Strategy 5
Strategy 5: Civic engagement for public information and knowledge
Civic engagement has at least two important links to information and knowledge. First, information that people create and use enables them to be more effective as citizens. Second, citizens must ensure that they and their descendants have access to good information and knowledge and the means to use it effectively. Institutions affect public knowledge, and citizens can affect the policies of institutions. Seen this second way, civic engagement is a cause, and public knowledge is an outcome. Both of the following models are important.
- Information developed and used by citizens creates Public Knowledge, which supports effective Civic Engagement
- Civic Engagement influences Policies and Institutions, which create or protect Information and Knowledge
In this section, I concentrate on the second model. Such policies as the funding of public media, information networks, archives, libraries, and other facilities; freedom of information, freedom of speech, copyright, and other intellectual property rights; and transparency of government, and industry—all these matter for the quality, relevance, and distribution of knowledge. Most of these issues are controversial, and I will not argue in this paper for particular policies. For our purposes here, the key point is that communications policies in the public and private sectors are important and they are matters of debate, contention, and pressure.
Active citizens must be involved in the debate and must exercise influence. By “citizens,” I mean all members of the community—not just experts, organized interests, and stakeholders. By “citizens,” I also mean something different from “consumers.” Individuals in their role as citizens approach issues of public policy with at least some concern for the polity; in their role as consumers, people tend to make decisions based on what is most desirable or convenient for themselves. Discussions, surveys, and political processes can be designed to elicit responses from people as consumers or as citizens (Elster, 1986). For example, people make different choices when they are asked to discuss an issue in public, give reasons, and then vote, than when they are given individual choices to make in a marketplace.
It is crucial that people discuss and act on media and communications policy in ways that elicit their thinking as citizens. After all, producing reliable and relevant public information and informative discussions of public issues are fraught with potential market failures. There may, for example, be inadequate incentives to produce and distribute worthwhile public information, unless the government subsidizes such efforts. Firms that do produce valuable information and discussion may charge fees or erect barriers that are incompatible with democratic values. As citizens, people must constantly evaluate the supply and availability of information and knowledge, and advocate appropriate reforms.
Once civic knowledge has been created, it must be protected against a wide range of threats, from malicious behavior to sheer neglect. Traditional forms of knowledge, such as the documents in a town archive, the reporting that filled a traditional town newspaper, and the artifacts in a local museum, all took money and training to catalog, manage, and conserve. Modern digital media also requires archiving, maintenance, and conservation. Digital conversations require moderation and protections against spammers, flamers, and viruses.
The overall risk is that policies will be decided by interest-group pressure and negotiation with minimal concern for public interests. To be sure, there is no consensus about what the “public interest” requires: libertarians, social conservatives, egalitarians, and others will (and should) disagree. But there should be a robust debate about the public interest in which citizens offer diverse arguments and principles that influence public policy. Policy should not simply satisfy powerful and self-interested stakeholders.
Once again, voluntary associations play an essential role. They recruit, educate, and motivate people to act as citizens. To ensure that the public interest is debated and the debate influences public policy, we need voluntary associations that perform the following functions:
Advocacy. Beneficial policies are public goods that often lose out to private interests that profit more tangibly from selfish policies. Thus we need independent, nonprofit associations that have incentives to recruit voters, activists, and donors to promote the public interest in relation to knowledge and information. The American Library Association, for example, has been a strong advocate for fair use and public access to knowledge.
Alliances. Communities across the country have information needs and valuable, accumulated public knowledge. Attacks on free information anywhere are threats to free information everywhere. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” That is what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote as he and his colleagues built a civil rights movement. As a result of their work, when civil rights were viciously repressed in one location, people got on buses from other places to come and protest. We may not need bus trips, but we do need people in each community to feel that the information needs of other places matter to them as well. In practical terms, that requires networks of associations that have working ties.
Education, broadly defined. People do not automatically acquire an understanding and appreciation of valuable civic knowledge, nor the skills necessary to produce and conserve such knowledge. Each generation must transmit to the next the skills, motivations, and understanding necessary to create and preserve public knowledge. Not only public schools but also private, nonprofit associations must play roles in this process. Associations must recruit and train the next generation of community historians, archivists, naturalists, artists, and documentary filmmakers (among other roles).
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