Citizenship and Public Broadcasting in Europe

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the function of public service broadcasting in a commercialized media landscape in which information serving the citizen is more and more endangered by programme offers addressing the consumer. In a first step the inter-linkage of the concepts of public sphere and citizenship will be unfolded and shown what they mean for public communication. In a second step it will be discussed what are the consequences of these concepts for public service broadcasting. The third and fourth element of the contribution are the consideration of the present situation of public service broadcasting in a commercial media environment and the challenge coming up by digitization. The last paragraph will show examples of the media performance concerning public sphere, interpreting programmes structures in France, UK and Germany.