Professor Christian Fuchs, Director of Westminster’s Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) is using his research to help public bodies advance digital democracy.
Fuchs’ research has studied how digitalisation has structurally transformed the public sphere.
The digital world, he argues, is not just an extension of real life, but an extension and manifestation of everyday life.
As in ‘real’ life, digital democracy is under siege – both from authoritarianism, and from an untethered, high-risk capitalism – two problems which have fused themselves together in modern life.
Fuelled by market dominance and tax avoidance, Big Tech like Facebook and Google cannot, by their nature, be apolitical, Fuchs says.
Making money from exploiting users’ “digital labour” (their personal data), their business model has helped advancing political authoritarianism.
We need to promote participatory digital democracy, Fuchs says, and we need to tax “digital capital”.
The Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy (UK)
John Bercow, the former Commons’ Speaker, launched the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy, in 2014, to strengthen digital democracy and increase public engagement with Parliament.
At Mr Bercow’s invitation, Fuchs, together with Dr Anastasia Kavada (also CAMRI), and colleagues from Westminster’s Centre for the Study of Democracy, took part in a roundtable in Parliament.
Fuchs also submitted further written recommendations, including changing Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) to encourage greater public participation.
As Mr Bercow confirms, the final 2015 ‘Open Up!’ report directly draws from Fuchs’ recommendations on using digital technology to get people more engaged with parliamentary debate.
“I would like to acknowledge the important input that Prof Fuchs made to the Digital Democracy Commission,” Mr Bercow wrote, in a letter on the subject.
He particularly highlights Fuchs’ emphasis, on “the need for Parliament to get better at ‘going to where people are’ to engage with them”.
Fuchs’ emphasis on going to “digital spaces” where people already spend their time would go on to become a strategic pillar of the Parliamentary Digital Service (PDS).
Launched in April 2015 in response to the Speaker’s Report, the Parliamentary Digital Service (PDS) leads what it describes as “the strategic direction of Parliament’s digital offering”.
In what ways can this strategy improve democracy?
“A big one is by transparency,” a PDS coordinator says. “And opening up Parliament so it is visible and much easier to understand.
“And making people aware of how they can engage and giving them opportunities to do that.”
In line with this, one of the eight key principles of the PDS strategy, follows Fuchs’ recommendation to “Be where people are”.
To achieve this, the PDS launched a campaign to build up engagement with Parliament’s social media channels – to great success.
UK Parliament’s Twitter-channel shot up from 404K to 1.55M followers, between January 2015 and June 2020.
‘Likes’ on its Facebook channel increased from 116,396 to 383,849, from January 2015 to January 2020.
In early 2019, Parliament’s YouTube channel reached 100,000 followers with more than 20 million total views.
Parliament’s Instagram channel launched in 2016, topping 130,000 followers by July 2020.
Advancing public service digital media in Austria
The Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) commissioned Fuchs to consider whether an online advertising tax would work in Austria and how the relationship of digital democracy and public service media looks like.
Drawing on his digital labour theory, Fuchs argued that, as online ad users’ national locations can be traced, and value can be placed on their engagement, there was a legal basis for a national tax.
Fuchs expanded these ideas in his contribution to ORF’s 2018 Public Value Study, focused on democracy and public service media.
He argued ORF should create public service versions of channels like YouTube, and a digital version of Club2, ORF’s legendary defunct debate show (which inspired Britain’s After Dark) to promote healthy digital public debate.
He presented his ideas at Dialogue Forum, a public, televised, ORF event, in January 2019 and October 2021.
The ORF Strategy 2025 was informed by such research-based recommendations. This strategy, ORF General Director Alexander Wrabetz says, creates the “foundations of the ORF’s successful development from a public service broadcaster to a public service platform”, fully engaged within the online space.
After member states failed to approve an EU-wide digital services tax, Austria introduced its own 5% online advertising tax for large corporations like Google and Facebook, which came into effect in January 2020.
The Public Service Media and Public Service Internet Manifesto
Continuing the work with ORF, Christian Fuchs together with Klaus Unterberger, who is Head of ORF Public Value, initiated the Public Service Media and Public Service Internet Manifesto.
This collectively authored text sets out why a democracy-enhancing Internet requires Public Service Media becoming Public Service Internet platforms – an Internet of the public, by the public, and for the public.
This manifesto has been signed and endorsed by more than 1,000 members of civil society, including leading public intellectuals Jürgen Habermas and Noam Chomsky, the European Federation of Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists, and the International Association for Media and Communication Research.
The manifesto can be read via the open access University of Westminster Press.
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Connect with Christian Fuchs
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