Investigate

Mike Saunders

In this paper Mike Saunders, Director of Digital Media at Kew Gardens explains how he believes the PSP can enable citizens to 'tell it how it is' and deliver a fertile and inclusive arena for exploring and participating in factual media.

Facts are not always absolutes, but often the accepted accounts and explanations that follow from stimulating debates. If a central proposition of the PSP is to proactively enable citizens to better understand their physical, social and political environment, it must do this by supporting and stimulating debate across a whole range of issues. 'Investigation' is a useful metaphor for how the PSP should approach factual content because it is an active process bringing together social interaction, play, experience, experiment and opinion.

Although investigation implies a fundamentally active role for the audience, it also relies for its success on the presence of linear and didactic content that frame, inspire and inform that participation. PSP inspired factual media will be primarily a collaboration between professional and amateur producers. In a mixed ecology of content, the PSP might engage talented 'auteur' producers to create provocative work that seeds a wider network of content. These provocations will demonstrate passionate, opinionated and authoritative views of the world which will drive debate and participation. Users will emerge from the wider network to become articulate voices in their own right.

One of the most effective ways of engaging users with complex issues is to give them models with which to play and experiment. This approach has been taken furthest in the learning field with educational software like Krucible, which simulates physical phenomena. An allied approach which might prove part of the PSP mix is the growing use of games to explore social and political issues. Demand for participative debate is evident not only from burgeoning social software and blogs but also with initiatives like openDemocracy, the Guardian's Comment is Free and collaborative communities of interest such as MumsNet. Perhaps most interesting are location specific social data logging sites like Urban Tapestries and Vision of Britain which allow the public to author localised content. These projects point the way to exciting opportunities for factual content across the nations and regions of the UK, and could be easily scaled for national and minority language communities.

A key challenge for the Public Service Content in a networked age, and one that necessitates a move beyond the experience of Public Service Broadcasting will be quality control. The opinions and information contributed by users of different types make the broadcast notions of 'balance' and impartiality problematic. Balance may be achievable when access to air time is linear and limited - it isn't appropriate for encouraging the diversity of views and opinions within a participatory network. Impartiality in this context may mean holding the ring and creating more exciting and free flowing debates invoking light-touch approaches to moderation. It may also mean commissioning marginalised voices to contribute opinions on particular subjects.

The role of the PSP

By subscribing to a number of key purposes the PSP could create a fertile and inclusive arena for factual content:

It seems that many people feel ignorant of, and distanced from decisions that could directly affect their individual, community and even global future. By encouraging passionate and opinionated voices, the PSP can stimulate a diverse and vibrant community that will trigger wider involvement in these issues. As well as supporting opinion, the PSP should also provide investigative tools and resources that encourage people to 'test' their theories.

An exciting and valuable outcome for the PSP would be to mobilise the public to contribute to, and make use of a national body of knowledge. The value of such knowledge depends on its ease of use - and the true value is only fully realised if the information can be freely used by anyone in any context. This implies an open rights framework, which itself can aid sustainability - if lots of people are using knowledge in different ways, there is an incentive to continually contribute to it; a powerful virtuous circle.

To achieve the proposed levels of participation, the PSP's factual content needs above all to be compelling and fun. That's not to say it should be superficial, but it should keep at its heart a playful approach to investigation. Play is our natural approach to learning, and the PSP's interactive core provides the perfect context to harness that potential. Plentiful academic research points to play as an effective route to learning, which suggests that the PSP could achieve many of its learning objectives through commissioning such content and applications. This will require innovative commissioning models that deliver value through processes as well as through products.

The PSP could further support communities to extend what they already do. This might include:

The PSP should also deliver support for media literacy skills across all of its content. Not only would this help broaden participation, but it would also mean the PSP could support open media literacy as a key enabler to unlock access to broader knowledge and content. There are a number of ways the PSP could approach this; from centrally created skills resources delivered through communities (both local and special interest) to peer-mentor networks. This would enable communities to deliver training based on PSP content that inherently appeals to the audience, and hence motivates effective learning.

By mobilising a critical mass of active public involvement in knowledge gathering and exchange, the PSP has a significant opportunity to help people understand more about, and contribute more to communities - whether geographic, ethnic or virtual. In doing so, the PSP can play an important part in building a society which has greater democratisation of knowledge, improved diversity of representation in debate and reduced cultural/socio-economic barriers.