Indicators for Media Pluralism in the Member States - Towards a Risk-Based Approach

CMDS was part of a consortium that was contracted by the European Commission to conduct the independent study "Indicators for media pluralism in the Member States - towards a risk-based approach" (2008-2009). Other partners of the consortium were K.U.Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), Ernst & Young Belgium, and Jönköping International Business School.

The output of the study, including the final report as well as a user guide and an Excel file containing the indicators embedded in a risk-based scoring system, is available online on the European Commission website. 

The study was one of the three steps in the Commission's approach for advancing the debate on media pluralism. The goal of the study was to create an effective monitoring tool to help the European Commission, but also national policy makers and other stakeholders, to assess media pluralism within the EU. This tool should be able to signal when and where risks to media pluralism might occur.

The analytical framework contained three types of indicators:

  • a set of indicators to measure (the presence and effectiveness of) policies and legal instruments that support pluralism in Member States;
  • a set of indicators to measure the range of media available to citizens in different Member States and to define different types of media markets from an end-user perspective and in the light of socio-demographic factors;
  • a set of indicators to assess the range and diversity of media looking at the supply side and economic performance of the media (such as the number of media companies, concentration and profitability ratios, etc.).

CMDS was responsible for developing the second set of indicators on socio-demographic factors of risk. The reserach team for this part of the project consisted of: Prof. Dr. Miklos Sukosd (CEU-CMCS), Arne Hintz (CEU-CMCS), Beata Klimkiewicz (Jagellonian University, Poland), Brankica Petkovic (Peace Institute, Slovenia), Sandra Hrvatin (Ljubljana University) and Laura Ranca (CEU-CMCS).

As a follow-up to the project, the European Commission, with an open tender, awarded a grant to the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF) to conduct the first Europe-wide monitor of risks for media pluralism: the Media Pluralism Monitor 2016 (MPM2016). The Centre, acting independently from the Commission and Member States, will implement the tool with the contribution of CMDS, which it developed through the two pilot test implementations in 2014 and 2015. The two pilots have already shown that no EU member state is today free from risks for media pluralism.

The MPM2016 project will implement a final version of the measuring tool and will assess risks for media pluralism in EU28 and two candidate countries.

Results of the first pilot test implementation (MPM2014) are available here. 
The results of the second pilot test implementation conducted in 2015 will be published in the upcoming weeks (end of March 2016) on the MPM website.