Essential Principles for Contemporary Media and Communications Policymaking

This report proposes principles to guide contemporary media and communications policymaking in democratic countries seeking to improve the contributions those operations and systems make to society. It articulates statements of principles to inform the development of policy objectives and policy mechanisms and to provide consistency across varying issues, technologies, and actions by defining fundamental criteria that can be used to inform discussion and guide policy decisions.

This report steps back from specific policy measures to articulate principles that are relevant and applicable to a wide range of media and communications platforms, infrastructures, and activities addressed at the local, national, regional, and global levels. The purpose is to help policymakers and policy advocates think initially at a more principled level and then link policy objectives and tools to these normative foundations rather than merely seeking immediate problem solutions.

[Prof Robert G. Picard is a senior research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at University of Oxford. Dr Victor Pickard is an associate professor at the Annenberg School forCommunication, University of Pennsylvania.]