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.

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

New book on digital media governance

The book Digital Media Governance and Supranational Courts untangles the digital media jurisprudence of supranational courts in Europe with a focus on the CJEU and the ECtHR. It argues that in the face of regulatory tension and uncertainty, courts can have a strong bearing on the applicable rules and standards of digital media.

Chapters written by expert contributors explore the interpretative steps taken by the CJEU and the ECtHR to solve arising legal issues, shedding light on their interpretation and refinement of the applied rules.

The book provides fresh insights into the effects of European adjudication on the content and scope of the rules enforced and examines the ways in which the two European courts address the specificities of digitalization and digital media in their rulings. It also addresses the process of defining the constitutional boundaries of digital media and the exercise of rights and freedoms therein, focusing on digital media and the distinct challenges posed by digitalization and digital communication.

One editor of the book – Evangelia Psychogiopoulou – is in operation at the Mediadelcom project. The other editor of the book is Susana de la Sierra. Cf. the page of the publisher, Edward Elgar Publishing.

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).