On 10 November 2018, the concept of Public Open Space (POS) was explored at a workshop by the Public Value Centre of ORF. Scholars and practitioners from Switzerland, Austria and Germany participated.
European Public Sphere: Towards a Public Civic Partnership
Volker Grassmuck on EPOS at Zugang Gestalten 2018, 25 Oktober 2018, Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin.
(in German)
Next EPOS meeting: 3 September 2018 in Berlin
The second EPOS meeting took place on Monday, 3d September 2018. We were invited by Heinrich-Böll-Foundation Berlin, Schumannstraße 8, 10117 Berlin. Details will follow.
What is 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:
- 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),
- working groups of stakeholders from the four constituencies and
- prototyping activities that showcase what EPOS could be.
Here is a short project description in German and in English:
EPOS is a research and development project by Barbara Thomaß, Leonhard Dobusch, Ellen Euler, Christine Horz, Christian Herzog, Phil Ramsey and Volker Grassmuck.