The theoretical concept of civic communication as well as its role in the world is discussed in the article. The author deals with the major problems of teaching civic issues and shows how these problems could partly be solved by developing deliberation skills of young citizens. The international project on teaching methodology of “Structured Academic Controversy” as a way for civic communication is presented in the paper. The main advantages and disadvantages of this methodology are pointed out and some other data from the pilot research study on effectiveness of the methodology mentioned above is analyzed. Finally, the author introduces the transatlantic civic project “Deliberating in a Democracy” in an implicit way, showing influence of this project to civic understandings and behaviour of the students in different countries. All insights and conclusions drawn by the author are based on the findings from the international study.

The concept of civic communication is discussed in the article as well as the transatlantic project "Deliberating in a Democracy" is presented. The author deals with the problems of civic education in Lithuania and shows how these problems partly could be solved by teaching students how to deliberate on controversial issues. The influence to the civic understanding and behaviour of the students as well as to teaching methodology of the teachers participating in a project are shown by the findings from evaluation which was carried out by the evaluation team from University of Minessota.

The aim of this article is to explore global and local challenges of public service broadcasting (PSB) development and to identify possible ways to manage these challenges in Eastern European countries (post-Soviet space). The study encompasses three main contextual dimensions: (1) local challenges of PSB, characterized and influenced by different political, social, economic and cultural conditions, experiences, traditions, norms, and the development of the democracy between countries, including transitional influences and consequences of media system development in post-Soviet space; (2) global challenges of PSB, including a continuing debate on the role, place and identity of PSB within media and political systems, by taking into account ongoing processes of digitization, technological development, media convergence, privatization, competition, commercialization, and their consequences; (3) a theoretical concept of the public value and its further developed approaches that emphasize strategic operation, performance, assessment and the development of public sector organizations (including PSB) by deliberating public needs and interests, as well as creating public value in an accountable and transparent way. It leads to the need for new commitments to the public and stresses the role of civic participation, support and trust in the work of PSB. The research is based on secondary literature studies, qualitative analysis of documents, semi-structured interviews, and a case study of Latvia.

Debates related to the quality of online discussions are quickly engaging scholars from different fields, but still, there is no single answer if we can expect online discussions to be deliberative enough for the establishment and maintenance of a well-functioning public sphere online. In this paper, I presume that respect is an essential category determining overall quality of online public discussions. Therefore, I assess if discussions from a preselected Facebook page on climate change are respectful. I find that in comparison to similar face-to-face settings, members of preselected discussions are quite respectful to each other. On the other hand, foul language is often used to address outside actors or groups. In turn, I link these results to the phenomenon of audience polarization online and conclude that in my sample, discussions cannot be of good quality because they are dominated by similarly thinking members, which possibly leads to polarization and generation of support and/or hate groups.