Iceland has never self-inspected its media content, and neither is it now. No publicly accessible media content monitoring is in place. A private company, Creditinfo Fjölmiðlavaktin [The media watch], collects all sorts of media content in their database, but access is restricted, and analysis is sold to commercial customers only. This database is highly useful for research purposes, and the company has on occasion worked with or given researchers access to the data, most notably when researchers from the University of Iceland and University of Akureyri analysed economic coverage in the media in the run-up to the financial crisis in 2008 (Guðmundsson et al., 2010; Guðmundsson & Jóhannsdóttir, 2010). Creditinfo also worked with the Association of Women in Business in mapping and monitoring gender representation in broadcasting news and news programmes in 2013 (FKA, 2020). Occasionally, Creditinfo publishes rankings, such as the representation of politicians in Icelandic media (“Who has been mentioned most often?”).
Additionally, Statistics Iceland collects and publishes data on the amount and share of Nordic and European programmes within the entire programming of both the public broadcasting service and private television (Statistics Iceland, n.d.), but this data is not updated often (the latest data from 2010), for lack of resources and funding. These reports also focus on numbers, counting minutes and genres, but not on content and quality itself.
The public service broadcaster RÚV is obliged by law (Act no. 23/2013) to publish an annual analysis of its programme (Parliament, 2013). These annual reports are produced internally and published on RÚV’s website (RÚV, 2019a).
Some external content research has been done at universities in addition to those mentioned above. Jóhannsdóttir (2018) and Guðmundsson (2012) studied commercialisation in the press, and Jóhannsdóttir and Einarsdóttir (2015) examined gender representation in the news media, to mention a few. However, no systematic and continuous monitoring or analysis of media content and quality is to be found.
