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.

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

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).