EPOS

Towards European Public Open Spaces (EPOS)

While Public Service Media (PSM) are under pressure from multiple angles, they remain one of the most important sites for public information, culture and integration. The proposed project builds on commonalities between PSM organizations, public knowledge institutions like Europeana and commons communities like Wikipedia and explores how democracy might be revitalized by them jointly setting up European Public Open Spaces (EPOS). The EPOS project explores how the establishment of a Europe-wide participatory platform, free from state and market interests – that draws on existing PSM activities – would further enhance and protect the public sphere.

EPOS is a project for conceptualizing a European public sphere constituted jointly by PSM, public knowledge institutions, knowledge commons communities and audience organisations. EPOS consists of three modules:

  1. research (on issues of participation, knowledge regimes, theories of deliberative and transnational, European public sphere and democracy and challenges in an algorithmically controlled online environment),
  2. working groups of stakeholders from the four constituencies and
  3. prototyping activities that showcase what EPOS could be.

EPOS is a research and development project by Barbara Thomaß, Leonhard Dobusch, Ellen Euler, Christine Horz, Christian Herzog, Phil Ramsey and Volker Grassmuck.

Her are the first project drafts:

see also