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Retired Professor Dr. Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink #30 What does science say? In the course of profound changes in the media system due to digitalisation, the question arises, especially for public service media, how they can fulfil their special mission of providing a service to society and for society; because as society changes, so do the tasks for public service media. This is all the more true with regard to youth and young adults, among whom public service media achieve comparatively low coverage and market shares. A central reason for this is that young people do not know the media landscape without the internet and mobile communication.

Their media environment is cross-medially interwoven, it no longer consists of a juxtaposition of separate individual media, but rather of cross-media communication spaces as well as cross-media content and person brands. A mandate that recognisably sets a specific individual medium as the starting point and point of reference and at best offers online services "accompanying the broadcast" does not do justice to the new situation.

In this sense, the mandate for public service media must be broadly conceived and also offer young people a communication service that provides them with attractive entertainment and, in particular, the orientation they need to cope with everyday life. The decisive factor is not the medium, but the fulfilment of these functions. This means that the service to society expected from public service media must no longer be determined by the technical distribution and the form of presentation. It must also be taken into account that the promise of the public service model to serve the population requires a very close connection to the perspective and communicative needs of youths and young adults. This requires intensive communication with young people, via social media, but also through serious involvement in the relevant supervisory and advisory bodies, such as the audience council.