What is happening with media pluralism within the EU? How do different countries perform in comparison and what risks can be identified? The comparative study “Media Pluralism Monitor” addressed these questions, as commissioned by the European Commission. It eveluated and compared media pluralism, as well as aspects of the regulation and organization in the EU Member States. The Hans-Bredow-Institut provided the results for Germany.
The Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom of the European University (Florence) examines media pluralism in the EU member states on behalf of the European Commission. Aspects of media regulation and of media markets must be assessed to make them internationally comparable. On one hand, legal provisions will be observed; on the other hand, indicators of real diversity in media organisations and media services will be taken into account. Besides legal provisions of media freedom and media pluralism, the cultural, geographical, and political diversity was considered, along with media ownership and the functions of broadcast corporations.
The Hans-Bredow-Institut provided the country study about media pluralism in Germany.
The Media Pluralism Monitor has the task of making media pluralism measurable within the Member States of the European Union. Thus, risks within the Member States, which have a scoring in different areas, can be evaluated and compared. Examples can be found in the area of market pluralism or the political independence of media. After previous pilot studies for developing indicators, now for the first time all Member States, and in addition Turkey and Montenegro, were included in the study.
Expert teams for each participating state used a standardised list of items for different areas and for different indicators to collect data on legal, political, economic, and social aspects. The questions allowed various types of answers: there were mainly questions to be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and questions based on risk assessment (high/medium/low). The standards for the responses were high because it is quite challenging to reduce complex issues for the answers of a questionnaire, despite an apparent simplicity. The expertise of national representatives from economics, politics, and media economics were gathered for some indicators in order to carry out the plausibility check. On the basis of the collected data a scoring will be determined, which can be used for a comparative analysis of risks for media pluralism of the participating states.
Project Information
Overview
Duration: 2015-2015
Research programme: RP1 - Transformation of Public Communication
