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 infog r aphics.

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.

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

First studies of Mediadelcom get ready

First two sets of studies by Mediadelcom are getting ready. The studies have already been presented to the European Commission as an interim report, but for the general public the improved and edited version will be published in July 2022.

“Each country has mapped out what kind of research sources and what kind of data is available in four domains in the 21st century. The question – who collects analysis and creates knowledge about the risks of deliberative communication – is also very important for our project. We studied what media researchers, various public agencies, private companies, single researchers have done and published. The level of accessibility of the data and analysis is also important. And of course, what is the quality of the data collected: to what extent and who has been financing research and monitoring, if at all. In some countries, the financing is pretty poor.

Of course, we asked whether this data collection and research has been random or systematic. The monitoring potentiality is very important because the main risks associated with media and deliberative communication appear in small daily changes. The absence of mechanisms to monitor the daily application of fundamental values for deliberative communication is critical because we may lose these values so quietly. Small practice-shifts are easily normalized and there is a risk that the society may wake up when it is too late to reverse these small changes and their normalization. Hence, our first case studies are designed to identify the areas where, for various reasons, there is a knowledge cap, no data collection and no attention towards certain risks.”

Marcus Kreutler has been the leader of the first case study task force. He said, “We had a number of countries that mentioned the huge importance that even single, e.g., EU financed project has had on the research landscape in the area. Estonia and Latvia come to mind, for example. They have mentioned several EU projects that really improved the data that has been assembled on that country. And at the same time, for example, Slovakia mentioned that relatively little participation in such international comparative projects would also prefigure a risk.”

Halliki Harro-Loit added, “That’s why the diachronic dimension is actually important because, to be part of any comparative project, you need to have qualified scientist and data analysts. That is why those having less resources will lag behind. While our comparative analysis, we need to pay attention to the reasons for some countries lagging behind even in cases of European comparative projects.” The Podcast episode #12 provides more detailed deliberations upon the first case studies. The second case studies focus on the state of art under the four domains developed within the Mediadelcom project. As for the initial purposes, the studies appear to be lengthy and descriptive and, thus, need to go though a thorough process of editing and reshape to make them easily readable and comparable by countries. All reports under WP2 are going to be public in July 2022. Up to then, the subsequent podcast episodes will cover the findings, country by country.

Picture: Pixabay