Discoverability of Local, National and Regional Content Online: Mapping Access Barriers and Contemplating New Orientation Tools

Abstract

Diversity of content is essential to vibrant public discourse and to cultural and social inclusion and cohesion. The Internet has enabled a platform for instantaneous sharing of information and communication among millions of people, with a relatively low threshold for participation and seemingly no barriers. Many have hoped that this digital space would, even without the need for policy intervention, create all the conditions necessary for individual freedom of speech (in both its active and passive forms) and for sustainable content diversity to flourish. Sadly, this brave new world has not materialized; instead, the digital space has brought discrete new challenges with it, some of which may call for deliberate action. One of these challenges has deep implications for cultural diversity and relates to the discoverability of local, regional and national content – that is, to the possibility for individual users to find and access content with a specific quality. It is the purpose of this paper to offer a well-informed basis for understanding this discoverability challenge and to allow for an appropriate framing of the policy discussions around it. Against this backdrop, the paper suggests how existing cultural policy toolkits can be redesigned – not so much as new top-down measures but rather as refocused cultural policies that engage not only conventional media outlets as suppliers of content but also intermediaries and users, individually and as part of civil society.

Keywords: cultural diversity, digital media, platforms, discoverability, local content, media and cultural law and policy