What is Civic Media?

CIVIC MEDIA is a large audience political decision making process driven by ongoing, issue-centered dialogues marked, in many cases, by votes of citizens, experts, journalists and public officials. It exists to help entire communities large and small define, prioritize and solve problems and to enable communities maximize opportunities as well. Strictly nonpartisan, civic media dialogues, as we have advanced them since the early 1990′s, strive to give all members of a community an informed voice in the government decisions that affect their lives. They are designed to make citizens and governments mutually responsive and accountable to each other. Their voter-driven solutions are advisorial to governments, their impact being compararable to that of a poll that is continuously refined and updated.

Properly produced, civic media can be productive, financially self-sustaining and even profitable. Civic media as we conceive of it is market-driven: it targets and serves the Market of the Whole of all members of a community. It can occur in any medium that allows for the ongoing presentation and/or processing of information. Its formats can be purely informational. Or they can blend information with games and contests that mimic the great game of voter-driven democracy.