The most profound challenges to building a more just, equitable and healthy society lie in our means and methods of civic dialogue and public participation.

Our concern therefore must be the culture of democracy -- which necessarily includes not just content, but also the way it is created and disseminated.

In the technological 21st century, our culture of democracy is largely defined by, and transmitted through, mass media -- and whether it's a commercial operation or PBS, mass media has ever been criticized as inadequate to the needs of encompassing public discourse.

As Neal Postman writes in his media-criticism classic "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business," the nature (or more broadly, epistemology) of our media dictates the quality of its content -- and thus of our discourse as a society.

New opportunities and challenges

His concern was that the epistemology of television -- the dominant mass medium in America today -- is inherently trivializing, and creates a decontextualized/fragmented "peekaboo" culture that ultimately breaks down the complex discourse required for effective self-governance in a democracy.

If so, then online media -- open source and participatory by nature -- potentially represents a radical shift away from the unaccountable, "one-way pipeline" of television and its milieu.

However, while the Internet has opened new doors for participation to communities, individuals and organizations across the socioeconomic and cultural spectra, it is far from perfect, and as vulnerable as any mass medium to commercialism.

For evidence of this, look no further than Rupert Murdoch's successful development of MySpace.com into the world's biggest one-to-one marketing database -- that is, until Facebook came along and stole his thunder.

The digital divide and a lack of non-virtual (i.e. real world) infrastructure further constrain the development of a more robust civic life through cultural participation and community building.

It is urgent that we address these dual issues of rampant commercialism on the one hand, and a lack of noncommercial infrastructure on the other.

To ignore the problems will simply allow the dysfunctions of commercialized mass-media to grow more deeply rooted and even pathological. This includes the stifling of critical inquiry, misinformed citizens, and the commodification and distortion of the cultural and information needs of local communities.

Independent Arts & Media advocates for a new, widespread commitment to New Public Media -- an encompassing term that admires the simple effort of producing and sustaining dialogue through media, journalism, arts and culture, and specifically those diverse and meritorious efforts that nonetheless are outside of established commercial and institutional structures.

This is in direct response to Postman's TV-driven nightmare of civic exclusion and disconnection, and all the dire consequences that follow.