European Media Research Articles

Between the cracks: Blind spots in regulating media concentration and platform dependence in the EU

Alongside the recent regulations addressing platforms and digital markets – the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) – the European Union’s (EU) European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) aims to safeguard media freedom and pluralism, two essential pillars of democracy. The EMFA introduces several provisions, including rules specifically focused on assessing media concentration in "the online environment". While these initiatives are commendable, there are noticeable blind spots in how EU regulations tackle the issues of dependence on, and the power of, platforms amidst the rising trend of media concentration. An essential aspect that needs attention is the technological power of these platforms, underpinned by their economic and political power. We find that neither the infrastructural power of platforms – transforming them from “gatekeepers” to “digital infrastructure and AI providers” – nor their relational power – creating imbalances and dependencies while posing sustainability challenges for (local) journalism – are effectively addressed in the current EU regulatory frameworks, despite both forms of power driving digital media concentration. The article then concludes with recommendations for a way forward capable of preserving values such as media pluralism and editorial independence.

Features of the development of the Ukrainian and European print media market in the current conditions

The article analyses the state of the Ukrainian and European print market in the current conditions, which are caused by socio-political, military, economic and technological global processes. The author identifies the peculiarities of functioning and development of the print media market in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war, which became a catalyst for a number of economic changes that led to a number of processes in financial terms: closure of publications, reduction of circulation, total transition to digital format, and, accordingly, transition to subscription. It is important to note that the above-mentioned processes took place in three stages: digitalization, the global economic crisis of 2013-2014 and Covid-19, and the war only accelerated them. The print media market cannot compete with other types of media. Falling circulation, closure of newsrooms or their mergers are typical for both the Ukrainian and European media markets. Today, this market and the online media market closely overlap, as print media, in order to survive financially and retain their audience in a highly competitive information environment, are actively moving to online platforms, often choosing social media as a place of operation. The study focuses on the print market in Poland, France, the UK, Germany and the Czech Republic. The European readership of traditional media consists of two parts: the older generation reads the printed version of publications, while the younger generation prefers to subscribe to digital analogues. It is more difficult for Ukrainian publications to retain their audience due to economic and military factors and a relatively young media market compared to the European one. The article emphasizes that the print media market is undergoing further active digitalization, which has particularly intensified during the Covid-19 period. This has given rise to the following trends: 1) updating of subscriptions to the digital format of printed publications; 2) transition to online formats of the same name, adaptation of the content of periodicals to social networks.

Information as public good and public service media in Europe: Introduction to this special issue

The right to public life has been one of the most important achievements of modernity. It was a result of long and painful civil struggles for dignity in a democratic public sphere. While de jure we are all welcome in the public sphere, de facto rapid processes of fragmentation and numerous contexts of misinformation insulate the actual chances of meaningful contribution to public life. Platform users are aggressively approached as consumers of goods and services and continuously stimulated to produce large quantities of any content, just to feed the voracious platforms. The sobering truth is that many people on the private high-tech platforms do not act like true democrats, but like private individuals who pursue very personal aims. At the same time, a private person does not have a mandate to act in the public interest of the rest of the citizens. For these reasons, we turn to information as a public good and public responsibility in this special issue. It is about media as a public service that allows democracy to keep centre stage within a polity. When citizens interact with relevant public information, they build the capacity to control their political environment, to form informed opinions and act upon them. When this basic desideratum is not structurally at the core of society, one cannot even start to consider democracy as the first course of action for the generations to come. Information as a public good is not a thing of nature, but a purposeful action. We take this stance when we approach information as a public good, rather than some residual category of market failure. The scope of this special issue is to analyse and explore the resources and institutional settings that allow information to thrive as a public good in the European contemporary informational ecosystem.

Transnational chain ownership of news media: Integration and independence across borders in DPG media

So far, studies that investigate the effects of increased media ownership concentration across countries on corporations’ management have been limited in size and scope, particularly from a European perspective. To approach this research gap, we conduct and analyze a series of expert interviews with executives and chief personnel of one transnational European media. The findings allow us to shine light on how cultural and linguistic diversity and proximity play crucial roles in either fostering or limiting opportunities for synergy operations, digital transformation, and an internationally oriented management style of news media firms.

Race-ing Masculinity

Studies about representations of Latinidad in US and European media have identified stereotypes like criminalization and hypersexualization. Furthermore, it has been argued that comedy operates as a double-edged sword in exposing racism, as humor can be deployed to simultaneously mask/justify and show/denounce racial discrimination and monolithic representations of Latinidad. Using a feminist intersectional perspective that foregrounds constructions of masculinities and racialization/migration as exclusionary factors, this essay discusses how RTVE Playz, the digital platform of the Spanish public television aimed at young audiences, represents Latinidad in its series Riders (2021). Situated within the dynamics of racialization in Spain, Riders stands out as an example of dark humor that both complicates and reinforces stereotypes. Through a close reading of the series, we assess its response to current social, political and cultural citizenship challenges.

The geopolitics of vaccine media representation in Orbán’s Hungary—an AI-supported sentiment analysis

Extant studies on the European media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic generally posit a linear relationship between the severity of the public health emergency and the volume of media reports. However, domestic politics and geopolitics may also impact the saliency, distribution, and sentiment of coverage in different outlets. Under Viktor Orbán’s illiberal leadership, Hungary sought deals for ventilators and vaccines from China and Russia—a deviation from joint European procurements. In this article, we conduct a content analysis of pro-government and Orbán-critical media to examine differences in their treatment of Eastern and Western vaccines. We relied on state-of-the-art deep learning analysis (a branch of articifial intelligence) to investigate all COVID-19-related articles (N = 72,339) published on three major Hungarian news portals between March 2020 and March 2022. We used a new fine-tuned BERT model for emotion analysis, the categories of which have been aggregated into three sentiment labels (positive, negative, and neutral). Our sentiment analysis results show a positive correlation between the number of sentences mentioning at least one of the vaccines and the (first) shots administered for only one outlet out of three. The pro-government portal in the sample showed more positivity towards Western vaccines than a hard-right, anti-government one. This latter also produced more positive reports concerning the Russian vaccine. These results shed light on the complex geopolitics of vaccine narratives in Hungarian media. Our research contributes not only to our understanding of illiberal media systems but also by sharing a new public dataset and a fine-tuned large language model that is applicable to alternative research questions and designs.

Synthetic opioids in Poland—A cause for concern or a media distraction?

BackgroundThe North American continent has been battling a major health crisis defined by opioids like OxyContin and fentanyl for over two decades now. In that time, it seemed that Europe is rather resilient to a similar problem, and heroin retained its position as a the most problematic opioid. This does seem to be changing and European media, including in Poland, is starting to report on growing popularity of synthetic opioids like fentanyl. MethodsWe use official data showing the number of prescriptions for synthetic opioids; data showing the percentage of people entering treatment due to different opioids; police data on drug interceptions as well as lab closures, and data on opioid related poisonings. ResultsThe data demonstrates that although Polish physicians are increasingly more likely to prescribe synthetic opioids like OxyContin or Fentanyl, their problematic use remains low. ConclusionPoland currently does not seem to be in a position that resembles an early stage of an opioid crisis. With this article we want to calm a heated public debate that is currently taking place in Poland, and redirect attention to a much more substantial problem of synthetic cathinones.

Unequal Framing in Times of Hardship? How Newspapers from Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and Switzerland Portray Syrian and Ukrainian Refugees – Evidence from a Deductive and Inductive Automated Content Analysis

ABSTRACT The mostly welcoming attitudes toward refugees from Ukraine stand in stark contrast to restrictive policies and often negative attitudes toward refugees from Syria in Europe. By emphasizing certain aspects of reality whilst leaving out others, media framing plays an important role in the public image of both refugee groups. To better understand how the different refugee groups were framed in European media, we applied Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling and a thorough manual analysis and validation process to identify frames from the topic modeling results. We identified eleven generic and issue-specific emphasis frames in a sample of 84,623 newspaper articles from Germany, Spain, the UK, and Switzerland from 2014–2022. The frames were grouped into four overarching frame categories: Fate, Threat, Value and Context Frames. Syrian refugees were mostly portrayed negatively through Threat Frames and Context Frames, whereas more positive humanitarian and victimization perspectives were pronounced in Fate Framing of Ukrainian refugees. The findings indicate more negative and delegitimizing framing patterns in news coverage about Syrian compared to Ukrainian refugees.

The role and accountability of the state as a news media owner in the contemporary media landscape

Drawing on critical capitalism theory and the social responsibility theory of media, this paper explores the role of the state as a news media owner in contemporary European media systems and the capitalist context. It focuses on accountability and the relationships between the state, state-owned media outlets, and the public. Academic research to date has predominantly examined public service media (PSM) and the dichotomy of private versus public media, thereby overlooking other models of state ownership. The lack of clear regulations on the state's accountability as a media owner outside PSM at the EU level, along with uncertainties in national regulatory frameworks (such as those seen in Slovenia, and the recent reinstatement of state ownership of media in Serbia) raise concerns about the potential for abuse of power. These issues are particularly relevant in the current context of illiberal and authoritarian tendencies within modern European capitalist societies.

Evading the European Media Freedom Act: Examining Public and Private Control of Media Organs in Hungary and Italy

Evading the European Media Freedom Act: Examining Public and Private Control of Media Organs in Hungary and Italy

Media representations of nuclear threats during the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Research objective: This article continues the scholarly tradition of uncovering the rhetorical practices that influence audiences’ perceptions, beliefs, and behaviours towards nuclear actors and issues and examines how the Romanian mass media reports on nuclear threats against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: This article conducts a detailed examination of how media coverage of nuclear-related topics influences public perceptions, generating a feeling of urgency and potentially leading to mass panic and hysteria. The study employed a quantitative methodology, conducting content analysis on a selection of 190 online news articles from the primary Romanian press agencies (Mediafax and Agerpress) published between February 24, 2022, and February 24, 2023. Employing an inductive approach, our analysis was guided by frames identified during the examination of the sample material. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: Nuclear threats and other related issues were frequently reported in the media in the post-World War 2 period. Given the history of media coverage of this topic, it is perhaps not surprising that a return to reporting nuclear threats has dominated the media discourse since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. RESEARCH RESULTS: The results of our study reveal two main frames used to report issues related to nuclear threats during the war in Ukraine: a historical reference frame and a forward-looking frame. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: This study introduces a fresh research direction for potential investigations into the origins and progression of nuclear threats as a unique area of focus in the analysis of Eastern European media reporting during times of conflict.

Forgotten Pioneers of Media Art: Laboratory of Presentation Techniques

Abstract In the mid-1970s the group Laboratory of Presentation Techniques (LPT) was active at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. The artists conducted experiments and formal searches, exploring the potential of film, performance, and a new medium: video. LPT was the first in Silesia, the second in Poland, and one of the first artistic groups in Europe dealing with video art. Looking at the artistic path of Grzegorz G. Zgraja, the last of the artists, as well as Jadwiga and Jacek Singer’s works, the paper analyzes the most pivotal artistic achievements of the group. Based on the interviews and archival research, the author reconstructs LPT’s artistic contribution to European media art and the reasons these pioneers of media art were forgotten.

Book notes: Gender and Sexuality in the European Media: Exploring Different Contexts Through Conceptualising of Age by Cosimo Marco Scarcelli, Despina Chronaki, Sara De Vuyst and Sergio Villanueva Baselga (Editors)

Book notes: <i>Gender and Sexuality in the European Media: Exploring Different Contexts Through Conceptualising of Age</i> by Cosimo Marco Scarcelli, Despina Chronaki, Sara De Vuyst and Sergio Villanueva Baselga (Editors)

Streaming from a digital periphery: Voyo as an East-Central European response to Netflix

Voyo, owned by Central European Media Enterprises (CME) and operating across six national territories, is currently one of the only three prominent transnational SVoD services based in countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Under the new owner PPF, a Czech-based investment group which bought CME from AT&amp;T, Voyo enjoyed unprecedented levels of investment in high-end original content, which resulted in a dynamic growth of subscribers from 2020 onwards, making it the second strongest streamer in Czechia and Slovakia after Netflix. The article labels CME’s digital strategy ‘deep localism’ and approaches it through the recent political-economic debates about the geography of platform economy. Despite its multi-territory corporate structure, CME has isolated each of its national Voyo services in terms of original production, licensing and audience targeting. This shows in the high percentage of local content as well as the virtual absence of its cross-border circulation between the national Voyo catalogues, which have been branded as purely national. The article interprets this compartmentalized strategy of deep localism as both a response to the changes in the global streaming market and an attempt to preserve the traditional linear audiences of CME in the new digital era. The research behind the article is based on interviews with CME executives and on comparative VoD catalogue analysis.

‘We Become Visible’: Television References As Intermedial Sites for Cultural Encounters in Jenny Erpenbeck’s Gehen, Ging, Gegangen

ABSTRACT The 2015 Refugee Crisis was the European media event of the decade. It shed new light on European migration policies and narratives of migration. Through the device of intermedial references, Jenny Erpenbeck’s (2015) novel, Gehen, Ging, Gegangen, presents intercultural encounters as a superable challenge. The novel suggests that media like television continue to function as national mediums, and while they may serve as an impetus for engaging with others, encounters between strangers necessitate modes of engagement that extend beyond listening and watching. The references in the novel encourage a discussion of national frameworks, limits of seeing, embodied nationhood, hospitality, and the enduring relevance of unmediated testimony, especially in light of constant new developments in media.

Towards Media Monitoring: Detecting Known and Emerging Topics through Multilingual and Crosslingual Text Classification

This study aims to address challenges in media monitoring by enhancing closed-set topic classification in multilingual contexts (where both training and testing occur in several languages) and crosslingual contexts (where training is in English and testing spans all languages). To achieve this goal, we utilized a dataset from the European Media Monitoring webpage, which includes approximately 15,000 article titles across 18 topics in 58 different languages spanning a period of nine months from May 2022 to March 2023. Our research conducted comprehensive comparative analyses of nine approaches, encompassing a spectrum of embedding techniques (word, sentence, and contextual representations) and classifiers (trainable/fine-tunable, memory-based, and generative). Our findings reveal that the LaBSE+FFNN approach achieved the best performance, reaching macro-averaged F1-scores of 0.944 ± 0.015 and 0.946 ± 0.019 in both multilingual and crosslingual scenarios. LaBSE+FFNN’s similar performance in multilingual and crosslingual scenarios eliminates the need for machine translation into English. We also tackled the open-set topic classification problem by training a binary classifier capable of distinguishing between known and new topics with the average loss of ∼0.0017 ± 0.0002. Various feature types were investigated, reaffirming the robustness of LaBSE vectorization. The experiments demonstrate that, depending on the topic, new topics can be identified with accuracies above ∼0.796 and of ∼0.9 on average. Both closed-set and open-set topic classification modules, along with additional mechanisms for clustering new topics to organize and label them, are integrated into our media monitoring system, which is now used by our real client.

Commercial Television as a Blind Spot in Emerging Media Systems: Romania and Bulgaria’s Cases

This study explores TV in Romania and Bulgaria, both considered “emerging” media systems in post-communist studies (Sparks, 1995). It uses Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) framework to analyze the central aspects regarding the configuration of commercial TV. The study offers an institutional perspective on TV by exploring the licensing frame and the TV offer. The interaction between commercial TV, politics, and the state underlines the intricate relations through powerful and influential networks involving the interests of a variety of individuals and groups. Currently, commercial TV is the most developed type of media in both countries. Through its empirical contribution, this study fills in the blind spot of media research, aiming to contribute to the understanding of the Romanian and Bulgarian media landscape. It offers a critical perspective on TV systems in relation to the polarized pluralist/Mediterranean model of Hallin and Mancini, considering its explanatory function within the analysis of Eastern European media systems. Elements of the national markets revealed particularities of the TV business, synchronically connected to the contemporary “hyper-television” vision (Scolari, 2009) and the “informational disorder” paradigm (Tambini, 2020).

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Horizon 2020 – EUMEPLAT – European Media Platforms: Assessing Negative and Positive Externalities for European Culture

Horizon 2020 – EUMEPLAT – European Media Platforms: Assessing Negative and Positive Externalities for European Culture

Expo 2020 Dubai’s Impact on the United Arab Emirates’ Brand: A Quantitative Analysis About American and European Media Companies

Expo 2020 Dubai’s Impact on the United Arab Emirates’ Brand: A Quantitative Analysis About American and European Media Companies