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In Memoriam

Lars Nord
1958–2024

Members of the Mediadelcom consortium are in mourning for their dear colleague Professor Lars Nord who passed away on August 7. Lars was an excellent academic thinker who contributed in many ways to Mediadelcom – his last large international project. He not only elaborated the main concept of deliberative communication but also explained in podcasts the ideas and advancement of the project. Lars was a reliable colleague who always met the deadlines and constructively commented on the project’s outputs. Some of the articles with his contributions are yet in the process of being finalised and so we still have him with us. The memory of Lars is kept alive in the hearts of the Mediadelcom consortium members. Our condolences to his family on their great loss.

Photo taken at the Mediadelcom consortium meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria in September 2022. Shot by Marcus Kreutler (DE).

Views: 72

Mediadelcom’s first book: Monitoring Mediascapes

Book Monitoring Mediascapes. A Premise of Wisdom-Based EU Media Governance came out timely just before the Mediadelcom final conference in Brussels. The book has been edited by Epp Lauk, Martin Oller Alonso and Halliki Harro-Loit and authored by multiple researchers working at the Mediadelcom project. It is a publication of the University of Tartu Press.

The book focuses on the capability of different European countries to collect relevant data, carry out research and analysis and finally assess the risks and opportunities associated with media development in terms of the societies’ potential for deliberative communication (p. 1).

The book takes a critical approach to research policy related to the four domains, consistency of data collection, and data overproduction, knowledge formulation and knowledge usage in media policy formulation. The book aims to show whether poor data, lack of data, restriction of access to relevant data sources and finally lack of knowledge of the media create risks for a good information and communication environment for deliberative communication. In addition, the traditions and development of media research, the financing of research projects and the competitiveness of media researchers internationally and nationally are discussed. The book raises several important questions: For what purpose is data collected, for example, in the interests of advertising sales or also in the interests of society? Are the data collected by public authorities or private companies? What kind of data are collected systematically and allow research studies to assess the dynamics of change? Where are the gaps in data, information and knowledge? (p. 8)

The book is an open access publication. An official e-variant will be published shortly. Meanwhile, you can look at the current PDF display of the book.

Views: 141

Recommendations and scenarios among the last deliverables of the project

The project is approaching its scheduled end. Among the last deliverables, Mediadelcom has produced Policy brief proposing recommendations for media governance (deliverable 5.5) and Creation of multiple scenarios (deliverable 4.1).

One of the starting points of the Mediadelcom’s policy recommendations is that more attention needs to be paid to the conditions under which different regulations are implemented. This in turn means asking how the regulations in each country need to be changed to motivate key players to act differently from now. The document includes particular recommendations regarding every participating country. These recommendations have been presented also as infographics.

The deliverable upon scenarios aims to forecast media transformation scenarios in the participating countries and Europe. In the course of testing various approaches for scenario building the consortium finally agreed that scenarios regarding the “wisdom based media governance” will be constructed as traditional narratives.

See also publications.

Views: 38

Final conference of Mediadelcom on 15 Feb 2024 in Brussels – will be live streamed

Monitoring Mediascapes for Democratic Communication in Europe: Meet the challenges of an election year

Hybrid event. Brussels, 15 February 2024

The EU-funded Mediadelcom project invites you in Brussels on 15 February to meet leading researchers, academics and media representatives to discuss the future of the media, the need for change, and the role of deliberative communication.


More than 60 major elections are scheduled worldwide in 2024, including within the European Union. Since there is some argument that democracy is at stake, now is an apt moment to focus on deliberative communication – a prerequisite of deliberative democracy.


This event marks the conclusion of the 3-year project Mediadelcom – the most comprehensive study of its kind done in Europe identifying the risks and opportunities for deliberative communication in today’s polarized Europe.

Keynote speakers and panelists:

Zrinjka Peruško, Professor of Media Sociology, Director, Centre for Media and Communication Research (CIM), University of Zagreb. Leader of Croatian team of Mediadelcom
Marius Dragomir, Director, Media and Journalism Research Center
Eric Heinze, Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mar University and author of ‘The Most Human Right: Why Free Speech is Everything’.
Renate Schroeder, Director of the European Federation of Journalists.
Laura Becana Ball, Advocacy and Policy Manager at the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD).
Ioana Avădani, President of the ICJ, Romania, Mediadelcom member

Michał Głowacki, Associate professor, University of Warsaw, Mediadelcom member

Location:
 Residence Palace
 155, Rue de la Loi, 1040 Bruxelles
Register to attend:

In person, please register via this link
Online (no registration needed) – watch online here.
Schedule overview:
09:30 – 17:00 
The event will include two morning panel discussions and an afternoon roundtable. We invite you to attend some or all of the sessions.
 Please find the draft schedule here
For further information: tanya@media-diversity.org

Views: 202

Mediadelcom goes Africa!

Written by Prof. Dr. Susanne Fengler

Mediadelcom German PI Prof. Susanne Fengler (on the right in the photo) presented the Mediadelcom project last week at the annual meeting of the East African Communication Association (EACA) 2023. The highly reputable EACA brings together journalism and mass communication scholars from East African countries, but has an impact into the scholarly community in sub-Sahara African mass communication research far beyond East Africa. More than 100 researchers attended this year’s meeting in Kigali, Rwanda. See more: www.eastafrica-ca.org.

African colleagues at the EACA connected instantly to the Mediadelcom core topic, as the lack of infrastructures for deliberative communication remains a major hinderance in many African countries. In the same panel with the Mediadelcom presentation, researchers from South Africa and Mauritius highlighted the relevance for indigenous languages for civic involvement in public debates in African countries. In the coming week, Mediadelcom German senior researcher Marcus Kreutler will present project results in Latin America.

Views: 49

Public event in Warsaw: Seeking for social cohesion

In an era of polarization, lies and conspiracy theories, walls are going up between people with differing views, religions, and politics. With limited opportunities to talk and listen in a respectful way – to deliberate – what will it take to break down those barriers? While attention often focuses on what politicians and the media should do, what about the creative sector? What role can artists play in preserving freedom and promoting deliberation in order to bring communities closer together?

The Faculty of Journalism, Information and Book Studies, University of Warsaw, in collaboration with the Media Diversity Institute Global, is organizing an event which will explore the contribution the arts, culture and media sector can make to social cohesion.

11 May 2023, Warsaw

Read the overview

View Fullscreen

Views: 120

Consortium meets in Warsaw

Mediadelcom country teams meet in Warsaw, Poland, to discuss the results from the fuzzy set and future findings’ dissemination. During the first day of the biannual meeting, the consortium talks about e-book proceedings and preliminary results of comparative fuzzy set analysis. Above that, the also aim to discuss the project’s impact, with on open public event dedicated to deliberate communications in arts, culture and media.

Views: 44

Video: Insights on Media Freedom

Mediadelcom publicised a video on Youtube in what “talking heads” provide insights on Media Freedom – picked at the congress of the Polish Communication Association (in Gdańsk, Poland, September 2022). The piece has been produced by the doctoral students of the Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznań); backed up by CEJC, PTKS and Com.press.

Mediadelcom had a session of its own at the congress (cf. Podcast #30). Some people from the Mediadelcom consortium appear also in the video.

See the video on Youtube.

Views: 73

First country case studies to appear before the new year

The expected term on publicizing the two country case studies would be before the end on the year 2022. The first reports will hopefully be uploaded in November 2022.

Edit [03-12-22]: The case studies are downloadable at the page of Publications.

The initial term was postponed due to several circumstances: the reports needed extensive upgrading, the expert interviews needed to completed (which was complicated in summer) and the drafts were resubmitted to the European Commission.

The observations emerging in the studies can be heard in the series of podcast episodes released between March and July 2022.

The first country case studies aim at the media research capabilities of each country to indicate the health of media and deliberative communication. Mediadelcom project coordinator Halliki Harro-Loit said in the Podcast episode #12 that not much of it has yet been researched in Europe.

The second case studies focus on the state of art under the four domains developed within the Mediadelcom project.

The member of the Advisory Board Prof. Daniel Hallin shared his observations upon the drafts reports at the consortium biannual meeting in Sofia, BG, in September 2022. He spoke on these observations also in the Podcast episode #29.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Views: 111

Article: Resilience of media in the Baltics

An article referring to been supported by Mediadelcom has been published in the Journal of Baltic Studies. The article aims to analyze the resilience of Baltic media systems in the global network environment.

In this work, resilience has been defined as media systems’ ability to survive despite the efflux of resources and loss of audiences’ attention and trust, and as the capacity to support a reliable, transparent, and diverse information sphere for the functioning of democracy.

The authors claim that resilience of media systems depends on many structural factors and on many different agents operating in the national media markets. The article treats the resilience of Baltic media systems from two angles: (1) changes in the structural conditions of media systems and (2) policy responses to them.

Using media market data from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the changes in the media during the last three decades are under scrutiny. The analysis shows that Baltic media systems are relatively resilient. The situation in national media systems is reasonable due to the strong basis established by decisions made in the 1990s. Public service and private media in these countries both contribute to the pluralism and diversity needed in the public sphere. The public service media respond to audience needs and offer reliable content, at least in the traditional media sector. In the online sector, a new role for PSM and innovation potential needs to be found. Still, there are few resources in Baltic media markets. The competition conditions for national media and global platforms are currently unequal and favor global media.

One of the main sources for resilience in Baltic media systems are their audiences: they still mainly trust and consume domestic content. The audiences in Baltic countries are media literate and able to recognize quality content. Still, the risk that audiences may slip away to the less demanding and mainly entertaining and social-interaction world of social media exists. The risk is related to the lack of resources available for domestic media to produce attractive quality content for different audience groups in the form they prefer.

In terms of media policy, the situation is concerning. The main actors influencing media policy do not take the contemporary challenges of media policy seriously. A coherent view of how to strengthen national media systems is missing. The analysis concludes that the implementation of media policy currently does not guarantee the resilience of small countries’ media systems. Cf. the article here.

The article is authored by Ragne Kõuts-Klemm (EST), Anda Rožukalne (LVA) and Deimantas Jastramskis (LTU).

Views: 155