Media Pluralism Research Articles

Broadcast Speech and the State of Broadcasting with Reference to Ethiopia: A Review

The issue of this reviewed is the issue of broadcast speech and the state of broadcasting in general and the Ethiopian reference in particular. It is also the issue of the right to freedom of expression, media diversity and pluralism since the one cannot be isolated from the other in the principles of freedom of expression to secure and guaranteed and to be applied the right given by the international, regional conventions ratified by the member states and the national constitutions. This review found that unlike its history the spectrum showed poor development both in terms of diversity and pluralism due to the unjustified reasons of controlling methods done by governments and other loyalties by the name of nation building, national development, security and profit maximizing purposes. That is why; this review argued that the broadcast media should not be treated differently from the other media in regulation except for the convincing reasons such as the issues of scarcity and economic efficiency as well as the technical matters of the frequency. The very reason of the argument is that broadcast media is the main source of information and entertainment especially in countries with high level of illiteracy and poor economic capability. Thus, this review found that controlling the broadcasting spectrum is another means of limiting the right to freedom of expression and even denying the role that the broadcast media plays in the activities of a country’s overall development processes as well as nation building affairs. This review, therefore, recommends that all stakeholders concerned with this issue should lobby the government as well as the policy formulators to reread and amend the existing proclamations with the highest responsibility and accountability to secure the use of the broadcast spectrum for the better exercising the emerging democracies and the overall development activities of the developing nations. And it further recommends that government must participates concerned stakeholders on the issues of nation building and national development and security by maximizing the use of the spectrum since all this issues cannot be achieved without the participation of all concerned stakeholders. Keywords: Broadcast Speech, Freedom of Expression, Media Diversity, Media Pluralism, Broadcast Proclamation

Making Democratic Contestation Possible: Public Deliberation and Mass Media Regulation

While recent democratic theory has insisted upon the contestability of public policies as a key source of democratic legitimacy, the role mass media should play in fostering public contestation has yet to be specified. The role of deliberative theory in particular should be to try to identify which standards mass communication needs to meet in order to provide a general forum for democratic contestation. This article focuses on the theoretical foundations of such a project. It puts forward three claims. First, the contestability of public policy can only be a source of democratic legitimacy if citizens have the opportunity to participate in public contestation through – among other forums – a general public forum that is endowed with a deliberative dimension. Second, media pluralism alone is insufficient in providing such a public forum: both external standards (related to the independence of mass media) and internal standards (related to the norms guiding media practices) need to be satisfied. Third, and as a consequence of the preceding two, the democratic contestability of public policies presupposes effective mass media regulation that goes beyond the promotion of media pluralism. Democratic contestation requires more than a “marketplace of ideas”.

Towards a methodology for measuring media plurality

Abstract The central objective in addressing media plurality is to ensure that no single body or person exercises an undue degree of influence over the flow of information and the formation of political opinion in the United Kingdom. David Elstein examines the media market in the United Kingdom and finds it lacks plurality and diversity since it is dominated by one actor, namely the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation).

Cultural Diversity in the Digital Age: EU Competences, Policies and Regulations for Diverse Audiovisual and Online Content

Cultural diversity is a multifaceted concept that differs from the notion of media pluralism. However, the two concepts share important concerns particularly as regards content production, content distribution and access to content. This chapter considers the EU’s role in contributing to diverse audiovisual and online content and assesses its limits.Although a signatory of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, the ability of the EU to foster cultural diversity in the digital environment is confined on account of its constrained competences in the field of audiovisual media and online content. Notwithstanding, the EU develops a number of substantive policies that benefit the creation and circulation of cultural content either in an explicit or in an implicit manner. Following a value-chain approach, this chapter discusses the complementary role of various EU sectoral regulations towards this aim. The analysis focuses on the Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) Directive (Directive 2007/65/EC – 2010/13/EU) and various aspects of the EU regulatory framework for electronic communications, particularly in relation to non-discriminatory access to bottlenecks in the distribution infrastructure and online platforms.The chapter advances the argument that existing EU policies have an important role to play for ensuring the free circulation of, and access to, cultural content. At the same time, aside from the cultural quotas in the above mentioned AVMS Directive, EU activity is less prominent in the field of content production. The analysis concludes by stressing the complexity of promoting cultural diversity in light of both cultural content supply and demand considerations. It also emphasises the importance of emerging policy issues, in particular net neutrality and findability.

Media freedoms and covert diplomacy: Turkey challenges Europe over Kurdish broadcasts

Focusing on Kurdish television broadcasts in Europe, this article sheds light on how minority broadcasting interrelates with national and intergovernmental political agendas and issues of national security. Drawing from a thorough analysis of policy and diplomatic documents, press articles, academic literature and two expert interviews and focusing on three Kurdish TV channels in Europe, Med-TV, Medya-TV and Roj-TV, it describes how the contrast between Turkish and European media freedoms and minority rights has driven Kurdish broadcasting to develop in Europe, rather than in Turkey. It reveals how, in an effort to obstruct these broadcasting activities, Turkey’s diplomatic undertakings have been able to sway opinions in several countries and get them to endorse more restrictive media policies. This study advances the understanding of minority broadcasting and the European Union (EU) media policies, but also highlights conflicting understandings of freedom of expression and media pluralism between Turkey and Europe.

Украина в политическом кризисе: образ России как катализатор противоречий

This paper deals with the period that is prior to Ukraine’s crises of 2013 14. The image of Russia shaped by political discourses, TV news and school textbook on history and geography is analyzed. The authors examine in what way the political doctrines which were in use exerted influence upon public opinion and resulted in direct and indirect consequences. They argue that the “European prospect”, which is serving as a guide line for social and institutional modernization all around Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia, has been transformed in Ukraine into an ideology for identity and state-building. The European aspiration was legitimized by an idea that “Ukraine is not Russia”. This concept kept its importance during the Post-Soviet period regardless of changes in political elites and has been transmitted through the mass-media and school education. The politics of the Ukrainian media was one-sided in spite of declared pluralism of opinions and freedom of speech. The TV news has not reflected the current events so much as a “war of discourses” promoted by protagonists and antagonists of the Ukrainian government. The observed plurality of Ukrainian media did not become a plurality of meanings and approaches. Analyses of the political discourses and mass media are balanced by review of school textbooks on history and geography. The authors discovered that all of the textbooks assumed a similar initial hypothesis despite the change in textbooks’ generations and political assessments. First, the history of the country and the history of the Ukrainian nation are considered as identical. Second, the approaches, which are well known as “victimization” and “occidentalisation” of national history, were applied to explain Ukrainian history. Third, history itself was considered as a predetermined process driven by the logic of history, not by people’s decisions. Objectifying history, the school textbooks interpreted historical incidents from the perspective of the current political agenda. School students built up an image of Ukraine as a colony first of the Moscow state, then of the Russian Empire and the USSR. In conclusion the authors argue that the opposition of Russia and Ukraine, which has been widely used as a tool for the creation of a unified nation in Ukraine, has played a destructive rather than a constructive role for both Ukrainian society and the state.

Evolving regulation for media freedom and pluralism in the European Union

European regulation of the media is limited to audio–visual media services and is influenced by the economic regulation of electronic communications, and of e-commerce, that have a close scope of application. However, media regulation has one peculiar differentiating characteristic: it cannot concentrate only on market competition, as the rest of modern economic regulation does, but has to pursue other fundamental values. In particular, media pluralism and media freedom emerge as policy goals that are essential for democracy and human rights in Europe. In this paper, we discuss the EU's search for a point of equilibrium within resistance from member states to relinquishing power in the sector; we describe the current debate, and suggest some possible directions for development.

Digital Media in Indonesia and Malaysia: Convergence and Conglomeration

Through a comparative study of trends in the media industry in Indonesia and Malaysia, this article analyzes the transformative process of digital media on news production. Through an in-depth discussion of the influential conglomerates in two neighbouring countries, it examines the effects of digital media on journalism, news, and information. By including Southeast Asia in scholarly debates concerning the impact of the digital revolution, it will address the timely need to balance the existing Western-centric bias in this field of academic research. This article examines the process of platform convergence and how this assists the formation of media oligopolies in both countries. It shows that despite the difference in restrictions in media environments in each country, the process of media conglomeration and convergence is highly similar. This has significant impact on the way we assess the impact of digitalization on media pluralism and diversity in the convergence era.

U.S. Control of the Internet: Problems Facing the Movement to International Governance

After the Snowden revelations, Internet governance has emerged from relative obscurity, involving only a small technical community, to occupy the center stage of human rights discourse and international relations.… Everyone agrees that digital technologies, including the Internet, are transformative technologies. They reorder society as a whole, as well as relations between society and individuals. But…[their] potential…has not been fully realized. A case in point: instead of the democratizing potential of the Internet, a few global corporations have created monopolies that are much bigger than those we have seen before, and this has happened in just two decades. What does this mean, for instance, for the plurality of media voices? We know that Internet advertising revenue in the United States, having previously overtaken the print media, has now overtaken even TV network advertising revenues. How did monopolies on such a scale happen, and happen so quickly? Does it have to do with the nature of the Internet? Or its architecture and governance?This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The political and ideological dimension of the measurement of freedom of information. Assessing the interplay between neoliberalism and the Freedom of the Press Index

The article aims to analyse the role of measurement in legitimising a specific conception of freedom of information. From a neo-Gramscian perspective, the work draws attention to the way a political and ideological paradigm influences measuring instruments, as well as the contribution of such tools in strengthening the hegemony of that paradigm. By illustrating the rise of neoliberalism as a case in point, the study hypothesises a neoliberal influence on the measurement of freedom of information. To test such assumption, the work describes three ideal typical models of freedom of information – the liberal, egalitarian and neoliberal models – and their connection with specific conceptions of democracy. Then, the article focuses on the Freedom of the Press Index by Freedom House, that is the most used and recognised instrument for measuring freedom of information. Though the Freedom House contends to measure a liberal conception of freedom of information, the analysis of the indicators of the Freedom of the Press Index shows that they mirror the neoliberal model at least with respect to the role of State and Market on media systems, and the conception of media pluralism. The results bring into question the uncritical acceptance of the Freedom of the Press Index as the universal yardstick of freedom of information.

Pacific Media Watch and protest in Oceania: An investigative free media case study

In the past three decades, global and regional media freedom advocacy and activist groups have multiplied as risks to journalists and media workers have escalated. Nowhere has this trend been so marked as in the Oceania region where some four organisations have developed a media freedom role. Of these, one is unique in that while it has had a regional mission for almost two decades, it has been continuously based at four university journalism schools in Australia, Fiji, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. Pacific Media Watch was founded as an independent, non-profit and non-government network by two journalism academics in the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) at the University of Technology, Sydney. Its genesis was the jailing of two Taimi ‘o Tonga journalists, ‘Ekalafi Moala and Filokalafi ‘Akau’ola, and a ‘whistleblowing’ pro-democracy member of Parliament in Tonga, ‘Akilisi Pohiva, for alleged contempt in September 1996. PMW played a role in the campaign to free the three men. Since then, the agency has developed an investigative journalism strategy to challenge issues of ethics, media freedom, industry ownership, cross-cultural diversity and media plurality. One of PMW’s journalists won the 2013 Dart Asia-Pacific Centre for Journalism and Trauma Prize for an investigation into torture and social media in Fiji. This article presents a case study of the PMW project and examines its history and purpose as a catalyst for independent journalists, educator journalists, citizen journalists and critical journalists in a broader trajectory of Pacific protest.Figure 1: A Pacific Media Watch Fiji torture and social media investigation series won the Dart Asia-Pacific Centre trauma journalism prize in 2013.

‘Nuevas’ políticas de radiodifusión para los medios no comerciales en México

Public policies in Mexico have privileged the commercial aspect of radios over the social function of non-profit media. Despite the recent constitutional reforms that were announced as the begin ning of new policies designed to satisfy the most diverse needs of communication and information, the demands of civil society to consolidate an atmosphere of media plurality have not been attended to. This article centers on the reasons for which the aspirations of civil society in this area have not materialized. With this objective, we focus on the evident disunity that has characterized communication public policies in Mexico with respect to two elements that are part of radio as a cultural industry – its economic aspect and its socio-cultural aspect.

The Evolving Regulation of the Media in Europe as an Instrument for Freedom and Pluralism

European regulation of the media is influenced by the economic regulation of networks, contents, and e-commerce, to which it is very close. However, media regulation has one peculiar differentiating characteristic: it cannot concentrate only on market competition, as the rest of modern economic regulation does, but has to pursue other fundamental values. In particular, media pluralism and media freedom emerge as policy goals that are essential for democracy and human rights in Europe. In this paper, we discuss the EU’s search for a point of equilibrium in Member States’ resistance to the relinquishing of their power in the sector; we describe the current debate, and suggest some possible directions for development.

Periodismo político en España. Prácticas, roles y actitudes

The general aim is to characterize Spanish political journalism through the discourse of editors of the political sections, to verify the extent to which it conforms to the model of a polarized pluralist media system. In Spain has had a consolidated advocacy oriented journalism, which either made the journalist part of the party or organization’s strategy, or an advocate of a particular ideology. According to Hallin and Mancini we consider two indicators of political parallelism: the journalistic orientation and practices, and the relations between the media and the political system. The data were obtained through indepth interviews with 14 editors. The results suggest that the Spanish political journalism meets two basic features: high levels of political parallelism and polarization. With regard to relations between politicians and journalists, they reveal an attitude of mistrust against politicians.

Rethinking Media Pluralism: An Examination of the Nigerian Media Ecology

The citizens’ ability to access a broad range of diverse political, economic and cultural views depend largely on the pluralistic state of the media in a country. Media pluralism is therefore considered as the cornerstone of any functional democracy. Consequently, media pluralism becomes a central media policy which dominates debates in the political and media spheres of developed and developing countries alike. Many scholars have argued that a pluralistic media will help address the issue of media concentration and create platforms that will facilitate diverse media ownership and viewpoints which are essential in the consolidation of democracy.

European Union Media Policy and Independent Regulatory Authorities: A New Tool to Protect European Media Pluralism?

Abstract Can a uniform policy for media pluralism be adopted across the 28 Member States of the European Union through the involvement of independent regulatory authorities? According to the authors, the chances remain remote due to political and stakeholder opposition grounded in diverse structural, cultural, political, and economic interests. Based on a review of key documents from diverse sources, and case studies in Hungary and Italy, it appears that the goal of an EU-wide collaborative network of financially and politically independent audiovisual regulatory authorities, with common standards, faces significant challenges. However, the authors see hope in the increased debate on the topic, and suggest that some movement in that direction may yet be possible.

European Union Media Policy and Independent Regulatory Authorities: A New Tool to Protect European Media Pluralism?

Abstract Can a uniform policy for media pluralism be adopted across the 28 Member States of the European Union through the involvement of independent regulatory authorities? According to the authors, the chances remain remote due to political and stakeholder opposition grounded in diverse structural, cultural, political, and economic interests. Based on a review of key documents from diverse sources, and case studies in Hungary and Italy, it appears that the goal of an EU-wide collaborative network of financially and politically independent audiovisual regulatory authorities, with common standards, faces significant challenges. However, the authors see hope in the increased debate on the topic, and suggest that some movement in that direction may yet be possible.

Protection of media pluralism in the republic of Serbia under the new legislation

This paper provides a short review of the provisions of the Law on Public Information and Media and Law on Electronic Media, concerning to the protection of media pluralism and media concentrations. The author points out that these rules focus on better protection of media pluralism and on providing greater transparency of media ownership, because the major changes introduced by the laws are the media register and new, more detailed regulated, media concentration regime. Therefore, the new laws establish the modern regulatory framework of the Republic of Serbia in the area of media concentration, which represent a solid basis for further development of media pluralism.

Why do pluralistic media systems emerge? Comparing media change in the Czech Republic and in Russia after the collapse of communism

A quarter of a century after the collapse of communism in the former Eastern bloc, a wide range of scholarly projects have been undertaken to compare and theorize processes of media change in the region. One question that scholars have sought to address is: what were the factors that crucially impacted how these media landscapes evolved? This essay aims to contribute to this debate by juxtaposing media change in two selected cases: the Czech Republic (as a best-case scenario in terms of convergence with the Western model) and Russia (as a scenario where convergence has been limited). Based on secondary analysis of a wide range of sources, the essay systematically exposes 11 crucial differences between the two countries and illustrates how these have impacted the processes of media change. The conclusion sets out how these findings could serve as a starting point and source of inspiration for future comparative research.

Media Pluralism Redux: Towards New Frameworks of Comparative Media Studies “Beyond the West”

A new form of “entertaining news,” accessed by most through television, has become a privileged domain of politics for the first time in countries “beyond the West” in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. What are the political consequences of this development: What is the relationship between media and politics in these regions? We answer these questions through a case study of India, the world's largest democracy, where two decades of media expansion and liberalization have yielded the largest number of commercial television news outlets in the world. We show why prevailing theories of media privatization and commercialization cannot account for the distinctive architecture of media systems in places like India. In this article, we first provide an overview of the historical and contemporary dynamics of media liberalization in India and the challenges that this poses to existing models and typologies of the media-politics relationship. We then present a new typology of media systems and a theoretical framework for studying the relationship between television news and democratic politics in India, and by extension in the global South. In the concluding section, we reflect on the broader comparative insights of the essay and discuss directions for future research. We believe that our alternative comparative framework captures more meaningfully the diversity and complexity of emerging media systems and their relationships to democratic practice in these regions.