MEDIADELCOM

Researcher: Professor Peter Berglez

Funding: EU/Horizon2020

The purpose of this three-year project (2021–2024), funded by the EU/Horizon2020 (size of project: 3 million Euro in total, with 6 million SEK for the Swedish research team), is to explore media’s development in fourteen EU states in terms of its ability to promote deliberative communication. In this context, deliberative communication refers to citizens’ democratic participation and active exchange of socially relevant ideas. Central values are pluralism, transparency and truth. In this holistic approach, media’s development is examined from several perspectives simultaneously, including economic development, media law development, working conditions in the media sector, journalistic competence, media accountability, media use, etc. A great deal of research is already available on these topics, but few attempts have been made to explore all of them and their complex relations as a whole. An important task is therefore to collect and analyze data already available in the different countries, i.e. to perform meta-analyses, but these need to be complemented with interviews with media experts, both in academia and the media sector. A central aim of the project is to develop a model for understanding and predicting the sustainability of media’s capacity to serve the values of deliberative communication. This is done by examining identified scenarios of risks or opportunities generated by the complex relations between economic, legal, technological, organizational and other forms of media development. Other Swedish researchers in the project are Professor Lars Nord at Mid Sweden University and Associate Professor Mart Ots at Jönköping University. The project is coordinated by Tartu University, and Professor Halliki Harro-Loit.

https://www.mediadelcom.eu/