Governance, Regulation, Innovation and Emerging Social Conventions in Changing Media Environments

Long-term collaboration between the Hans-Bredow-Institut, Hamburg, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI), Brisbane, is financed by the German Research Funding Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)

Ongoing media change and associated shifts in the wider media ecologies require us to rethink current media governance and regulation frameworks; the development of new social conventions by user communities within specific media environments especially in new and social media must be recognised in this process, and media policy must begin to engage with the social conventions established by users themselves, but also with the structuring power that is inherent in the “technological architecture” of hardware and software configurations, the code. This is also a question of media innovation – in collaboration between media organisations, technology developers, regulatory bodies, and the user communities themselves. Today, the governance and regulation of digital media requires international and interdisciplinary collaboration, which is what this project will deliver. Through this collaboration, we aim to develop models for the governance of self-organising and adaptive open systems.   »»

EU Study on Indicators for Independence of Audiovisual Media Services Regulatory Bodies now available

The independence of regulatory bodies in the field of audiovisual media can not be measured mathematically; however, indicators that indicate risks and detrimental constellations potentially allowing external parties to influence the independence of media regulators can be found. These indicators have been identified by the EU study "Indicators for Independence and Efficient Functioning of Audiovisual Media Services Regulatory Bodies" which was carried out by a research team led by the Hans Bredow Institute. Besides drafting a theoretical framework for regulatory independence the study was able to theoretically deduce, empirically establish and – at times – qualify a number of indicators for the independence of media supervision. As a service of transfer into practice, a ranking tool has been developed from the numerous indicators. This tool provides an opportunity for regulators, governments, agents of civil society and finally also for the European Commission to roughly analyse whether and – if applicable: where – regulators are vulnerable as far as their independence is concerned.   »»

Institute for Internet and Society Starts with Four Partners

Hans Bredow Institute will be co-operating Partner

By autumn 2011, three leading academic institutions in Germany, including Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin University of the Arts and the Social Science Research Center Berlin, and in close collaboration with the Hans Bredow Institute in Hamburg, will establish an Institute for Internet and Society. At the new Institute for Internet and Society, research will be conducted on changes in society caused by the Internet. The new institute will be financed by Google, but is autonomous in its organisation and scientific work.   »»

Another structural transformation of the public sphere? On recent challenges and current research projects

Lecture by Jan-Hinrik Schmidt at Umeå University in Sweden

At the end of January, 2011, Jan-Hinrik-Schmidt, senior researcher for digital interactive media and political communication at the Hans Bredow Institute, was invited to present the institute and some of his research at the HUMlab, an interesting and lively centre at the conjunction of media studies, information technology and arts at Umeå University in Sweden.

His talk was on “Another structural transformation of the public sphere? On recent challenges and current research projects”, alluding to Jürgen Habermas’ grand theory of the public sphere, and presenting some concepts and research ideas to analyze changes in the structures and mechanism of the current sphere that have to be accounted for.   »»

Preliminary Final Report of the INDIREG study available for download

The Preliminary Final Report of the study INDIREG – Indicators for independence and efficient functioning of audiovisual media services regulatory bodies, a study conducted on behalf of the European Commission – is now available for download at the EU Audiovisual and Media Policies website. For documentation purposes we also provide two annexes to the study on this page.

On 31st January 2011, the INDIREG project conducted a public workshop in Brussels. The workshop was transmitted via a live webstream, a documentation of the ppt presentations may be available within the next days on the project's website.   »»