Quality of European News Ecology
2nd workshop of the Jean Monnet Network on European Media and Platform Policies (EuromediApp)
10-11 June 2021
Venue: https://uni-salzburg.webex.com/meet/tales.tomaz
Program
Thu 10 at 15-17:00 CET - First seminar
Susana Salgado (Lisbon) and Colin Porlezza (Lugano/London)
- Facilitator: Tales Tomaz (Salzburg)
Fri 11 at 10-12:00 CET – Second seminar
Helle Sjøvaag (Stavanger) and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (Oxford, Reuters)
- Facilitator: Auksė Balčytienė (Kaunas)
Fri 11 at 14:00-15:30 CET – Podium
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Colin Porlezza, Susana Salgado and Helle Sjøvaag
- Facilitator: Leen d’Haenens (Leuven)
- Conclusions: Josef Trappel (Salzburg)
Speakers
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Professor of Political Communication at the University of Oxford and Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, UK
Colin Porlezza, Visiting Professor with the Institute of Media and Journalism IMeG at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland, and Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Journalism at City, University London, UK
Susana Salgado, Professor of political communication and media and politics and Principal Researcher at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Helle Sjøvaag, Professor of journalism with the department of media and social sciences at University of Stavanger, Norway
Context
This second workshop by the Jean Monnet Network “EuromediApp” concentrates on Europe’s news ecology and how it develops in uncertain times. The Covid-19 pandemic is just an additional driver on top of structural transformations advanced by (1) digitization of the entire news production process, (2) further ownership concentration among leading news media, (3) precarization of journalistic jobs, (4) modified news consumption habits, (5) economic constraints following from the gradual decay of the traditional advertising-based business models of commercial media, and other influencing factors.
In the second EuromediApp workshop, eminent guests will address four questions in their opening remarks, discussed by members and friends of the Euromedia Research Group. Members of the organizing committee and the EMRG will act as respondents to the guest speakers. Each session is scheduled to last two hours, with two presenters each (Thursday afternoon and Friday morning). Friday afternoon will bring together all speakers in a podium-style debate to discuss and
conclude the main strengths and challenges of the contemporary news ecology and, in particular, the corresponding policy agenda.
These findings will further serve as input in the EuromediApp Winter School in February 2022, where advanced Master students and PhD candidates have the opportunity to discuss news ecologies and policies with scholarly experts.
The four input questions for this workshop are:
- How do the recent developments digitalization, platformization and algorithmization relate to plurality, and to what extent do news media and journalism react to serve citizens’ information needs?
- Which strategies could news media adopt to fulfil public interest expectations in the age of platformisation? Distinguish larger and smaller (language) areas.
- Should the concept of public service media be extended to platform communication? How to create the political conditions for it?
- What further political responses would you propose vis-à-vis hyper-commercial platforms in order to expand democracy-oriented news media and responsive journalism?
