Merely Facilitating or Actively Stimulating Diverse Media Choices? Public Service Media at the Crossroad

Personalized recommendations provide new opportunities to engage with audiences and influence media choices. Should the public-service media use such algorithmic profiling and targeting to guide audiences and stimulate more diverse choices? And if they do, is this a brave new world we would like to live in? This article outlines new opportunities for the public-service media to fulfill their commitment to media diversity and highlights some of the ethical and normative considerations that will play a role. The article concludes with a call for a new body of “algorithmic media ethics.”