Hungarian Media Ownership: A Network Analysis

The aim of the project, supported by the Open Society Foundations is to increase transparency of the ownership structures of Hungary’s media market and to explore the utility of network analysis techniques as a means of quantifying and visualizing trends in market concentration. Specifically, this project would use network analysis to map the relationship between the country’s top media companies based on ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs) in order to identify and assess patterns of ownership consolidation and market influence over time.

The analysis would include a series of comparative visualizations of ownership networks in Hungary, based on links between beneficial owners, for specified years (between 1998 and 2014). It will also be accompanied by a short written report prepared by project team members that analyses the growth (or recession) of key ownership clusters based on the density of network links and it also assesses the levels of transparency of ownership information by identifying which ownership chains end with non-transparent UBOs (eg holding companies, on or off shore).

These outputs will serve as the pilot phase for our Center’s broader work on media market and ownership transparency issues and CMDS aims to develop a methodology for examining ownership structures that can be used for assessing these in other countries in the region and in Europe.