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.â¨
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 â a prerequisite of deliberative democracy.â¨
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 PeruĹĄko, 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 âThe Most Human Right: Why Free Speech is Everythingâ. 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 AvÄdani, President of the ICJ, Romania, Mediadelcom member⨠MichaĹ GĹowacki, 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 thislink Online(no registration needed) â watch online here. Schedule overview: 09:30 â 17:00 â¨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
On October 4-6, Mediadelcom consortium had the last meeting of that kind in Bucharest, Romania. During the in-person contact event, the country teams had a detailed discussion on topics related to final outcomes of the project. The two books under preparation went through in-depth finalizing debate. Also, validity of conclusions, narrative based scenarios and agent based models were talked through at the meeting. The summary of the meeting has been presented in the podcast episode 44.
Furthermore, the issues of dissemination were addressed, as the final results are to accomplished soon and need to be presented to the public. Some publications have already been launched or at least introduced in Mediadelcom podcasts. Regards the coming publications, please stay tuned on our website.
Audiences were warned by artists and journalists not to stay silent when freedoms are under threat and encouraged to be proactive in tackling polarization and divisions in society at a public event in Warsaw, Poland, on 11 May.
The warnings came during the event, âBreaking Down Walls: Artists, freedom and social cohesionâ organized by the Faculty of Journalism, Information and Book Studies at the University of Warsaw, in collaboration with the Media Diversity Institute Global and with the support of the Museum of Modern Art.
Hanna Azemsha, a TV journalist and reporter from Belarus, who is working in Poland for Belsat TV, made a powerful warning about being complacent. She said change in her country didnât happen overnight and people didnât take it seriously at first. As a result, freedoms have been lost and many of her fellow journalists as well as opposition figures and activists are in jail. Reporters Without Borders highlighted in its 2022 Round-up that Belarus is one of the worldâs top jailers of journalists with more than 30 behind bars.
Azemsha encouraged audience members to âtake action every time you see freedom of expression being threatened. Donât close your eyes when you see something wrong.â
It was a message repeated by other speakers at the event, part of the MEDIAdelcom project, exploring the role of the creative and media sectors in preserving freedom and promoting deliberation.
Agata SzczÄĹniak, a journalist, sociologist, columnist and activist, who works for OKO.press a fact-checkingand investigative journalism outlet in Poland, said people need to fight any actions that lead towards authoritarianism. She said presenting the facts and informing people about issues is not enough.
âThere is a presumption that when facts are presented to people they become enlightened. It is not true.â SzczÄĹniak added that people read and absorb facts in the framework of their own culture and beliefs, but she still believes the media plays an important role in presenting the facts and making them available to the public. She urged people to support the media, especially independent media, to ensure its survival and ability to present responsible reporting.
Speakers agreed common ground was needed for deliberation to succeed and to tackle the problem of polarization, especially in Polish society.
Professor Andrzej Krakowski, a film director, producer, teacher, writer and cartoonist who lives in the US, spoke about his experience being expelled from Poland during anti-Semitic purges in 1968. He called for people to listen to each other and enter into dialogue to exchange ideas. âWe canât keep putting bandaids on wounds when we donât understand where the wounds come from.â Krakowski said there is an overload of information and media options, and people donât know how to communicate.
Shady Lady, a Polish drag queen, artist and activist whose performances touch on the issues of the LGBTQ+ community, agreed it was important to listen and not just consume information. âFor us in the LGBTQ+ community, we are open to discussion and to communicate and describe issues, but sometimes the other side doesnât want to listen.â Shady Lady added that there was still a lack of respect for the LGBTQ+ community in the country.
In Poland, authorities in one-third of the country have adopted anti-LGBT resolutions since 2019, declaring themselves free of “LGBT ideology” which includes so-called LGBT âfree-zonesâ. Some towns have since had their âzonesâ annulled by courts.
Shady Lady said polarization is the biggest issue facing society and the arts provide an avenue for connecting people.
MichaĹ Janicki, a painter, creative art director, and head of painters and animators in BreakThru Films in Poland, agreed art has a role to play in helping solve problems. He said artists can provide a space for people to meet and exchange ideas. âI think art can do a lot, we just need to be brave. Deliberation is possible if only we are willing to meet in the same room.â
Krakowski also appealed to the audience to listen to each other and be more proactive in solving problems. âThe most effective way is to do. Letâs not push for change, letâs make change.â
Dr. William Tayeebwa, Senior Lecturer of Journalism and Communication at Makerere University in Uganda, sent a video message saying freedom of expression was also under pressure in many African nations, but artists have been speaking out on issues including governance, human rights and freedom of expression. He urged artists in Europe to do the same. âWith the rise of right-wing politics in Europe, the work of artists and cultural figures is even more important to spread the message of love and empathy towards the other.â
The event also featured art by Warsaw University students including a digital photographic display, Freedom! Where are you? and a dance performance interpreting freedom.
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 â to deliberate â 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.
Mediadelcom presented a panel at the 9th European Communication Conference by ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association), hosted on 19 – 22 October 2022 in Aarhus, Denmark. The conference carried the theme ‘Rethink Impact‘.
As described in the Conference Booklet, âthe theme âRethink Impactâ serves as a frame for discussing how media and communication research, education, and training interact with, impact on and reflect society. /- – -/ Impact concerns the conditions of translating research insight into tangible outcomes for society, policy and business. Impact also suggests that such outcomes from research and education can be (and should be) quantified and validated.â
Mediadelcomâs panel Monitoring Media Change: Concepts and Cases appeared at the International and Intercultural Communication section of the conference. Hereby, we present the abstracts of the contributions at the panel. Also, there are the slides of the opening presentation available.
It is undisputed that media and journalism fulfil important functions in democratic societies and that the media transformations of the recent years have brought along various new possibilities for informed decision-making and deliberative communication. At the same time, media change also leads to new risks that may undermine social cohesion: Trends like disinformation and hate speech are just two examples of dangerous tendencies that have been propelled by technological transformation processes and must be considered a threat for democratic societies.
In the course of the 21st century, European media and communication research has triggered an overabundance of studies that deal with such problems as well as other phenomena of contemporary media change. However, its capability to highlight problematic trends in an early phase and work out operative scenarios of media development for policy makers and media experts has obviously been limited. Although the existing knowledge is voluminous, even a cursory review reveals that it is dispersed and fragmented.
The proposed panel intends to provide an inventory of the scope and quality of media and communication research in Europe. In how far can existing studies and further data sources help to provide a reliable monitoring of current media change processes? What, in fact, are the key risks and opportunities of the media and communication development in the 21st century? And in how far can our discipline contribute to securing a functional media environment for deliberative communication in democratic societies?
These questions are in the centre of a large-scale Horizon 2020 project which is currently realised by 14 research institutions in all parts of the European continent. The presentations collected in this panel will summarize key results from the first project phase, combining innovative conceptual insights with meta-analyses of previous studies and original empirical research.
The first presentation will serve as an introduction by conceptualizing risks and opportunities for media development and providing a comparative overview over the media monitoring potentiality in the 14 participating project countries. The second presentation will focus on the specific challenges of monitoring media accountability in Europe, also drawing on the findings of a recently completed global study on the diffusion of different instruments of media self-regulation. Presentations 3 and 4 will offer exemplary case studies from selected countries in Western and Eastern Europe: The analysis of the Italian case highlights trust in journalists as an indicator of deliberative culture and showcases results from a representative survey among Internet users. The Bulgarian country study uses the technique of PEST analysis to discuss to most pressing challenges for the national media system. The fifth and final presentation turns the spotlight on the special conditions of communication and media research in smaller European countries (such as Austria, Croatia, Estonia, and Latvia) and analyses their value for the international research community. In sum, the panel not only helps to broaden our understanding of different aspects of comparative media research, but also collects valuable hints with regard to the practical relevance of media and communication research in European societies.
Media monitoring potentiality in 14 European countries: Risks and opportunities
By Halliki Harro-Loit (EST) & Tobias Eberwein (AUT)
Social acceleration has been a catalyst for rapid changes concerning the communication scapes of European societies. Democratic societies need deliberation, but what kind of communication cultures are supported by different stakeholders and structural possibilities? The aim of this introductory contribution is to conceptualize and analyse the risks and possibilities concerning the monitoring potentiality of the performance and normative regulation of news media (journalism), media usage patterns and competencies of different actors who influence the news and communication culture of societies. Until now, however, there is no holistic approach to analyse media-related risks and opportunities. The contribution will therefore develop a novel conceptual approach that enables focusing on relationships between news production and consumption as well as contextual factors related to normative regulation and media literacy. The monitoring potential is related to various stakeholders who gather data on media and media usage, transform the data into knowledge and use this knowledge for media policy.
What interests and values are served by which stakeholders and how does this actual monitoring serve the media policy in different European countries? What is the role and resources of media researchers? These research questions will be answered with the help of an extensive literature review and a comparative analysis of the monitoring potentiality of 14 European countries, based on original case studies that offer a synthetic review of the âmedia-related risks and opportunities discourseâ in the studies on media transformations and innovations. The contribution will, thus, broaden the theoretical understanding of risks and opportunities for deliberative communication and fill a knowledge gap by synchronising existing dispersed studies and data into a concept that enables evaluating risks and opportunities for deliberative communication from a transnational perspective. At the same time, it will offer a first inventory of available monitoring instruments in different communication cultures across Europe.
Media accountability: Global trends and European monitoring capabilities
By Marcus Kreutler & Susanne Fengler (DEU)
The concept of media accountability has long been analysed with a focus on Western or European democracies and on instruments developed in these countries. Even in Europe, comparative research has so far mostly highlighted the situation at singular points in time, sometimes limited to few instruments. To broaden the view on the topic, this paper follows a two-step approach: In a first step, it highlights trends in media accountability from a global perspective in order to develop a comprehensive framework of instruments and their interplay in different social settings. In a second step, building on this framework, monitoring capabilities for media accountability in 14 European countries are being evaluated.
The analysis of global trends in the field is based on a study of 44 countries across world regions and political regime types. Findings show that the concept of media accountability has a âlimited capability to travelâ, as observed by Voltmer (2012) for media systems in general.
Existing literature (e.g., Puppis, 2007) has described media governance as a continuum, from media regulation, to co-regulation, to professional self-regulation. However, this âliberalâ model, developed against the backdrop of established press freedom in Anglo-Saxon and Western European countries, does not accommodate the nuanced phenomena of media accountability our study has portrayed.
Instead, we find âmedia councilsâ in countries with the tightest media control â clearly examples of âmedia captureâ (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2013; Coskun, 2020). We find media accountability instruments which are maintained by foreign actors, as media markets are too weak to sustain local initiatives. Co-regulatory practices and statutory councils are more common, but pose a risk of being exploited for political purposes in countries marked by patrimonialism and clientelism. Several Post-Soviet country reports show that if media accountability systems do not mature, there is a considerable risk of falling back into a state of media regulation. Traditional liberal models may also no longer fit to explain changing media ecosystems in Western countries.
The findings described above have also structured the study of monitoring capabilities in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Sweden. Beyond the status quo, the capability to monitor changes and trends over time has been of particular interest. A general observation is that even in countries with relatively well-developed monitoring and research structures, much of the available literature is focusing on normative questions, and available data is not necessarily comparable longitudinally or cross-nationally. International efforts like the MediaAcT project or handbooks of media accountability (Eberwein, Fengler & Karmasin, 2018; Fengler, Eberwein & Karmasin, 2022) have inspired key publications in a number of countries, but are rarely followed up by a continuous monitoring of developments in the field. Several cases describe a common reason for monitoring deficits: Weak professional culture among journalists leads to ineffective and often neglected media accountability measures, which in turn limits research funding activity and funding opportunities.
Trust in journalists among the public as an indicator of deliberative culture: The case of Italy
By Sergio Splendore, Augusto Valeriani & Diego Garusi (ITA)
Media trust is one of the most debated issues in political communication. Nevertheless, it represents a concept that has required continuous refinement from a methodological and empirical point of view (StrĂśmbäck et al., 2020). In the contemporary high choice political information environment (Van Aelst et al., 2017), characterised by the construction of highly personalised media experiences (Castro et al., 2021), it is even more crucial to understand how trust changes with respect to citizensâ media repertoires.
This contribution aims to study a neglected issue regarding media trust: trust that people maintain toward journalists (i.e. those that are professionally trained to gather, process, and distribute information of public relevance). However, the overall scenario has been rapidly changed and a wide variety of other actors, professional and non-professional, including citizens themselves, perform similar actions within increasingly crowded information ecologies (Lewis, 2012; Carlson & Lewis, 2015).
In such a context, the study aims to answer the following questions: (1) How much do citizens trust journalists? and (2) How do their media consumption repertoires influence their perceptions? Considering trust in journalists makes it possible to capture citizensâ judgements regarding the ability of the journalistic professional system to still perform a public service in contemporary societies.
Media trust is one of the most debated issues in political communication. Nevertheless, it represents a concept that has required continuous refinement from a methodological and empirical point of view (StrĂśmbäck et al., 2020). In the contemporary high choice political information environment (Van Aelst et al., 2017), characterised by the construction of highly personalised media experiences (Castro et al., 2021), it is even more crucial to understand how trust changes with respect to citizensâ media repertoires.
This contribution aims to study a neglected issue regarding media trust: trust that people maintain toward journalists (i.e. those that are professionally trained to gather, process, and distribute information of public relevance). However, the overall scenario has been rapidly changed and a wide variety of other actors, professional and non-professional, including citizens themselves, perform similar actions within increasingly crowded information ecologies (Lewis, 2012; Carlson & Lewis, 2015). In such a context, the study aims to answer the following questions: (1) How much do citizens trust journalists? and (2) How do their media consumption repertoires influence their perceptions? Considering trust in journalists makes it possible to capture citizensâ judgements regarding the ability of the journalistic professional system to still perform a public service in contemporary societies.
The study presents the results of a CAWI survey to a representative sample (n=1563) of the Italian population of Internet users in the age range 18â74, interviewed in the second half of May 2020. This was a crucial context to study trust in journalists because the first mass lock-down following the COVID-19 pandemic just ended, then citizens needed to find information and to develop new (or consolidate old) relationships of trust with information sources (Scaglioni & Sfardini, 2021). At the same time, the cacophony of voices, as well as the centrality assumed in the communication space by doctors, scientists, and others non-journalistic actors, has created a context capable of significantly impacting trust patterns in the traditional âexpert mediatorsâ of information.
This research considers trust in journalists as an indicator of potential deliberative communication. The higher the trust, the more citizens feel as aware and informed participants of the public debate. The ways how the determinants of this trust operate indicate what are the risks that hinder the realization of the deliberative communication and the opportunities that are reserved for it. The main results emerging from the estimated multivariate models show that there is a negative correlation between the use of social media for information on matters of public importance and trust in journalists. In addition, those who use politiciansâ accounts as a privileged source of information on social media have lower trust in journalists. Among other issues, these results pose one of the most frequent questions concerning political communication, i.e. which role social media are playing within the political communication environment.
Challenges of deliberative communication in the Bulgarian media ecosystem
Contemporary societies are undergoing significant transformations which correlate with the dynamic developments of the information and communication technologies. Today these transformations are being catalysed by the intensity of the media ecosystem, encompassing all actors and factors whose interaction allows the media to function and to fulfil their role in society. It combines the mission of the traditional media with the potential of the blogosphere, social networks and mobile communications. Situated in the context of globalisation processes, the media themselves are undergoing multi-layered transformations. Using PEST analysis, the paper examines the political, economic, social and technological challenges to the Bulgarian media ecosystem within the framework of deliberative communication.
For the proper functioning of the contemporary media ecosystem, a number of political issues of the basic pillars of Europeâs audiovisual model are becoming increasingly important, such as: freedom of expression and access to information; pluralism of opinions and variety of content; professional standards and journalistic ethics; transparency of ownership and accountability to the audiences; protection of underage and vulnerable social groups; cooperation between regulation, self-regulation and co-regulation; the expansion of social media, etc.
The sustainability of these principles is a decisive factor for the democratic functioning of the countryâs human-centred societal developments.
In contemporary times, the media and telecommunications sectors are among the industries that feel the strongest economic effects of the digital transformation. Internationalisation of economy and convergence of modern communications favour the prevalence of multi-sector and multinational corporations. At the same time, the globality and uniformity of the Information Society are dissolving into the separatism of glocality.
Today, transformations in the communication environment are catalysed by the social impacts, which also lead to a paradigm shift in the media â from mass media channels to individual media services. A virtual online mosaic culture has been created which, due to its interactive nature, acts as integrating while having alienating and restrictive effects on people, destroying their âliveâ communication. This phenomenon is significant to understanding such phenomena as information overload and digital fatigue that consumers are facing.
The technological factors are the most active among those elements, affecting the construction rate and the functioning of the contemporary global information society. Therefore, media, information and digital literacy skills acquire additional importance in todayâs intercultural dialogue in the communication environment. The ICTâs developments are so intense that it is difficult to define whether because of technological and economic convergence the media sector will evolve to the ever-increasing deregulation in favour of the market or to the serving of the public interest.
Some of the findings of the study have been disseminated to policy makers, media managers, and academia.
Media and communication research in smaller countries in Europe
By Ragne KĂľuts-Klemm (EST), Zrinjka PeruĹĄko, Dina Vozab (HRV), Anda RoĹžukalne, Alnis Stakle, Ilva Skulte (LVA), Tobias Eberwein (AUT)
Big and small states are equal in respect of functioning as comprehensive entities â they all need state apparatuses, the ability to provide services for citizens, the capacity to protect themselves, and appropriate media systems to guarantee a deliberative communication space for the democratic processes. Nevertheless, the resources of smaller countries can be limited and this can have an impact on the performance of their functions. Small states deserve special attention. Not only can the development of media systems in smaller countries have specific implications, like Puppis (2009) suggests, their self-reflecting capacity manifested as institutionalised media research can have limitations deriving from their smallness, too.
âSmallnessâ is a relational concept. For our contribution, we will define it broadly â based not mainly on the GDP per capita, but on the actual and perceived size of the population as well. Perceptions of smallness can also derive from the neighbouring of giant same-language countries (Meier & Trappel, 1992).
We will compare the monitoring and research capabilities of media developments in four small countries in Europe that represent contrasting historical backgrounds as well as different types of media systems: Austria, Croatia, Estonia, and Latvia. We will use the data collected for a case study of a large-scale H2020 project â a comparative research initiative that intends to highlight risks and opportunities for deliberative communication in the European media landscape. In the course of this case study, researchers from the participating countries conducted an extensive review of available academic publications and additional data sources in the fields of media regulation and accountability, journalism, media usage, and media-related competencies.
The aim of our comparative analysis is to identify factors that can have an impact on the monitoring and research capabilities of smaller countries. It will answer the following questions: What are the research interests of academic media studies in these countries? Is the research oriented toward national society or more broadly? How is academic research integrated into the international research community? At what stage is the research in respect of institutionalisation of communication as a scientific discipline? The results of the analysis will not only broaden the ongoing debate about comparative media systems research, but also offer valuable insights for media managers and policy-makers in smaller (European) countries.
The second semi-annual meeting of Mediadelcom in 2022 takes place in Bulgaria, at the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication of Sofia University âSt. Kliment Ohridskiâ.
At such meetings, the consortium fine-tunes the concepts and variables for the research. This time, the first book details are being addressed, as well as the visions for comparative research among the 14 participating countries. Also, the agent approach and the resultant agent-oriented modelling is getting more focused as a tool.
The consortium is carefully listening to the feedback from the distinguished professors from the Advisory Board, Daniel Hallin and Kaarle Nordenstreng, and will adjust sail based on that.
Also the arrangements for intensified dissemination of the results have started to let the professional, academic and public audiences to get the load of the observations, conclusions and policy recommendations by the Mediadelcom project.
The Mediadelcom consortium meets this week in Dubrovnik, Croatia to discuss the issues of WP3. This contains the fuzzy set approach in qualitative comparative data analysis, which the consortium is setting up for further research.
Also, the publication plans are under discussion. As to the Grant Application, there will be two books published during the project.
In parallel, the 10thGraduate Spring School & Research Conference on Comparative Media Systems is running to cover the topics of deliberative communication. This is co-organized with the ECREA CEE Network & Mediadelcom, titled âMedia System Characteristics as Risks or Opportunities for Deliberative Communicationâ.
Six months into the Mediadelcom project, the consortium members met in person for the first time in the second week of September in Tallinn, Estonia.
Three countries â Latvia, Estonia, and Bulgaria â had performed pilot studies to set common grounds for the fine-tuning of the operational variables and other aspects of the research methodology.
As Marcus Kreutler (DEU) told in the Podcast Episode #7, the pilot studies served as a reality check on what works well for the future study and what still needs some refinement. âThe theoretical teams â who basically wrote the manual for the case study teams â have much clearer idea what works in their ârecipeâ and what simply did not work in the reality of one country. This is a loud alarm bell when it comes to applying it to other countries.â
The consortium members interviewed for the podcast episode asserted that the discussions on the pilot studies provided much clearer grounds for combining theoretical work with case studies in practice, including searching and synthesizing the existing bibliography in risk analysis.
Over the course of four days, the teams discussed case studies to be drafted under WPs 2 and 3 by the beginning of 2022. The research methodology and structure of the studies were specified. As explained by the project coordinator Prof. Halliki Harro-Loit, the first case study should provide answers related to the potentiality of media transformations in 14 countries. The second, a comparative case study provides a critical analysis of the risks and opportunities for media transformations in Europe in general.
The project meeting in Tallinn ran parallel in the assembly hall and over the Internet.
View to the Theatre Estonia from Teatri väljak. Snapshots from Google Maps street view.
The Mediadelcom Tallinn workshop will take place on 7â11 Sep at Teatri väljak 3, Tallinn. Teatri väljak means ‘Theatre Square’ and is located near the opera and ballet theatre Estonia. At the other end of the square, there is the ministry of foreign affairs.
At Teatri väljak 3, there are the Tallinn premices of the University of Tartu. It is located between a reconstruction site and the scientific library of the Tallinn University. Once upon a time, this all used to be the quarter of the Academy of Sciences – when the Academy was a set of research institutes during the soviet time.
In front of the entrance, there is a bus stop. Bus ride is free for the city citizens, but all foreigners need to buy a ticket , which can be done by simply touching the card reader with your bankcard at the front door (this also applies to arrivers from Tartu).
September brings us closer to autumn. In the global muddle of COVID-19, it has been unclear if Mediadelcom participants could gather in person. It is now clear that it is possible to get together: the consortium meeting (workshop) will take place in Tallinn (Estonia) on 7-11 September.
Through four days, the teams will discuss case studies. Three countries â Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria â have performed pilot studies to set grounds for the fine-tuning of the operational variables and other aspects of the methodology. Other discussion matters include how to apply fuzzy-set methodology and diachronic approach, how to relate the case studies and bibliographical database, and how to apply the agency approach.
Mediadelcom was launched in March 2021 and the members of the teams long to see each other face to face to better perform networking tasks and get to know the colleagues all over Europe. Further details will be reported soon.
For the past year, Mertek Media Monitor (Hungary, a partner also for the Mediadelcom) has been led by Memo98 (Slovakia), MediaForum (Czechia) and ActiveWatch (Romania) to examine the media policies of these four countries.
They all used the same methods to analyse the phenomena of the media system. The researchers were looking for answers to questions such as â how do state advertising appear in the media market? â what is the system, financing and content of public service media? â how difficult is it to get information as a journalist? â is there evidence of bias in the media authority?
The coming up is the closing event of the research. Thus, the organizers urge to join it and be informed about the results and the policy recommendations. The event will be held in English. The research was funded by National Endowment for Democracy.
The Embassy of Sweden in South-Africa together with partners will arrange a seminar launching a policy brief developed by a team of Swedish and African researchers and media practitioners who have jointly examined how independent journalism can be not only a leverage for democracy but also contribute to sustainable societies. And how media itself can develop new models for its own sustainability. One of these partners is also the MEDIADELCOM consortium member â JĂśnkĂśping Universty, Sweden.
Meet the rapporteurs and follow the discussions around a new way of looking at journalism â called sustainable journalism, discussing about the future of journalism in a society marked by a lack of sustainability. Mark your calendars to watch the seminar online, held on Friday, 23 September 2021 between 14:00 â 15:00 hrs CEST/SAST Stockholm, Berlin, Brussels, Pretoria (UTC+2).
The Croatian partners of MEDIADELCOM from the Zagreb University together with the Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik (IUC), and the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, are launching a new book, Comparing Post-socialist Media Systems: the Case of Southeast Europe.
This book explains divergent media system trajectories in the countries in Southeast Europe and challenges the presumption that the common socialist experience critically influences a common outcome in media development after democratic transformations by showing different remote and proximate configuration of conditions that influence their contemporary shape.
This is a conceptually rich, methodologically sophisticated, and interdisciplinary analysis of south-east European media systems that explains continuity, change and divergence between the six cases. It deserves to be read not only by scholars of the region but by those considering how to approach more generally the study of comparative media systems and cultures.
John Downey, Professor of Comparative Media Analysis, Loughborough University
Applying an innovative longitudinal set-theoretical methodological approach, the book contributes to the theory of media systems with a novel theoretical framework for the comparative analysis of post-socialist media systems. This theory builds on the theory of historical institutionalism and the notion of critical junctures and path dependency in searching for an explanation for similarities or differences among media systems in the Eastern European region.
Extending the understanding of media systems beyond a political journalism focus, this book is a valuable contribution to the literature on comparative media systems in the areas of media systems studies, political science, Southeast and Central European studies, post-socialist studies and communication studies.
The launch took place on Apr 15, 2021 at 04:00 PM CEST â Sarajevo, Skopje, Zagreb. The event was streamed live and can be catched up at theIUC YouTube channel
The Swedish researchers present conceptual variables on journalism. Screen-shot from the Teams plaform display.
The H2020 project MEDIADELCOM officially started today, as the four-day kick-off meeting started. Several founding aspects were discusses, including the essence of deliberative communication which is what the entire project is all about.
Some of the focus of the project has been introduced in our earlier website posts, both written and oral. We continue to produce our outreach materials on the project activities and brainwork.
The rest of the kick-off meeting will be focused on several aspects and tools (e.g., variables, templates etc.) being addressed in the project, especially upon WP1 – Work Package 1 – but also on dissemination of findings, research ethics, reporting to the EC.
The consortium will hear about the simultaneous EU funded projects in the field of Evolving Media Landscapes and Europeanisation â Mediatized EU and EUMEPLAT. In parallel, the advisory board members and the surveying EC officers will give several addresses to the consortium members.
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