Dilemmas of democratic self-defense in European public broadcasting

This project studies how public service broadcasting organizations throughout Europe have responded to the growing presence of broadly defined populist and extremist parties; political actors that tend to oppose the protection of minorities, gender equality, the rights of migrants and refugees and which have seen a surge in popular support in recent years.The project engages with a particularly difficult dilemma for liberal democracy in general, and for public broadcasting organizations in particular: how to, on the one hand, safeguard pluralism, inclusive participation and an open political debate and, on the other, protect the human dignity of all members of society, especially when the inclusion of actors that challenge fundamental values risk undermining the dignity of others.Normatively, the project develops a viable approach to the dilemma between human dignity and political pluralism, an aspect of this problem area that previous discussions on these issues have largely neglected.

Empirically, the project combines a systematic study of how public broadcasting organizations in 37 European countries have dealt with this specific dilemma, along with in-depth case studies of 5 European countries: Sweden, Germany, France, Italy and Greece, to both describe and explain the emergence of specific ways of dealing with the dilemma between human dignity and political pluralism.