ECREA16-Abstract

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Friday, November 11

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CLP05

The Interaction BetweenMedia Policy andMediaMarkets: An Analysis of Small European Countries

M. Milosavljevič

University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Economic forces of globalization and harmonization of media legislation at the European level have often provoked concerns about the residual power

of Member States of the European Union and/or European Economic Area to develop, implement and adapt media policies. Moreover, the effectiveness

of these policies, once implemented, is questioned as well. States are increasingly considered dwarfs left with limited competencies that do not suffice to

further goals like pluralism, quality, diversity and universal access. Not only are competencies said to become more limited, several scholars have also crit‑

icized several European countries for moving away from a social responsibility and/or democratic corporatist media model towards a liberal media model.

Whereas there is indeed a tendency of de-regulation and liberalization to be observed across Europe, one can at the same time notice a certain reluctance

of small countries to completely go along with the recipes of the free market, be it for public interest or protectionist reasons. Rather, controlled liberal‑

ization – i.e. finding some third way in between liberalization and protectionist – seems to a preferred option. In that sense, media policy can play and

continues to play a role in shaping media markets.To what extent this is the case and what the different approaches in terms of controlled liberalization are,

is the subject of the proposed panel. Focus is on small European countries and/or regions. How do they approach media policy in areas related to television

broadcasting? Are policy makers setting out from an implicit or explicit vision on media policy and the role it plays / should play in media markets? Is this

a vision shared with stakeholders, whether corporate or civil society? What is the influence of the corporate sector vs. civil society on media policy making?

Do we see evolutions in terms of vision or not? Is there room for academic input? Etc. The panel consists of five papers, covering analyses of different coun‑

tries/regions, but also comparative case studies. Papers combine empirical methods such as desk research, market analysis, qualitative document analysis,

expert interviews, etc. References Van den Bulck, H. and Donders, K. (2014). Pitfalls and obstacles of media policy making in an age of digital convergence:

The Flemish signal integrity case. In Journal of Information Policy 4, pp.444–462. Hallin, D.C and Mancini, P. (2004). Comparing media systems: three mod‑

els of media and politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lowe, G.F. and Nissen, C.S. (Eds) Small among giants: Television broadcasting in smaller

countries, Göteborg, Nordicom; Syvertsen, T., Enli, G., Mjos, O. and Moe, H. (2014). The media welfare state: Nordic media in the digital era, Michigan:

University of Michigan Press.

PN 153

Does the Public Interest Matter for Companies in the Media Sector? A Comparative Analysis of Experiences in Flanders and Norway

K. Donders

, T. Raats

, T. Syvertsen

, G. Enli

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Communication Sciences, Brussels, Belgium

University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

Scientific research has elaborated quite extensively on the role of public broadcasters or, in more contemporary speech, public service media providers in

society. Their specific position in democracy and superiority to market models of media provision is subject of influential work done by scholars such as

Michael Tracey (1998), Nicholas Garnham (2000) and various RIPE edited collections, edited by Lowe. Concepts like public interest and public value, albeit

the latter criticized for being overly managerial in nature (Moe and Van den Bulck, 2014), are often used in debates on the uniqueness of public service me‑

dia. In a similar vein, many books and articles about the evolution of media policies and markets in Europe talk about a lessening importance of the public

interest in developing media policies (Van Cuilenburg and McQuail, 2003; Van den Bulck and Donders, 2014) and some scholars even allege that a capitalist

organization of media markets is incapable of working to the benefit of the citizen and society at large (McChesney, 2014). Others have counterargued

saying that liberalization of media has, notably in smaller markets, been moulded to fit within historical, political, social, economic and cultural contexts on

the one hand and to reconcile goals of profit maximization and economic growth with important aspirations regarding national identity, cultural production

and national language. Syversten et al. (2014) illustrate such a specific situation exists in Scandinavian countries and dub the mixed situation – i.e. com‑

bining a liberalized market with the ambition to realize public interest objectives – the “media welfare state”. Against this background, we aim to analyze

whether and to what extent the public interest, public value or, even more abstract, non-economic values play a role, not so much in government policies,

but rather in media companies’ strategy development. Semi-structured stakeholder interviews (for an elaboration of methodology see Raats et al., 2015)

will be conducted in both Flanders and Norway in Spring 2016. Stakeholders included are private broadcasters, television production companies, television

distribution companies, public broadcaster(s), newspaper publishers and emerging online journalism initiatives. Interviews will also consider the actual

and desirable role respondents assign to government policy in terms of co-shaping (or not) media markets. Flanders and Norway are selected for various

reasons. Both are small media markets with limited audiences (6,5 million and x million inhabitants respectively), can be considered a small language area

(hence, also limited export potential), have a strong public broadcaster and local private media companies, and a high GDP.There are also notable differenc‑

es in terms of market structure and the public funding of the public broadcasters VRT and NRK (with the latter receiving considerably more public funding).

These similarities and differences make Flanders and Norway interesting case studies.This paper aims to fill a void inmedia studies research, which has quite

extensively studied public broadcasters’ strategies and motivations (e.g., Donders, 2012), but has neglected to empirically investigate how private media

companies conceive of their role in media markets and society.