"This report presents findings from the third wave of the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS3), conducted between 2021 and 2025. In this iteration, we focused on journalists’ perceptions of risk and uncertainty in their profession and sought to identify key factors that shape how journalists navigate
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journalism’s changing environment. These risks and uncertainties arise from four partially overlapping domains: politics, economy, technology, and news consumption. Accordingly, the WJS3 questionnaire addressed journalists’ safety, editorial freedom, professional roles, news influences, and labor conditions. Our survey confirms that journalism is under pressure. Journalists worldwide are often undercompensated, and more than one-third engage in secondary employment. Economic pressures on news organizations have intensified in most countries. Nearly half of journalists have been targeted with hate speech, while psychological, physical, and digital threats are more prevalent in the Global South than in the Global North. More than 300 researchers from 75 countries participated in WJS3. This report provides a concise overview of key global findings. Subsequent publications will analyze specific topics in greater depth; please visit worldsofjournalism.org for more information." (Foreword, page 4)
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"The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance explores the concepts, methodologies, and implications of collective intelligence for democratic governance, in the first comprehensive survey of this field. Illustrated by a collection of inspiring case studies and edit
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ed by three pioneers in collective intelligence, this handbook serves as a unique primer on the science of collective intelligence applied to public challenges and will inspire public actors, academics, students, and activists across the world to apply collective intelligence in policymaking and administration to explore its potential, both to foster policy innovations and reinvent democracy." (Publisher description)
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"To what extent do structures and conduct of leading news media correspond with requirements of contemporary democracies? Based on a root concept of democracy and several empirical indicators, the Media for Democracy Monitor (MDM) delivers a panorama of the news media’s performance regarding freed
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om, equality, and control across several countries. In 2011, the MDM analysed 10 democracies. Ten years later, it covers 18 countries worldwide and pinpoints essential strengths and weaknesses during this decade of digitalisation. Around the globe, news are highly attractive to users, and the journalistic ethos of watchdogs and investigators is paramount. On the downside, journalistic job security eroded over time, and gender gaps both in content and employment patterns remain strikingly excessive in most countries. Volume two contains all countries analysed for the first time in 2021: Belgium (Flanders), Canada, Chile, Denmark, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Italy, and South Korea." (Publisher description)
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"In this article, I discuss how the world’s smallest states, including Iceland, are routinely absent in research and comparative studies concerning media and politics. Size has up until now mostly been ignored as a possible factor in understanding media systems and the relationship between media a
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nd politics on the national level. Existing research from other academic fields, such as public administration and economics, has revealed an important finding: small states have unique characteristics that differentiate them from larger states. They can therefore not simply be viewed as smaller versions of large states that have been central in knowledge production. Arguably, a Nordic perspective in media research needs to incorporate the size variable into the research agenda. This article illustrates how this expanded agenda will enrich our understanding of media and politics in the Nordic countries and open up new areas of study on small and large states more generally." (Abstract)
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"This book explores the potential of the Internet for enabling new and flexible political participation modes. It meticulously illustrates how the Internet is responsible for citizens' participation practices from being general, high-threshold, temporally constricted, and dependent on physical prese
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nce to being topic-centered, low-threshold, temporally discontinuous, and independent from physical presence. With its ethnographic focus on Icelandic and German online participation tools Betri Reykjavík and LiquidFriesland, the book offers plentiful advice for citizens, programmers, politicians, and administrations alike on how to get the most out of online participation formats." (Publisher description)
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"This thesis examines the dissemination of political information in Iceland through an investigation of three interlinked and under-studied areas of research in the country. The research gaps concern perceptions of routine political news coverage, the politician-journalist relationship, and the impa
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ct of social networking sites on interactions between the public, journalists and politicians, as well as on news coverage of politics. The data in this mixed methods study is comprised of 50 semi-structured interviews with Icelandic politicians and journalists, and survey answers from a representative questionnaire (N= 1,264). In filling these research gaps, the Icelandic case is used to expand existing paradigms. Iceland has been routinely ignored in the comparative political communication literature, and the same goes for other small states. The thesis illustrates how qualitative differences between small and large states open up new areas of investigation. The findings demonstrate that the Icelandic legacy media is perceived to be breaking down and routinely bypassed in political dissemination. The smallness of the Icelandic society means that there is much more direct interaction between politicians, journalists and the public than in larger states. This happens in informal settings offline, as well as online, particularly on Facebook. In order to study these online forms of communication, I show that there is a need to probe the more private avenues, in addition to the public arena. I introduce the concept of a ‘two-level online sphere’ in relation to this. The thesis contributes to theory building by constructing frameworks based on four dimensions of ‘scaled down’ political communication dynamics: 1) offline network density, 2) online network density, 3) mobile multifunctionality, and 4) flexible autonomy. In addition, I show that the Icelandic case can be seen as a ‘canary in the coalmine’ in relation to political communication developments in the larger democracies of the world." (Abstract)
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"Governments around the world have dramatically increased their efforts to manipulate information on social media over the past year. The Chinese and Russian regimes pioneered the use of surreptitious methods to distort online discussions and suppress dissent more than a decade ago, but the practice
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has since gone global. Such state-led interventions present a major threat to the notion of the internet as a liberating technology. Online content manipulation contributed to a seventh consecutive year of overall decline in internet freedom, along with a rise in disruptions to mobile internet service and increases in physical and technical attacks on human rights defenders and independent media. Nearly half of the 65 countries assessed in Freedom on the Net 2017 experienced declines during the coverage period, while just 13 made gains, most of them minor. Less than one-quarter of users reside in countries where the internet is designated Free, meaning there are no major obstacles to access, onerous restrictions on content, or serious violations of user rights in the form of unchecked surveillance or unjust repercussions for legitimate speech." (Page 1)
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"The accelerating digitalisation of the media landscape has released enormous forces of change in the Nordic advertising markets. The overall impression from the results of this study is that the sweeping changes digitalisation is bringing about are not just undermining the business model on which t
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he majority of commercially financed media companies in the Nordic countries have based their journalistic operations, they are also making it more difficult for the same companies to find a sustainable business model in a digital environment. The battle for advertising revenue is now an unfair fight. Media companies at the national and local level are finding it increasingly difficult to compete with the advertising solutions that global digital actors such as Google and Facebook are bringing to the market. The latter are not just more sophisticated than the domestic alternatives, they are also significantly cheaper. The results of this study indicate unequivocally that the differences in competitiveness between Nordic and non-Nordic advertising platforms will be exacerbated as digital advertising investments grow." (Executive summary)
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"Internet freedom has declined for the sixth consecutive year, with more governments than ever before targeting social media and communication apps as a means of halting the rapid dissemination of information, particularly during antigovernment protests. Public-facing social media platforms like Fac
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ebook and Twitter have been subject to growing censorship for several years, but in a new trend, governments increasingly target messaging and voice communication apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram. These services are able to spread information and connect users quickly and securely, making it more difficult for authorities to control the information landscape or conduct surveillance. The increased controls show the importance of social media and online communication for advancing political freedom and social justice. It is no coincidence that the tools at the center of the current crackdown have been widely used to hold governments accountable and facilitate uncensored conversations." (Page 1)
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"Internet freedom around the world has declined for the fifth consecutive year, with more governments censoring information of public interest and placing greater demands on the private sector to take down offending content. State authorities have also jailed more users for their online writings, wh
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ile criminal and terrorist groups have made public examples of those who dared to expose their activities online. This was especially evident in the Middle East, where the public flogging of liberal bloggers, life sentences for online critics, and beheadings of internet-based journalists provided a powerful deterrent to the sort of digital organizing that contributed to the Arab Spring. In a new trend, many governments have sought to shift the burden of censorship to private companies and individuals by pressing them to remove content, often resorting to direct blocking only when those measures fail. Local companies are especially vulnerable to the whims of law enforcement agencies and a recent proliferation of repressive laws. But large, international companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have faced similar demands due to their significant popularity and reach." (Page 1)
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"Internet freedom around the world has declined for the fourth consecutive year, with a growing number of countries introducing online censorship and monitoring practices that are simultaneously more aggressive and more sophisticated in their targeting of individual users. In a departure from the pa
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st, when most governments preferred a behind-the-scenes approach to internet control, countries are rapidly adopting new laws that legitimize existing repression and effectively criminalize online dissent." (Page 1)
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"Despite the importance of media ownership transparency for both the individual and the state, only two of the surveyed countries—Italy and Romania—address media transparency directly in their constitutions but in both cases the focus is on transparency of fi nancial sources not ownership. In th
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e Turkish Constitution the state is empowered to require information as a precondition to publication. None of these constitutions therefore impose an express positive obligation on the state to ensure that the public has access to information on media ownership. Although the Constitution of Norway does not expressly refer to media ownership transparency, Norwegian media ownership rules, which do provide for ownership transparency, refer back to the provisions on freedom of expression in article 100 of the Constitution. These impose on the state a positive duty to create conditions that “facilitate open and enlightened public discourse”, thus underlining the link between freedom of expression and media ownership transparency." (Key findings, page 3)
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"What are the particular characteristics of the media in small nations? What challenges do broadcasters and other media institutions in these countries face, how can these be overcome, and are there advantages to operating in a small national context? How are small nations represented on screen, and
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how do audiences in small nations engage with the media? Bringing together perspectives from across Europe, including case-studies on Catalonia, the Basque Country, Wales, Scotland, Iceland, Portugal, Slovenia and Macedonia, this collection answers these questions. At the same time, it provides readers with insights into broader issues of media policy, representation, national identity, transnationalism, audience reception and media research methods." (Publisher description)
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"The current UIS Questionnaire on Media Statistics provides information for three UNESCO frameworks, namely the Media and Information Literacy Framework, the Media Development Indicators Framework and the Framework for Cultural Statistics. The questionnaire collects data for reporting global progres
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s on Action Lines C2, C3, C8 and C9 of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in UNESCO’s fields of competencies. In particular, Action Line C9 recommends appropriate policies to foster and sustain media and information development. This document provides country profiles for each of the countries that participated in the two pilot surveys conducted in 2011 and 2012." (Background, page 3)
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"Freedom House has conducted a comprehensive study of internet freedom in 60 countries around the world. This report is the fourth in a series and focuses on developments that occurred between May 2012 and April 2013. The previous edition, covering 47 countries, was published in September 2012. 'Fre
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edom on the Net 2013' assesses a greater variety of political systems than its predecessors, while tracing improvements and declines in the countries examined in the previous editions. Over 70 researchers, nearly all based in the countries they analyzed, contributed to the project examining laws and practices relevant to the internet, testing the accessibility of select websites, and interviewing a wide range of sources. Of the 60 countries assessed, 34 have experienced a negative trajectory since May 2012." (Page 2)
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"This paper presents the results of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) pilot survey on media statistics conducted in 28 countries in 2011. The survey instruments were designed to provide an initial set of quantitative indicators identified by UNESCO’s Media Development Indicators project. G
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iven the limitations of this sample survey, this report is intended to highlight the scope of the questionnaire items while describing initial results. Further analysis of the indicators and trends will be made in the future as the data collection is expanded to include a greater number of countries. Chapter 1 focuses on indicators related to the regulatory environment in which media operate across countries. Chapter 2 presents data on the supply of different types of media (radio, television, newspapers) before discussing distribution by ownership and geographic coverage, as well as the availability of radio and television equipment and related issues on the penetration of broadcast media channels within each country." (Introduction)
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