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Our Media, Our Democracy, Our Future. The Future of the Media in the Western Balkans and Turkey – Facts and Trends. Regional Overview
Deep Insights

Sanela Hodžic, Sandra B. Hrvatin

Sarajevo; Ljubljana: Mediacentar; Peace Institute; South East European Network for Professionalization of Media (SEENPM) (2025), 57 pp.

"The results of the research conducted in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey suggest that the key determinants for the future of our media and democracies are the following: • The poor socio-economic status of journalists and their exposure to ... pressure and attacks, coupled with modest support mechanisms, cripple the ability of journalists to promote the public interest, report on key issues of public interest, and hold power to account. In the most extreme cases, the pressure involves imprisonment, interrogation, surveillance, and lawsuits aimed at silencing journalists. • The lack of consistent monitoring and registration of cases of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) in the region, with dozens of lawsuits against journalists filed by political officials and their affiliates. • A growing number or media outlets, but a declining number of journalism students, highlighting concerns about the future shrinking of staff numbers in media newsrooms and about the growing automatization of journalism. The most drastic drop was in North Macedonia, with the number of journalism students in 2023 amounting to only 11% of the number from ten years ago and 50% of the number from 2000. • The number of media outlets is growing, mostly in the online sector, while print media outlets are becoming increasingly endemic. • A worrying trend of overt concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few media conglomerates, often tied to national or foreign governments, that takes a toll on media freedom and pluralism. • The dominant instrumentalization (through ownership and funding) of media (including private and public) for particular political and/or business interests limits the space for editorial independence and integrity. • Non-profit media are still a rarity in the region, with only a few non-profit radio broadcasters in some countries, and an unknown number of online platforms of civil society organizations with a community-focused mission. • Lack of transparency of the media sector, particularly a lack of accessible and reliable information concerning the media industry and the media market. • Advertising is the main source of revenues in the media sector, with the total revenues ranging between EUR 12 million in Montenegro and over EUR 4 billion in Turkey. • Although it is declining, the TV sector is still dominant in terms of its share of advertising revenues, while social media’s share is increasing, and in Turkey it amounts to as much as 45.7% of advertising revenues. • The tech giants such as Google and Meta are an increasingly dominant competitor for media outlets in the region, jeopardizing the future sustainability of national and local media outlets and potentially curbing political pluralism in public communication. • Public funding for the media, including funding of public broadcasters (declining in four out of seven countries), grants, and subsidies for media outlets and government advertising, amounts to several to dozens of millions of euros per country, taking up an important share of media revenues, but without proactive transparency, effective guarantees of editorial independence, well-defined purpose and evaluation, the opportunities to make public funding for the media an important instrument of media democratization remain under-used. • The representation of different age, gender, ethnic, religious, and other groups in media content and in the newsrooms’ staff is limited. In multiethnic communities some policies promote ethnic diversity of media content, while other identity axes are largely neglected and pluralism in public communication is very limited. Women are an important, and in many countries even dominant, workforce in the media, but remain underrepresented in managerial posts." (Executive summary) more

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Misinformation technology: Internet use and political misperceptions in Africa

Joel Cariolle, Yasmine Elkhateeb, Mathilde Maurel

Journal of Comparative Economics, volume 52, issue 2 (2024), pp. 400-433

"The use of the Internet to access news has an impact on African citizens’ perceptions of democracy. Using repeated cross-sectional data from the Afrobarometer survey across 35 African countries over the period 2011–2018, along with an instrumental variable approach, allows addressing potential ... more

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Bundles of trust? Examining the relationships between media repertoires, institutional trust, and social contexts

Marc Verboord

Coomunications, volume 49, issue 2 (2024), pp. 243-262

"How the media influence the trust that citizens have in institutions such as politics and science seems more important than ever, given the decline of institutional trust in Western societies, and the increasingly diversified media landscape. This paper focuses on the relationship between media rep ... more

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Empowering crisis-affected communities in Papua New Guinea through information: Guidance on using media channels and key messages for responders

London: CDAC Network (2024), 34 pp.

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Building Trusted Media in a Fragile Setting: An Evaluation of Radio Ndeke Luka in Central African Republic

Jeffrey Conroy-Krutz

Michigan State University (2024), 8 pp.

"Can the impact of a news radio station on a highly vulnerable population in a crisis-affected country be measured? The installation of new FM transmitters for Radio Ndeke Luka in Beloko, Birao, and Obo in the Central African Republic offered an opportunity to carry out a field study measuring the i ... mpact of our radio station before and after its introduction in these remote regions of the country. The results of this study reveal a tangible impact and a shift in listeners’ perceptions, particularly regarding misinformation. The Central African Republic, marked by a weak central state, widespread poverty, and recurring intercommunal conflicts, is particularly vulnerable to misinformation. Radio Ndeke Luka, a project of Fondation Hirondelle in CAR, plays a crucial role by broadcasting reliable news 24/7 in both French and Sango across the country. Thanks to funding from the European Union, new FM transmitters for RNL were installed between December 2021 and April 2022 in remote areas of the Central African Republic, specifically in Beloko, Birao, and Obo. This provided an opportunity to assess the radio’s impact on local populations before and after the installation. Investigators from the local network of IMMAR Research & Consultancy followed a protocol developed by Dr. Jeff Conroy Krutz, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University. This protocol ensured a random selection of adult participants and gender balance. In total, over 1,700 people were interviewed before the transmitters were installed, and more than 1,800 afterwards, within the same communities across the three localities. Measured Impacts Increase in Audience: RNL became the most listened-to radio station in the targeted areas within months of the new transmitters going live. Relevance and Impartiality: 52% of listeners considered RNL’s programs essential to their daily lives. Trust and impartiality scores also improved between the pre- and post-launch periods. Trust in RNL far exceeded that of other locally accessible radio stations. Combating Misinformation: Residents of the three areas reported significantly greater confidence in their ability to distinguish fact from fiction after the installation of the transmitters, which facilitated access to RNL programs." (https://www.hirondelle.org) more

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Have people ‘had enough of experts’? The impact of populism and pandemic misinformation on institutional trust in comparative perspective

Vaclav Stetka, Francisco Brandao, Sabina Mihelj, Fanni Toth, Daniel Hallin, Danilo Rothberg, Paulo Ferracioli, Beata Klimkiewicz

Information, Communication & Society (2024), 22 pp.

"Public trust in institutions is a key prerequisite for effective crisis management. However, the rise of populism and misinformation in recent years made it increasingly difficult to maintain institutional trust. Despite this recognition, we still lack a systematic understanding of how exposure to ... more

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The Watchdog Press in the Doghouse: A Comparative Study of Attitudes about Accountability Journalism, Trust in News, and News Avoidance

Antonis Kalogeropoulos, Benjamin Toff, Richard Fletcher

International Journal of Press/Politics, volume 29, issue 2 (2024), pp. 485-506

"The watchdog role has been one of the most widely discussed normative functions of the press. In this study, we examine the public’s attitudes toward the news media’s watchdog performance and how they correlate with trust in news and news avoidance, two important phenomena for democracy and the ... more

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Expectations of News Media in Uganda: Advancing a Theory of Relative Institutional Trust in Journalism

Meagan E. Doll

International Journal of Communication, volume 18 (2024), pp. 1873–1892

"Compared with work on trust in news, surprisingly little research examines audiences’ expectations of journalism. Audiences’ expectations, after all, elucidate public opinion of news, including the criteria by which news and journalists may be trusted. Journalism expectancy research is particul ... more

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Radio Ndeke Luka's Audience

Fondation Hirondelle; Radio Ndeke Luka (2024), 2 pp.

"Radio Ndeke Luka (RNL), created in 2000 by Fondation Hirondelle, is the most listened-to radio station in the Central African Republic (CAR). It broadcasts live 24/7 in French and Sango via a dozen FM transmitters, and collaborates with some 20 community radio stations. It is also present on Canal+ ... more

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Wie ticken Jugendliche? 2024: Lebenswelten von Jugendlichen im Alter von 14 bis 17 Jahren in Deutschland

Marc Calmbach, Bodo Flaig, Rusanna Gaber, Tim Gensheimer, Heide Möller-Slawinski, Christoph Schleer, Naima Wisniewski

Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb); Arbeitsstelle für Jugendseelsorge der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz; Bund der Deutschen Katholischen Jugend (BDKJ); Deutsche Kinder- und Jugendstiftung, DFL Stiftung (2024), 308 pp.

"Bereits seit 2008 berichtet die SINUS-Studie „Wie ticken Jugendliche?“ alle vier Jahre über die Verfassung der jungen Generation. Ausführliche Interviews, fotografische Dokumentationen des Wohnumfelds und Selbstzeugnisse der Jugendlichen liefern einen lebendigen Einblick in die Lebenswelten d ... more

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The Future of Trustworthy Information: Learning from Online Content Creators

Julia Angwin

Shorenstein Center (2024), 22 pp.

"What emerges most clearly from this comparison of journalists and creators is that journalism has placed many markers of trust in institutional processes that are opaque to audiences, while creators try to embed the markers of trust directly in their interactions with audiences." (Conclusion)

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The Influence of Media Trust and Normative Role Expectations on the Credibility of Fact Checkers

Florian Primig

Journalism Practice, volume 18, issue 5 (2024), pp. 1137-1157

"Fact-checking has been granted a pivotal role in mitigating the effects of online disinformation, but its effectiveness has nonetheless been questioned. Like any persuasive communication, fact checkers depend on their recipients perceiving both their messages and them as credible. This study invest ... more

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Trust in a Digital World: The Roles of Media Trust and Ordinary Citizen Cues in Online Disinformation’s Credibility

Jula Lühring, Michael Hameleers, Edda Humprecht, Judith Möller

Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft, volume 72, issue 3 (2024), pp. 297-312

"The perception of disinformation as societal risk has reached a troubling peak amid the COVID-19 pandemic, strategically targeting vulnerable audiences through digital media by mirroring characteristics of vox populi disinformation. This study investigates the conditions under which COVID-19-relate ... more

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2024 Edelman Trust Barometer: Global Report

Edelman (2024), 88 slides

"The 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals a new paradox at the heart of society. Rapid innovation offers the promise of a new era of prosperity, but instead risks exacerbating trust issues, leading to further societal instability and political polarization. In a year where half the global population ... more

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Information Ecosystem Assessment: Jordan

Aida Al-Kaisy

Internews (2023), 63 pp.

"This report provides an assessment of the media landscape in Jordan from the perspective of its audiences. Based on audience research, it examines the key issues emerging around media usage, trust, content, and literacy. It is based on data that was collected throughout June and July 2023; the medi ... more

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2023 Edelman Trust Barometer: Global Report

Edelman (2023), 71 slides

"Four Forces That Lead To Polarization: 1. Economic Anxieties: Economic optimism is collapsing around the world, with 24 of 28 countries seeing all-time lows in the number of people who think their families will be better off in five years. 2. Institutional Imbalance: Business is now the sole instit ... more

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Digital Trust Initiatives: Seeking to Reward Journalistic Ethics Online

Eleonora Maria Mazzoli

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2023), 28 pp.

"Digital trust initiatives strive to address complex problems and have multiple goals: from empowering users, to improving journalistic practices, to driving audiences and revenues to trusted news sources—and they cannot achieve such goals alone. Bolstering trustworthy news outlets and the content ... they produce in the digital information ecosystem is no easy undertaking. It entails interfacing with a diverse set of stakeholders—readers, journalists, news organizations, platforms, and advertisers—all of whom have distinct behaviors, goals, and incentives. Yet, the potential payback is immense if all the parts in this complex system can be aligned toward a similar objective. Cooperation among these initiatives as well as with other key industry actors in this sector will be key. There are signs that such collaboration is underway. The Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) emergency protocol powered by NewsGuard aims to support news outlets at risk and will be tested for the first time in Ukraine later this year. It is a potentially promising example of how these initiatives can work together to help newsrooms around the world establish their credibility and transparency in times of crisis. There are also indications of increased cooperation between these initiatives and tech companies. A recently launched project shows the potential for collaboration among multiple digital news trust initiatives and online platforms: the Microsoft Journalism Hub, a resource center built to connect the journalism community with tools, technology, services, and partner programs. Among its features, it includes NewsGuard’s indicator tools and offers support for JTI’s certification program. Digital trust initiatives have set ambitious goals, but their ambitions for change at a global scale remain largely unproven as these efforts are still quite young. Additionally, the opacity of platforms’ content curation and moderation processes, and the lack of data on advertisers’ investment decisions, contributes to a dearth of concrete evidence on how these actors are actually using these indicators and standards—if they are using them at all. The extent to which these initiatives will gain broader traction is yet to be seen." (Conclusions) more

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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Kirsten Eddy, Craig T. Robertson, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2023), 158 pp.

"Across markets, only around a fifth of respondents (22%) now say they prefer to start their news journeys with a website or app – that’s down 10 percentage points since 2018. Publishers in a few smaller Northern European markets have managed to buck this trend, but younger groups everywhere are ... showing a weaker connection with news brands’ own websites and apps than previous cohorts – preferring to access news via side-door routes such as social media, search, or mobile aggregators. • Facebook remains one of the most-used social networks overall, but its influence on journalism is declining as it shifts its focus away from news. It also faces new challenges from established networks such as YouTube and vibrant youth-focused networks such as TikTok. The Chinese-owned social network reaches 44% of 18–24s across markets and 20% for news. It is growing fastest in parts of Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. • When it comes to news, audiences say they pay more attention to celebrities, influencers, and social media personalities than journalists in networks like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. This contrasts sharply with Facebook and Twitter, where news media and journalists are still central to the conversation. • Much of the public is sceptical of the algorithms used to select what they see via search engines, social media, and other platforms. Less than a third (30%) say that having stories selected for me on the basis of previous consumption is a good way to get news, 6 percentage points lower than when we last asked the question in 2016. Despite this, on average, users still slightly prefer news selected this way to that chosen by editors or journalists (27%), suggesting that worries about algorithms are part of a wider concern about news and how it is selected. • Despite hopes that the internet could widen democratic debate, we find fewer people are now participating in online news than in the recent past. Aggregated across markets, only around a fifth (22%) are now active participators, with around half (47%) not participating in news at all. In the UK and United States, the proportion of active participators has fallen by more than 10 percentage points since 2016. Across countries we find that this group tends to be male, better educated, and more partisan in their political vie ws. • Trust in the news has fallen, across markets, by a further 2 percentage points in the last year, reversing in many countries the gains made at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic. On average, four in ten of our total sample (40%) say they trust most news most of the time. Finland remains the country with the highest levels of overall trust (69%), while Greece (19%) has the lowest after a year characterised by heated arguments about press freedom and the independence of the media." (Summary, page 10) more

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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Craig T. Robertson, Amy Ross Arguedas, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2023), 167 pp.

"In many countries, especially outside Europe and the United States, we find a significant further decline in the use of Facebook for news and a growing reliance on a range of alternatives including private messaging apps and video networks. Facebook news consumption is down 4 percentage points, acr ... oss all countries, in the last year. • News use across online platforms is fragmenting, with six networks now reaching at least 10% of our respondents, compared with just two a decade ago. YouTube is used for news by almost a third (31%) of our global sample each week, WhatsApp by around a fifth (21%), while TikTok (13%) has overtaken Twitter (10%), now rebranded X, for the first time. • Linked to these shifts, video is becoming a more important source of online news, especially with younger groups. Short news videos are accessed by two-thirds (66%) of our sample each week, with longer formats attracting around half (51%). The main locus of news video consumption is online platforms (72%) rather than publisher websites (22%), increasing the challenges around monetisation and connection. • Although the platform mix is shifting, the majority continue to identify platforms including social media, search, or aggregators as their main gateway to online news. Across markets, only around a fifth of respondents (22%) identify news websites or apps as their main source of online news – that’s down 10 percentage points on 2018. Publishers in a few Northern European markets have managed to buck this trend, but younger groups everywhere are showing a weaker connection with news brands than they did in the past. • Turning to the sources that people pay most attention to when it comes to news on various platforms, we find an increasing focus on partisan commentators, influencers, and young news creators, especially on YouTube and TikTok. But in social networks such as Facebook and X, traditional news brands and journalists still tend to play a prominent role. • Concern about what is real and what is fake on the internet when it comes to online news has risen by 3 percentage points in the last year with around six in ten (59%) saying they are concerned. The figure is considerably higher in South Africa (81%) and the United States (72%), both countries that have been holding elections this year. • Worries about how to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy content in online platforms is highest for TikTok and X when compared with other online networks. Both platforms have hosted misinformation or conspiracies around stories such as the war in Gaza, and the Princess of Wales’s health, as well as so-called ‘deep fake’ pictures and videos." (Executive summary, page 10) more

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Reviving News Media in an Embattled Europe

Washington, DC: Freedom House (2023), 33 pp.

Our Media, Our Democracy, Our Future. The Future of the Media in the Western Balkans and Turkey – Facts and Trends. Regional Overview Deep Insights

Our Media, Our Democracy, Our Future. The Future of the Media in the Western Balkans and Turkey – Facts and Trends. Regional Overview
Deep Insights