Questions
- What are the key roles played by the media in democratic society? [Blogpost and KP1]
- How would you define ‘the media’ in the context of the present multi-media ecosystem? Refer in your answer to relevant theories, regulatory and policy instruments and case-law. [Blogpost]
- List and explain the five most important principles that have shaped the European Court of Human Rights’ approach to media freedom. [Blogpost and infographic]
- Explain, in your own words, how the European Court of Human Rights has developed the principle of media pluralism in its case-law. [Blogpost, infographic and, more extensively, KP4]
- What are the main aims and focuses of the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA)? [Video]
- How does the EMFA fit into the broader European media regulatory and policy framework? [Video and blogpost]
- What is the (added) value of the EMFA for the protection of media freedom and pluralism in Europe? [Video; please note that this question also has a central place in Exercise 2, below]
Exercises
1. The Power of the media
[a reflective and creative assignment requiring a very good, multidisciplinary understanding of how the media and social media platforms work and how they can influence individual and public opinion-formation, drawing on reception analysis theory and media effects theory]
In his 1999 book, Why study the media?, Roger Silverstone wrote, very perspicaciously:
“It’s all about power, of course. In the end. The power the media have to set an agenda. The power they have to destroy one. The power they have to influence and change the political process. The power to enable, to inform. The power to deceive. The power to shift the balance of power: between state and citizen; between country and country; between producer and consumer. And the power that they are denied: by the state, by the market, by the resistant or resisting audience, citizen, consumer. It is all about ownership and control: the who and the what and the how of it. And it is about the drip, drip, drip of ideology as well as the shock of the luminous event. It is about the media’s power to create and sustain meanings; to persuade, endorse and reinforce. The power to undermine and reassure. It is about reach. And it is about representation: the ability to present, reveal, explain; and also the ability to grant access and participation. It is about the power to listen and the power to speak and be heard. The power to prompt and guide reflection and reflexivity. The power to tell tales and articulate memories.”[1]
Preparatory assignment
Re-write this passage, adjusting the perspective to that of ‘social media platforms’ instead of ‘media’.
Group activity
[Plenary or in sub-groups]
- Discuss your text, drafting strategy and specific drafting choices with the other members of your group.
- Instruct GenAI software to do the preparatory assignment:
– Discuss and decide which initial prompts you should give.
– Discuss and decide how to refine your prompts to yield better results. - Assess the text created by GenAI in a critical manner.
- Which is better: your text or the GenAI text? Why?
2. Comparing and assessing media freedom principles at the European level
[a higher cognitive level assignment involving comparing, contrasting and evaluating different articulations of principles of media freedom and pluralism under the Council of Europe and European Union frameworks]
Make lists of the most important principles of media freedom and media pluralism, as developed in:
- the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights;
- the European Media Freedom Act.
Compare and contrast the lists as follows:
- Which principles on list (a) correspond to principles on list (b)?
- Which principles on list (a) do not feature on list (b)?
- Which principles on list (b) do not feature on list (a)?
Assess and then discuss your findings in small groups (or in a plenary discussion). What conclusions can we draw from these findings about the (added) value of the EMFA for the protection of media freedom and pluralism in Europe?
[1] Roger Silverstone, Why Study the Media? (London/Thousand Oaks, CA/New Delhi, SAGE Publications, 1999), p. 143.