Attentional Integrity as a Mission for Public Service Media and Its Recommender Systems

Public Service Media (PSM) is struggling to develop new forms of justification in the “personalization era”, not only to save its role as a public institution but also to educate various generations adapting to a global multi-platform world. New media policy strategies seem necessary. The article attempts to stimulate the discussion by highlighting a new priority for PSM: “attentional integrity”. By doing this, it elaborates a discussion starting from the UNESCO (2001) definition of PSB core principles: Universality, Diversity, Independence, Distinctiveness. These principles are firstly introduced and discussed in the context of recommender systems. Then, the concept of “attentional integrity” is briefly defined and its operationalization discussed for PSM-oriented RS. Finally, we discuss the relation between PSM and attentional integrity, their limits and opportunities. The conclusion is that PSM could proactively develop PSM-oriented recommender systems that account for attentional integrity.