MeSch – Merit key: Satisfying needs in the post-digital world
„Die jetzigen Bürgermedien als starre, traditionelle Institution sind jedoch nicht mehr zeitgemäß. Höchste Zeit also, um endlich aus dem Dornröschenschlaf aufzuwachen.“ (Nowak, 2023).
How can citizen media be relevant in a post-digital world – and that means both becoming relevant and, assuming existing relevance, remaining relevant. As the key to a future-oriented design of citizen media, the project uses the theoretical concept of merit wants. Since they have not yet been sufficiently explored in the predominantly economic discussion of merit goods, we must also ask: Can media satisfy such needs at all? The project also asks whether citizen media could be better at doing this than the system of fee- or tax-funded media that still dominates in Europe. After all, there is a growing reluctance to pay broadcasting licence fees in Germany and other European countries (e.g. Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria). Finally, there is the question of how citizen media will have to be designed in the future in order to satisfy merit wants.
As a first step, a scale will be developed that identifies public good-oriented needs related to media. This is done at the level of the individual, as systematic evidence of collective needs quickly reaches its limits. Based on these findings, we will explore how media content in a post-digital world needs to be designed to meet these needs. Thus, the empirical approach can support the development of relevant, needs-based content to make citizen media fit for a post-digital world.
Ideally, the scale to be developed will enable work on and with demand-driven and possibly quota-driven media offerings that address merit wants. In this way, the hoped-for quantification of merit wants can provide very concrete recommendations for action for the management, further development and (democracy-promoting) organisation of citizen media. The dualisation of the broadcasting system in the 1980s is still unimaginable without citizen media in Germany. Its renewal for a media system that has long since become completely digital seems overdue. From the perspective of the project team, the opportunity of the project lies in integrating new user groups and increasing participation for the common good in the interest of society as a whole. This can be achieved because, historically speaking, citizen media have always been participatory in nature. The project thus opens up the media system to the realities of post-digital participation. This is done from both a theoretical-conceptual and an empirical-applied perspective.
