Strengthening User Trust in Media Services

Currently, there are very few structures to assist media consumers -and especially young people - find high-quality, trustworthy media and Internet content. Inexperienced users often have difficulty sifting out high-quality content from the endless stream of information and services. As can be expected, commercial providers are not especially interested in meeting quality standards. This conference will address the problem by examining potential measures which could help strengthen the users' trust in the quality and security of media content and in the credibility of its providers. For instance, a foundation could be established to negotiate agreements with the large commercial providers (AOL, T-Online, etc.) that would make socially relevant content available through non-commercial channels.
Together with representatives of European media companies, governments and associations, the congress will work at achieving two main goals - first, to establish an international network promoting trustworthy, qualitative and unrestricted Internet content, and second, to initiate a European discussion of quality assurance measures currently used by self- and co-regulatory media providers. In contrast to other European countries, there are a number of successful examples of self- and co-regulatory organizations in Germany, such as the "Voluntary Television Review Body" (FSF), "Voluntary Self-Monitoring of Multimedia Service Providers" (FSM), the German Advertising Council and the German Press Council.