Impact case study database

Prof Fuchs’ research has had a significant impact on the digital public sphere through the strengthening of its democratic character in respect to the two aforementioned challenges.

1. Advancing digital democracy: the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy adopted Fuchs’ recommendations regarding public participation within the parliamentary process in the UK and the strategy of engaging citizens in parliamentary democracy through the digital technologies they use on a regular basis (e.g. non-governmental social media platforms).

2. Advancing a public service Internet: Fuchs has advised Austria’s public service broadcaster – the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) – on how to tax online advertising and develop a public service Internet.

1) Impact on the UK Parliament and the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy:

In 2014, the then Speaker of the House of Commons, the Rt Hon John Bercow MP, founded the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy. The Commission inquired into how digital media technologies could be harnessed to strengthen digital democracy and to open up the workings of parliament to citizens.

On invitation of the Speaker, Prof Fuchs, together with Dr Anastasia Kavada (CAMRI) and in co-operation with colleagues from the University of Westminster’s Centre for the Study of Democracy, contributed to the inquiry by participating in a roundtable in Parliament [A1]. Fuchs also submitted written evidence that proposed an update to Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) that would strengthen digital democracy and further advance the digital public sphere itself. He stressed the importance of finding ways to ‘strengthen citizen participation in digital democracy’ and to ‘engage citizens in parliamentary democracy and parliamentary communication’ [A2].

The subsequent Open Up! Report of the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy (2015), made 35 recommendations to the House of Commons and the UK Parliament that were grouped under five themes [A3]. The Report explicitly mentions and acknowledges the importance of Fuchs’ recommendation that Parliament should connect ‘with people in the digital spaces where they spend their time’ [A3, p. 27] and the recommendation that the House of Commons should use digital technologies to ‘experiment with new ways of enabling the public to put forward questions for ministers’ [A3, p. 46].

In a corroborating letter [A4], the former Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow confirms the vital impact of Prof Fuchs’ research on the Speakers’ Commission for Digital Democracy: ‘One of the themes of the roundtable and Prof Fuchs’ written evidence was the need for Parliament to get better at ‘going to where people are’ to engage with them, by connecting with people in the digital spaces where they spend their time and in the way they like to connect. This was adopted by the Commission as one of the key themes in its report. […] Prof Fuchs’ ideas for encouraging greater public involvement in the parliamentary process were also referenced in the report. […] I would like to acknowledge the important input that Prof Fuchs made to the Digital Democracy Commission, based on his research, which informed its work and its report’ [A4].

Most significantly, the Parliamentary Digital Service (PDS) was launched in April 2015 in response to the Speaker’s Commissions Report [A5a, A5b]. PDS has combined the work of the Parliamentary Information Communication Technology (PICT) and the Web and Intranet Service (WIS) teams and is mandated with the ‘responsib[ility] for the strategic direction of Parliament’s digital offering and the delivery and management of parliamentary digital platforms, including the website’ [A5a].

Asked about the recommendations of the Speaker’s Digital Democracy Commission [DDC], in January 2016, a coordinator of PDS confirmed that ‘a strategy that we have [been] developing [has] a commitment to deliver a number of those actions. So we are leading that in so that the DDC recommendations become part of our digital strategy’ [A5c, p. 233]. Asked about the ways in which this strategy could improve democracy, the coordinator responded: ‘a big one is by transparency and opening up Parliament so it is visible and much easier to understand. And making people aware of how they can engage and giving them opportunities to do that. But doing it in a way that meets their need where they are’ [A5c, p. 234]. As such one of the 8 key principles of the strategy devised by PDS was, as recommended by Prof Fuchs, to ‘Be where people are’ [A6].

In this connection, and as explained in posts grouped under that specific principle, PDS created the ‘UK Parliament’s first ever Facebook strategy’ [A7], and a YouTube strategy that encompassed ‘ways to deepen engagement with our subscribers and viewers through comments, polls, and interactive live broadcasts’, which was enacted through YouTube’s ‘Community’ function [A7]. The success of this strategy is such that Parliamentary channels have successfully engaged social media users. Parliament’s Twitter-channel increased its number of followers from 404k on 1 January 2015 to 1.55mn on 29 June 2020 [A8], and also increased the number of ‘Likes’ of its Facebook channel from 116,396 on 1 January 2015 to 383,849 on 13 January 2020 [A9]. In early 2019, Parliament’s YouTube channel reached 100,000 followers and more than 20m total views, of which more than 6m occurred in 2018 [A10]. In 2016, Parliament launched an Instagram channel in order to further engage with the public; this channel has more than 130,000 followers as of 29 June 2020 [A11].

As such, this key aspect of the Parliamentary Digital Strategy, which followed Fuchs’ recommendations on engaging users within their preferred digital spaces, has achieved greater participation from citizens in UK democracy and parliamentary matters.

2) Impact on the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF):

Prof Fuchs’ research has also informed the policies of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) in regard to their idea of introducing a tax on online advertising and the idea to use this tax for funding public service Internet platforms.

ORF is Austria’s public service broadcaster and is committed to advancing the public value of public service media. In 2017, ORF commissioned Fuchs, Dr Josef Baum (University of Vienna), and Prof Clemens Thiele (University of Salzburg) to undertake a feasibility study on online advertising taxation in the context of Austria.

Fuchs’ chapter of the study draws on his theory of digital labour [B1]. Given that the national location of users can be identified via their IP addresses every time they click on or view an online ad, it is possible to determine the value generated through online advertising in a specific national jurisdiction. This income can thus be taxed in the country where it was produced, and Fuchs’ theory of digital labour provides a legal basis for doing so. Given that Google and Facebook control more than two-thirds of the global online ad revenue, Fuchs points out that such a tax would help to create a fairer digital public sphere by which public service online media could compete with the online dominance of such corporations.

ORF’s Public Value Competence Centre also commissioned Prof Fuchs to contribute to their 2018 Public Value Study, which focused on democracy and public service media [B2]. Fuchs’ chapter in the 2018 ORF Public Value Study recommends not just the introduction of a digital services tax and a digital ad tax for funding alternative Internet platforms, but also advises that ORF is legally enabled to introduce public service Internet content platforms, for instance a public service version of YouTube and a digital version of the legendary ORF programme Club 2 [B2, B3]. The latter is a television show that ran between 1976 and 1995 and was characterised by uncensored, unlimited live-debate. After Dark was the British version of Club 2 (broadcast on Channel 4 and BBC) [B4]. Fuchs suggests it be renewed in an online participatory format in order to facilitate a healthy digital public sphere. On 16/1/2019, Fuchs’ ideas were presented at a public ORF event (‘Dialogue Forum’), which was broadcast on ORF television later that month [B5].

Prof Fuchs’ analysis had direct impact on ORF’s policymaking. His 2017 work informed ORF’s Theses on Austria’s Media Landscape , which was published at the end of that year . In this text, ORF Director General Alexander Wrabetz draws on the idea of the public service Internet, arguing that as a ‘correction to the algorithm-driven filter politics on Facebook, the ORF should, as counterpoise, again be allowed to organise (advertising-free) online debates’ [B6 p.11] and embrace the ‘new possibilities and platforms that are used on a massive scale’ [B6 p.13]. Committing to the position that public service media need to transform themselves from ‘broadcasters into content-platforms’ [B7], Wrabetz’s Theses were further developed into the ORF Strategy 2025 that, according to Wrabetz, has created the ‘foundations of the ORF’s successful development from a public service broadcaster to a public service platform’ [B8]. Launched in December 2020, Wrabetz characterises the development of ORF towards a public service Internet platform provider as an ‘important strategic direction for the ORF’s digital future’ [B8].

In the Theses, Wrabetz also argues for the ‘application of the advertising tax to online-advertising’ [B6 p.15]. The significant impact of Prof Fuchs’ 2018 research on this policy position is confirmed in a corroborating letter from ORF’s Directorate-General: ‘The Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) acknowledges the vital and extremely valuable contribution that Prof Fuchs has made and that has informed the ORF’s understanding of the foundations of online advertising and helped to develop its own policy perspective in respect to the role that online advertising, Google and Facebook play in the digital economy. The ORF has in this context recently suggested that the Austrian advertising tax is extended to online advertising so that it would also affect Google and Facebook’ [B9].

While an EU-wide digital services tax failed to be agreed upon by member states, on September 20, 2019, the Austrian parliament uniformly agreed to introduce a five percent online advertising tax for large corporations such as Google and Facebook that came into effect on January 1, 2020 [B10a]. Operating as a foundation under public law and Austria’s pre-eminent media provider, ORF’s voice is heard in the policy discourse. The Austrian digital advertising tax is important because digital monopolies that are open to ideological bias due to their corporate nature, make much of their money from online advertising; their vast financial power means they are able to crowd out politically neutral / objective public service media, thus threating the democratic nature of political discourse. This tax goes some way towards facilitating the ability of publicly funded media to compete for the same audiences and to thus provide balanced political discourse.