"In this report, we examine how public service media in six european countries (Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom) are delivering news in an increasingly digital media environment. The analysis is based on interviews conducted between december 2015 and February 2016 [..
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.] Public service media organisations have high reach for news offline (via television and radio) in all six countries, but only in Finland and the United Kingdom do they have high reach for news online. In all countries but Finland and the United Kingdom, significantly more people get news online from social media than from public service media. Our interviewees highlight three particularly important issues facing public service news provision online today, namely: 1. how to change organisations developed around analogue broadcasting media to effectively deliver public service news in an increasingly digital media environment; 2. how to use mobile platforms more effectively as smartphones become more and more central to how people access news; 3. how to use social media more effectively as more and more news use is driven by referrals and in some cases consumed off-site on platforms like Facebook." (Executive summary)
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"The EuroMaidan protests that shook Ukraine in late 2013 to early 2014 triggered a chain of events that brought numerous changes and challenges for the Ukrainian society. The Ukrainian media landscape has also been affected by the new challenges and impetus for democratization. The post-Maidan perio
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d saw both, improvements in the media environment and setbacks. While Ukrainian journalists can benefit from increased media freedom, new progressive legislation and reinvigoration of the democratic debate, many problems still shape the development of the media. Editorial dependence on owners, concentration of mainstream media in the hands of oligarchs, deteriorating quality of content and crisis of professional identity are distinctive features of the post-Maidan media landscape in Ukraine. This paper provides an overview of developments in the Ukrainian media system since the declaration of independence with a special focus on the situation after the EuroMaidan and discusses four major challenges that will impact the transformation of the Ukrainian journalism and media sphere." (Abstract)
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"During political system change and for coming to terms with conflicts, media are the most important mediators. They should help with making the past more transparent, in order to support the transition to democracy. Experts of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the international “Article 10 ECHR
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Task Force” met in Tirana in October 2015 and made the following ten recommendations." (Page 1)
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"In Tschechien ist die Qualitätspresse in einer schwierigen Lage. Der Markt ist klein, die Kosten sind hoch und die Erträge bescheiden. Zeitungen und Nachrichtenmagazine werden ihrem Anspruch, seriöse Berichterstattung zu bieten, oft nicht gerecht. Die Verantwortung für die Boulevardisierung war
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lange den ausländischen, überwiegend deutschen Medienhäusern zugeschrieben worden, die in den 1990er Jahren in Tschechien investiert und den Pressemarkt dominiert hatten. Seit der Weltwirtschaftskrise 2008 haben sich diese Investoren zurückgezogen, die neuen Eigentümer sind meist tschechische Großunternehmer. Doch die Qualität der Berichterstattung ist nicht zwangsläufig besser geworden. Die Frage, wie frei die Presse ist, stellt sich vielmehr noch dringlicher. Dies gilt insbesondere für die Erzeugnisse aus dem Hause MAFRA, das dem Agrofert-Konzern des Großunternehmers und Finanzministers Andrej Babiš gehört." (Abstract)
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"The independence and pluralism of Bulgaria’s media has eroded steadily over the past decade. The downward spiral in media freedom that threatens to drown public debate on important policy issues is unrestrained since 2006, when the country was ranked 35th on the Reporters Without Borders Index. N
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ine years later, Bulgaria has fallen to 106th place [...] Bulgarian authorities are increasingly employing tools of “soft censorship” to dominate the country’s media and narrow public access to information and informed policy debate. This analysis defines official “soft censorship” or indirect censorship as any of an array of official actions intended to influence media output, short of legal or extra-legal bans, direct censorship of specific content, or physical attacks on media outlets or media practitioners. These indirect forms of censorship include selective media subsidies and partisan allocation of advertising, as well as biased application of regulatory and licensing powers that can influence editorial content and affect media outlets’ viability." (Executive summary)
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"Given that the nature of civil society in different countries is different, and also often shifting in response to political changes, examining the relationship between civil society and media production (mainstream and alternative) in Egypt, Kenya, Serbia and South Africa involves being sensitive
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to both specificity and commonality. The types of civil society organisation across these country contexts are diverse, challenging the construction of a simple definition, with different types of activism emerging across time. Even as countries make shifts towards democracy, gains can be easily lost and recouped, as Egypt has shown in recent years. Unpacking the relationship between media and political activism is also complex, given that there are a range of activisms including social and political activism which also sometimes overlap. The terrain is currently extremely dynamic: while the mainstream media may follow old routines of news gathering, and may be subjected to both state and self-censorship, the new media terrains open to possibility for dialogue and exchange, but also for the spread of dissent. New forms of activism also challenge the mainstream media routines, such that, for example, the media workers also monitor social media for story leads." (Conclusion)
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"The current five-year Ukraine Media Project (U-Media) runs from October 1, 2011 to September 30, 2016 and is implemented by Internews. U-Media builds on the previous eight years of the Strengthening Independent Media in Ukraine Project, also known as U-Media and also implemented by Internews. The p
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roject has four objectives, with varying degrees of Level of Effort (LOE) prioritization included in parentheses: 1) Support and Promote Freedom of Speech and Media Independence (30%), 2) Increase the Variety of News Sources and Improve News Quality (40%), 3) Improve the Enabling Environment for Media and Freedom of Speech (20%), and 4) Improve Organizational Capacity of Ukrainian Media CSOs (10%) According to the original Request for Applications, at least 55% of the U-Media budget, originally $14 million (which has since increased to $15.85 million), should be used to fund local Ukrainian media organizations. U-Media provides grants to three types of beneficiaries— institutional partners, core partners, and emerging and short-term partners—to achieve these four objectives." (Project background, page vi)
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"Strengthening Independent Media (SIM) in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a 5-year $5.481 million activity, which was launched in October 2010, financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and implemented by the Internews, with partners Annenberg School of Communications at
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the University of Pennsylvania and the Media Center Sarajevo (MCS). SIM Activity originally was designed as a comprehensive media assistance program to support traditional and online media outlets, various journalists’ associations in BiH, the Communications Regulatory Agency (CRA), the state regulator for broadcast media, and the Press Council (PC), the BiH self-regulating body for print media, through a $1.0 million small grants program with additional funds for capacity building and resource development. Two years into the Activity’s implementation, Internews and its partners, based on directions from the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia and USAID/BiH recalibrated its media development strategy for BiH and streamlined its tasks into the following components: 1. Support the quality and growth of online media outlets, technologies, and sources; 2. Build the quality of investigative reporting and resources; 3. Develop local capacity expertise and practice in media policy, media law, and media literacy. SIM’s Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system employed the International Research and Exchanges Board’s (IREX) Media Sustainability Index (MSI) as the primary indicator to measure the Activity’s overall success, along with other outcome, output, and input indicators. This performance evaluation examined the results of the five-year media assistance in BiH and the effects of the program on the BiH’s overall media landscape." (Executive summary)
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"Instead of seeking to provide an objective definition of hate speech, the paper’s empirical approach highlights that context matters. More specifically, analysis of the political and socio-economic context in which the speech act occurs and consideration of the nature of the speaker and audience
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– including their impact and transmission – allows for a nuanced and informed approach to evaluate hate speech, and how this impacts democratisation processes. The paper presents: a general discussion of freedom of speech and its relationship with hate speech; a brief discussion on the definitions of hate speech and international legislation; a short discussion of hate speech in the four country contexts of the MeCoDEM project: Egypt, Kenya, Serbia and South Africa." (Executive summary)
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"Ukrainian mass media outlets are mostly driven by their owners’ individual interests and thus serve as instruments to securing political and economic power. Corruption and lack of financial transparency further inhibit the healthiness of the country’s media landscape. The Media Ownership Monito
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r Ukraine, carried out from July to October 2016 together with the Institute of Mass Information (IMI), showed that the Ukraine media is prone to power plays, more than ever. The Media Ownership Monitor pinpoints that concentration is especially high within the audio-visual and radio markets. The major four TV owners – StarLight Media, 1+1 Media, Inter Media and Media Group Ukraine – represent an audience share of more than three quarters. The top four radio groups even combine a reach of 92% of the audience in Ukraine: Tavr Radio Group, Ukrainian Media Holding, Business Radio Group and TRK Lux. Those media groups mainly belong to some of the richest in Ukraine, amongst others Viktor Pinchuk, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Dmytro Firtash and Rinat Akhmetov. The print media and online sectors are less concentrated. Online media in particular offer much more pluralism and choice to Internet savvy Ukrainians." (http://www.mom-rsf.org)
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"This report provides an overview of core comparative findings from MeCoDEM interviews with journalists in Egypt, Kenya, Serbia and South Africa. It investigates the role of journalistic actors in transitional societies across a set of comparable democratisation conflicts and themes of inquiry: jour
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nalistic work practices, role perceptions, and ethical principles and dilemmas. Empirically, the study builds on qualitative semi-structured face-to face in-depth interviews with 100 professional journalists working for local news organisations in the four countries." (Executive summary)
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"Structural conditions are to be understood as the totality of (formal and informal) orders and structures that characterise media and journalism in a certain space, most commonly, a country. Eleven interrelated and interdependent dimensions of structural conditions relevant to media and journalism
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have been extracted and adapted from existing literature, guiding structured and comprehensive analysis within specific (country) contexts: (1) historical development, (2) political system, (3) political culture, (4) media freedom, (5) level of state control and regulation of media by the state, (6) media ownership and financing, (7) structure of media markets and patterns of information distribution, (8) orientation of media, (9) political/societal activity and parallelism of media, (10) journalism culture, and (11) journalistic professionalism. Country reports feature a unique set and combination of structural factors shaping media and journalism in the four countries, demonstrating the importance of conflict communication as a case study with regard to structural conditions. For example, different degrees of democratisation regarding media structures become evident in varying levels of media freedom and state interference in the media sector. Moreover, there are significant differences in media landscapes and the structure of media markets, reflecting the different size, economic situation, infrastructure and cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity of the four countries, as well as the differing degrees of literacy and spending power of inhabitants." (Executive summary)
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"Ukrainian journalists find it hard to remain neutral and independent when covering the conflict in their country. Many are torn between feelings of patriotism and their role as detached observers, new research has found. Of the 47 Ukrainian journalists, representing 42 different media outlets, inte
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rviewed for the study, most said they tried to adhere to ethical and journalistic standards when reporting the war in the Donbas region, eastern Ukraine, but added they did not want to ‘hurt’ the Ukrainian side through their reporting. The research found that few Ukrainian newsrooms offer guidance or support to journalists on how to cover the conflict. There are no written rules or agreed ethical standards and professional judgments are usually left to the journalists themselves. Ukrainian reporters working in the conflict zone tend to rely on their ‘gut instinct’, rather than instructions, the study revealed." (Publisher description)
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"The purpose of this assessment is to compile a general portrait of the media landscape in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in order to determine the broad status of reforms and needs in the media sector and make recommendations for potential further USAID involvement in the sector. The assessment team
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addressed the following three main questions: 1. What areas of the BiH media sector require the most urgent assistance that can be provided in the next five years? 2. What types of assistance might be the most effective in those areas, and on what scale? 3. What are the comparative advantages of US assistance to media outlets?" (Executive summary)
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"Only 8% of respondents stated that the media in Moldova exhibit, to a very large extent, a responsible behavior toward their audiences. The majority of respondents or 56% stated they were dissatisfied with the lack of responsibility of the national media. One in ten respondents considered him/herse
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lf very informed; another five in ten respondents are quite satisfied in terms of perceived level of information. Television is still the main source of social and political news in Moldova, with 65% of respondents citing it as the preferred source, followed by the Internet (websites) (24%), and the social networking sites and radio stations with 5% each. According to the study “Measuring the perceptions of sociopolitical news by the media audience in the Republic of Moldova”, realized in October 2015, information sources have their specific audiences. Television is preferred mostly by occupationally inactive people, aged over 45 years, with secondary and low levels of education. Young people, with higher levels of education, who are occupationally active, and live in municipalities show preference for getting information online." (Page 5)
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"Of the 939 identified main media literacy stakeholders, over a third were categorised as “civil society” (305), followed by “public authorities” (175) and “academia” (161). Over two-thirds of them do not have a statutory responsibility in this area and base their involvement on a differ
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ent motivation. 189 networks were identified and the vast majority of them (135) are operating at national level. Since the level of activity differs a lot between countries, of the maximum of 580 projects (20 possible projects for each of the 29 respondents, but not all of them were able to detect 20), only 547 were identified. The most common project type is “resources” (173); the second is “end-user engagement” (107). These two together account for more than half of all analysed projects, showing that providing frontline support to citizens is a priority. As to the a ddressed media literacy skills, “critical thinking” was the clear winner, being dealt with by 403 of the 547 projects, followed by “media use” (385). This trend is also confirmed by the case study analysis of the most significant 145 projects, which also feature projects on “intercultural dialogue” (46 of 145), including skills around challenging radicalisation and hate speech online." (Executive summary, page 3-4)
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"Incidents of physical violence and – worse still – impunity for those who commit such acts continue in Croatia, an unacceptable situation for an EU member state. On the other, legal provisions such as the country’s criminal defamation and shaming laws have been abused to punish investigative
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journalists for doing their jobs. Such trends can and must be reversed. But it is also clear that ‘informal’ limits to free expression, which can be more easily disguised and hence denied, are at work in Croatia. These limits include excessive political influence in the media as well as politically motivated discourse that seeks to undercut critical journalism by singling out its practitioners as “activists” or even “traitors”. These patterns have an impact both on the production of content, through direct pressure or self-censorship, and on the reception of content by the public. The most glaring example of recent political influence is the recent government’s obvious interference at the public broadcaster HRT." (Conclusion, page 15)
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"In this comparative regional overview of the governing and funding models of public service media in the countries of South East Europe, we see a variety of solutions. The information we have gathered and presented here demonstrates once again that these media organisations use large amounts of pub
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lic money – either through the licence fee collected from households, or through state budgets, but the supervision mechanisms for their programming and finances are predominantly politically driven. Almost all governing bodies are entirely or partly appointed by parliament, and despite formal requirements for qualifications, their members are commonly appointed on the basis of political affiliation and compatibility with the political parties in power. It is not only the apparent political interests that make public service media in the region into their playground that have made these media rather devastated giants, but also the particular, private interests of the representatives of civil society, their organisations or the fields they represent. Their representation in the governing structures of the public service media in the region has often been misused and trust in the genuine representation of the public in the governing structure of public service media has been compromised. There are deep differences in the funding and governing models among the countries in the region. Particularly Hungary, with its giant PSM governing structure and solutions such as nomination of members of the Board of Governors by the political majority and opposition, or the indefinite term of office for a Director General appointed by that Board of Governors, seem to constitute an environment far from supportive of independent, open and inclusive public service media operations. The size of the governing bodies also differs significantly, but that provides no particular guarantee of quality and efficiency in their work." (Conclusions)
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