As the IPPR’s Facing the Future report rightly identifies, the collapse of common ground in our democracy cannot be ignored. The fragmentation of public discourse, fuelled by the transformation of the media landscape, poses one of the most pressing challenges for anyone seeking to rebuild a more cohesive, representative, and inclusive society. But while the report speaks to the urgency of renewing progressive politics, its critique of media fragmentation must go further. If we are to truly reconstruct our shared democratic life, we must rethink not only what media is but who gets to make it, where it is made, and how it circulates.
At Decentered Media, we believe that reclaiming the public sphere starts in the middle—not at the top. The solution is not more elite editorialisation from traditional institutions, nor more algorithmic spoon-feeding from globalised content platforms. Instead, what’s needed is the steady rebuilding of community-focussed, citizen-led media infrastructures—those rooted in the Foundational Economy and driven by social value, not commercial exploitation or centralised state control.
The Problem Isn’t Just the Message – It’s the Medium and Who Owns It
The Facing the Future report outlines how personalised social media has split the public sphere into reactive silos, undermining democratic dialogue and amplifying zero-sum resentment. But this is not merely a consequence of bad political ideas—it’s the outcome of a media ecology structured to monetise attention, not facilitate understanding. Global platforms prioritise what is viral, not what is valuable.
To challenge this, we need pluralistic and independent media production ecosystems. That means re-establishing community media infrastructures that allow people to make and share their own media on their own terms. This must include:
- Affordable and decentralised access to media production tools.
- Community-based training and learning support services.
- Trust-based digital networks that reward autonomy and authenticity.
If we fail to support these capacities, we concede the future of the public sphere to an arms race of corporate spectacle and political panic.
From Broadcast to Base: Building the Infrastructure of Voice
A progressive response cannot rely on regulatory bodies or state-licensed gatekeepers to decide who gets to speak. The search for common ground must be pluralistic and competitive, grounded in freedom of expression and supported by distributed technologies that allow people to act independently of both the state and the market.
We must invest in civil society-led platforms that use distributed systems such as blockchain and peer-to-peer architectures. These systems offer the potential for secure, accountable, and autonomous media exchange, far removed from the extractive logic of surveillance capitalism. Such infrastructure should not be gatekept by institutional committees—local or national—but governed by the very communities who use and sustain them.
Trust Is Not a Product – It’s a Practice of Respect
As the report acknowledges, trust is the currency of a renewed democratic culture. But trust cannot be engineered from above. It grows from the ground up, where differences of opinion are not censored but respected; where local voices are not overwritten by homogenised narratives; where civic expression is not filtered through ideological approval panels, but allowed to speak freely and with purpose.
That’s why our priority must be to equip communities with the means to communicate for themselves—to articulate their needs, their place, and their futures without needing validation from a cultural or political elite. This is the foundation of a functioning, living democracy.
Towards a Social Market for Media
It is not enough to critique “junk media.” We must offer alternatives. A social market for community and civic media would sustain producers who are committed to public interest values, supported by civic institutions but not controlled by them. Here, media production becomes part of everyday life: a practice of care, learning, creativity and debate embedded in local economies and cultural identities.
In short, the future of democracy will not be televised by others—it must be produced by us. Let’s face that future, not with nostalgia or control, but with autonomy, plurality, and solidarity.