181 23 Taking The Principles of Public Service Media into the Digital Ecology 1 Georgina Born It was suggested in Chapter 13 of this book that the normative principles of public service media (PSM) have become more rather than less relevant, have expanded and have gained a new urgency in the digital era. In what follows, a series of propo- sitions are advanced, focused on the ways that such principles fnd new expression in digital conditions. If the proponents of neoliberal economic thinking argue that the digital economy is best served, and best understood, in terms of the dynamics of competition operating within free markets, then the oligopolistic tendencies that have become pronounced in the last decade, manifest in the dominance of a few key dig- ital intermediaries and in the rapid capacity to establish primacy in new digital mar- kets, disprove such assumptions. Tis chapter therefore advances the need for public intervention in digital media markets on several levels, each of them important, each founded on and drawing legitimacy from the expanded normative principles set out in Chapter 13. Given the evidence accruing in support of the wider need for such interven- tions – for example, as has recently been raised on the grounds of national security 2  – it is remarkable how little public debate has occurred about the desirability and the potential signifcance of public service interventions in the digital ecology. It is per- haps indicative that where such debates have occurred, it has been less in the global North than in the global South, where the severe and deepening economic, social and cultural disadvantages stemming from dependence on and lock-in by monopo- listic commercial media frms based in the North – whether with respect to hardware, software or social media – have, on occasion, become focal policy and legislative concerns. 3 9781906897710_pi-344.indd 181 9781906897710_pi-344.indd 181 11/1/2017 10:11:43 PM 11/1/2017 10:11:43 PM