Like in MDM 2011 (Marcinkowski & Donk, 2011), scholars, university institutes, and specialised private agencies and companies still provide content monitoring. A private institution, linked to the biggest public service media provider ARD, provides mostly quantitative content analysis about the Internet and audiovisual media, as well as related usage patterns. Results and reports are published free of charge online and in the journal Media Perspektiven. Empirical data and studies offer independent insights and are highly useful for research purposes. Two other institutions (IFEM – Institut für empirische Medienforschung and GöfaK Medienforschung) also produce print, Internet, and audiovisual content analysis, which are publicly funded and published on their websites, in Media Perspektiven and special reports. The InfoMonitor (IFEM) monthly reports feature the most salient political news, politicians, and topics. During the Covid-19 crisis, the institute published access to free quantitative research about Covid-19 discourse in the most-viewed news shows on television, Tagesschau and heute.
The GöfaK Institute conducts applied and contracted research for the Landesmedienanstalten, the authority responsible for licensing commercial television and radio stations and funded by public service licence fees. GöfaK is also concerned with the research topic media and migrants. Related studies are publicly accessible and free of charge, but are more relevant for scholars and research institutions. Between 1998 and 2018, the Landesmedienanstalten established a continuous television programme published in the ALM-report, which was replaced in 2016 by the annual Content Bericht. It analysed the content quality of public service and commercial television (Weiß et al., 2019).
Additionally, public service media are obliged to produce a report to justify the public value of their content, the Declaration of Self-Commitment [Selbstverpflichtungserklärung]. The Public Value Test [Drei-Stufen-Test], which is due if new services are implemented, is only published internally.
What is missing are external monitoring institutions to monitor the quality and performance of large media corporations. Accordingly, there is no systematic monitoring for the press. International companies like MediaTenor offer special strategic information and services for customers, like media companies or editorial units.
Free monitoring instruments have been established by unions and parts of non-governmental organisations and scientific institutions, or by initiatives. One of them is a privately funded non-governmental organisation by famous television actors Maria and Elisabeth Furtwängler, MaLisa foundation (see Indicator F9 – Gender equality in media content).
All of these monitoring instruments – free of charge or not – are usually not published by relevant news media, but by scientific journals or special interest magazines. Consequently, their public visibility is rather low.
