Norms for the New Public Sphere: Institutionalising Respect for Truth, Self-Government, and Privacy

A well-constituted public sphere is essential for political legitimacy. According to our model inherited from Ancient Greece, the public sphere is a social space in which people discuss political problems, ideas, and policy proposals, and get an opportunity to influence political action. In the large democracies of the 20th century, the public sphere was no longer associated with a physical space (an agora); instead, it was primarily constituted by debates in print media, the radio, and television. Today, as news and opinions are increasingly shared on social media and the old media wither or adapt, a new public sphere is being forged.

In this new public sphere, traditional roles like 'investigative journalist' or 'news anchor' have lost their former significance. In their place, how often and how quickly a news item or opinion piece is shared has become a key factor affecting the attention it receives. New 'gatekeepers' - social media platforms and their algorithms alongside old-media editors - have altered traditional patterns of inclusion and exclusion. People who would not have sent a letter to The Times can make their voices heard in concert with peers (as in the #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo campaigns). At the same time 'fake news' (e.g. climate change sceptics, the anti-Obama 'birther' conspiracy theory) gains a wider following, and personalised online content polarises social groups.

The problems our project aims to address are that the emergent new public sphere is ineffectively governed by older laws and regulations, and that our moral understanding of new public sphere roles - 'twitter user', 'platform provider' - is under-developed. We will engage in philosophical exploration of three justificatory principles appropriate for governing and conceptualising the public sphere, principles that could underpin a future media policy framework for the UK:
1. Epistemic value principle: the public sphere should institutionalise practices that encourage the acquisition and sharing of knowledge, that filter false beliefs, and that foster responsible engagement with evidence and facts.
2. Liberal self-government principle: the public sphere should respect the liberty of all participants, and should enable them to participate as equals who can together constitute a 'public' that governs itself.
3. Privacy principle: the public sphere should secure an appropriate space for privacy.

A first overarching aim is to improve philosophical understanding of these principles, and of how they can work together to shape a well-governed new public sphere. It might seem that a right to free expression, grounded on the liberal self-government principle, must be protected even for contributions (e.g.' climate scepticism', 'fake news') that violate the epistemic value principle because they are blatantly false or fail to engage with available evidence. Similarly, it might seem that the epistemic value principle justifies silencing contributions that have not been channelled through expertise (thereby marginalising many more views than hate speech or 'extremism'), or justifies publicising important privacy-violating truths (e.g. about politicians' families). We examine the new forms of these familiar conflicts.

Our second overarching aim is to operationalize our philosophical understanding by developing recommendations for policy-makers, civil society and citizens in the new media age that would, if followed, deliver a legitimating media policy framework. We will explore, e.g. the benefits and costs of regulatory norms for YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, the case for public service online media platforms alongside old-style public service broadcasting, and the ideals that can define new professional or citizenship roles. Given the lack of fit between the emerging new public sphere and old media policies and concepts, it is pressing to develop a better understanding of what a well-constituted new public sphere should look like.

Our project's research will deepen understanding of how the epistemic, self-government and privacy principles should shape a liberal public sphere, of the contemporary relations between these principles (e.g. of what epistemic standards must be attained for proper self-government today), and of how they can be operationalized in the internet age to deliver political legitimacy. Our focus is on the UK context, with its specific combination of 'old' and 'new' media, its rapidly changing regulatory and cultural norms, and the inclusions, exclusions and accountability relations these encompass. The emerging shape of the new public sphere, with its multiple benefits and costs, makes it difficult for involved practitioners to see what values should guide new media regulatory and policy proposals, and to develop appropriate new professional roles. We will use our philosophical work to address these problems: we will develop norms that will guide new regulation, policy and roles in order to allow the new public sphere to deliver democratic legitimacy.

Practitioners who will benefit from our proposals include:
- media and journalism professionals
- policy-makers and regulators
- civil society actors including NGOs and activists
- legal professionals
- politicians

We will create differentiated proposals for these groups by focusing on:
- developing guidelines for regulatory proposals (or proposals against regulation) for use by policy-makers, regulators and civil society activitists;
- developing critical understanding of old and new media roles, with their defining duties and ideals (e.g. 'investigative journalist', 'content curator') for new media/journalism professionals;
- developing guidelines on the values and norms entailed by our epistemic, self-government and privacy principles for politicians and legal professionals who can shape a national media policy framework.
In each case we will use our philosophical research to underpin a set of high-level norms that different specialist practitioners can develop in different directions. We will not offer detailed proposals for precise regulatory frameworks or new public or private bodies, but nor will our recommendations be too abstract to be operationalized.

We will involve all potential users in development of the proposals: through participation as equal partners with academic researchers in six research workshops, through a dedicated Project Launch and a Practitioner Event, and through full involvement of our expert advisory board. The result will be a networked group of interested practitioners who will both help generate the project's outputs and benefit from and publicise them (see Pathways to Impact). We will use our network of participant practitioners to disseminate our proposals widely beyond the group, and in doing so we will make full use of our Project Partner, Doteveryone and their blog, of our advisory board and of the project website. We will produce professional brochures outlining our proposals. To engage time-poor politicians, we will involve them primarily at the conclusion, in Policy Paper Launches planned for the Houses of Parliament and the Scottish Parliament (arranged in consultation with our advisory board member, Baroness Onora O'Neill, and current Stirling visiting professor, Lord Jack McConnell).

Several policy initiatives have recently been launched in this area. However, they tend to focus on immediate legal and regulatory challenges, such as how to enforce the responsibilities of news publishers on digital intermediaries like Facebook. In our view, these challenges demand more profound philosophical reflection. By interrogating the epistemic and ethical concepts that underpin the policy framework, we aim to generate recommendations with greater legitimacy and lasting value. Complementing our targeted impact activities and policy papers, the project's major academic outputs will be written in a non-technical, accessible style.