE CATH & DANIEL O’MALEY

Articles and Statements

  • 5 Business Models for Local News to Watch in 2020 (GIJN)

  • 5 CEOs of wealthy foundations pledge to do more to help charities pay overhead (Maria Di Mento – philanthropy.com)

  • A digital declaration: On big data as surveillance capitalism (Shoshana Zuboff – Frankfurter Allgemeine)

  • A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue (Rasmus Kleis Nielsen – Nieman Lab)

  • Advertising is the Internet’s original sin (The Atlantic)

  • American journalism is dying. Its survival requires public funds (Victor Pickard – The Guardian)

  • Australia is making Google and Facebook pay for news: what difference will the code make? (Amanda Meade – The Guardian)

  • Australia’s new tech code is a road worth exploring (Anya Schiffrin Stiglitz – Financial Times)

  • “Big tech is watching you. Who’s watching big tech?” The Markup is finally ready for liftoff (Sarah Scire – NiemanLab)

  • Can Independent Journalism Thrive under Paywalls? (Prateek Sibal – Economic and Political Weekly)

  • Common understanding of G7 competition authorities on “Competition and the Digital Economy” (G7 – July 2019)

  • Competition rules could protect human rights on social media platforms (Maria Luisa Stasi – OpenGlobalRights)

  • Digital platforms, regulation, and media sustainability: A lesson for Europe from Down Under (GFMD)

  • Disinformation sites generate over $200 million: study (DW Akademie)

  • Facebook and Google should pay for the news they use (Courtney C. Radsch – Thomson Reuters Foundation)

  • Facebook just dealt another potentially lethal blow to local journalism (CNN Business)

  • Foundation grants have strings attached, and nonprofit journalists sometimes don’t like being told what to do by them (Laura Hazard Owen and Joshua Benton – NiemanLab)

  • Global journalism is fighting for international development funding but shouldn’t need to. Especially now. (Rieneke Van Santen – Medium)

  • How can competition law help to secure freedom of expression on social media? (ARTICLE 19)

  • How Google is hurting local news (Sean Fischer, Kokil Jaidka, and Yphtach Lelkes – Washington Post)

  • How May Google Fight an Antitrust Case? Look at This Little-Noticed Paper (NY Times)

  • How to ask for money (Splice Media)

  • How to evaluate commercial revenue as a sustainability strategy for investigative media organisations (GIJN)

  • Internet economics is a thing, and we need to take note (Geoff Huston – RIPE Labs)

  • It’s not that we’ve failed to rein in Facebook and Google. We’ve not even tried (Shoshana Zuboff – The Guardian)

  • It’s time to reboot the startup economy (Tim Wu – OneZero)

  • Media Viability: 6 strategies for success (MDIF / DW Akademie)

  • News media needs to convince readers to open their wallets. Consolidation has not helped (Elizabeth Hansen and Elizabeth Anne Watkins – Columbia Journalism Review)

  • Public infrastructure isn’t just bridges and water mains: Here’s an argument for extending the concept to digital spaces (Joshua Benton – NeimanLab)

  • Public investments for global news (Victor Pickard – Centre for International Governance Innovation)

  • Restoring competition in ”winner-took-all” digital platform markets (UNCTAD)

  • Targeted advertising is ruining the Internet and breaking the world (Nathalie Maréchal – Motherboard)

  • The media’s post-advertising future is also its past (The Atlantic)

  • The trilemma of big tech: We can have democracy, market dominance, and business models that optimise for anger and junk — but only two at a time (International Politics and Society)

  • The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free (Current Affairs)

  • The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data (The Economist)

  • Threats to media sustainability and freedom of expression in the digital era (Michael J. Oghia & Mira Milosevic – GFMD)

  • UNCTAD: ARTICLE 19 joins the 18th Intergovernmental Group of Experts’ meeting (ARTICLE 19)

  • Universal Advertising Transparency by Default joint statement (EPD and partners)

  • We can’t fight fake news without saving local journalism (Emily Bell – The Guardian)

  • ‘We can’t reach the women who need us’: the LGBT YouTubers suing the tech giant for discrimination (Jenny Kleeman – The Guardian)

  • We need to fix the news media, not just social media (Public Knowledge – Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)

  • We will finally confront systemic market failure (Victor Pickard – NiemanLab)

  • Why am I not seeing this ad? (Jan Pieter Balkenende – EU Observer)

  • Why Facebook Can’t Fix Itself (Andrew Marantz – The New Yorker)

  • Why local journalism needs a funding pipeline (Yvonne Leow – Reynolds Journalism Institute)

  • Year in review: Everything I wrote about media business and revenue models in 2019 (Damian Radcliffe – Medium)

Digital Media Literacy

The importance of digital skills and media literacy (also known as media information literacy – MIL) has already been recognised by many Internet governance and development stakeholders, particularly in relation to education, democracy, access to information, and countering disinformation and misinformation. Stakeholders from across the Internet governance ecosystem recognise the importance of user capabilities (such as digital media literacy skills) as a core competency for the advantageous development of the Internet and enabling meaningful access. Digital media literacy includes topics such as but not limited to:

  • What it means to use digital media in a responsible way;

  • Understanding news cycles;

  • Analyzing the bias held by different media outlets;

  • Evaluating conflicts of interest and funding behind content producers;

  • Recognising misinformation or “deep fakes;” and

  • The ability to identify and evaluate the credibility of information.

Additional references and resources include:

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