Bridge Initiative hopes to raise awareness around a potential fifth crisis which might affect all others. This is the crisis of the New Media Public Sphere.

With the concern of allowing the public to be better informed around the issues at stake with globalization, BI has always worked to bring to the table its own media expertise and analysis of the potential evolution- negative or positive- of the public sphere. To achieve this, it used media professional forums, partnerships with Television, Film, the Press (such as the International Herald Tribune, El Pais, etc) . And it convened specific meetings on the role of media in globalization. In April 2005, a BI meeting in London gathered all stakeholders (international institutions, CSOs, media organizations) around this issue. In 2007, BI designed a module for a one week seminar aimed at conventional media and new media players and it co-organized three seminars (Ouagadogou, March 2007- Rabat, October 2007,-Alexandria, December 2007). BI has also been part of the GAN-NET (Global Action Network) process on communication and the GFMD (Global Forum for Media Development).

BI has permanently tried to demonstrate ways through which new narratives could emerge from bottom-up approaches instead of more communication or campaigning strategies from the top. The slogan of our Open UN event during the 2005 Millenium Summit, was “One Person, One Voice.” BI’s mediation processes on specific issues have often served as research for a multimedia format (madmundo.tv) welcomed by stakeholders where journalists investigate across the planet in the name of a citizen who is affected by a given issue. But as participants to the 2008 BI plenary meeting indicated, there is now a shared concern that the Public Sphere might not remain a Public Good. This challenge needs to be addressed.

Content used to be generated and produced solely by media professionals (journalists, authors, producers, directors, and commissioning editors) who have been working within a certain ethical framework. They now fear that the new public sphere might become mostly privatized and lose its public terms of reference. The public sphere is also now made up of self-generated content and of the incredible flow of conversations taking place between people themselves through the web and through so-called “social networks”.

The borders between the different genres are becoming unclear, either threatening journalistic freedom or allowing new forms of journalism to grow with no code of conduct. In order to maintain the public nature of the new public sphere, there are currently no real regulations to refer to and no real reflections on which national or international bodies should conceive them. Regulation in this field means ethical guidelines; it might also mean some kind of positive obligation so that the production of content is not reduced to games, game shows, sports, blockbusters, or tabloid news but also embraces some social concerns (as in the case of public television in the early days of television).

BI would want to encourage the new operators (Telecom and internet companies) and other stakeholders (international institutions, governments, conventional media organizations, and civil society organizations) to focus attention on the emerging dangers of new public communication patterns; and to favor special alliances to create joint umbrellas which would give more visibility to relevant content.

• New Regulations
• Positive obligations
• Multi-stakeholder alliances
• Joint Umbrellas

Through conferences, seminars, and articles in the press, BI will work to focus attention on several ideas about the framework for tomorrow’s public sphere, and promote the idea that, in a similar manner to “environmental and social responsibility”, the public sphere would benefit from a “moral and social responsibility” engagement by concerned corporations in the public and private sectors. In 2009, Bridge Initiative will convene a meeting built around such an agenda.

Strategically, Bridge Initiative will engage to work through existing bodies dealing with “environmental and social responsibility” or with “public goods” in order to apply existing frameworks to the domain of the Public Sphere. Options include the UN Global Compact, business and human rights organizations, UNESCO, the World Summit on Information Society Process, and the Global Network Initiative.