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.

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