You are invited to “host” indicators in our workshop, making a short oral presentation with general findings within this one indicator (cross-country). You can find the reports under the tab "Edition 2020 -> Country Reports - provisional" above in the menu (or directly through this link). Tell us which indicator (or several) you would like to comment by writing your name in the respective box at your earliest convenience: https://myfiles.sbg.ac.at/index.php/apps/onlyoffice/s/bfS7y6tN5b7FCao

Best,

Tales

We are already uploading the reports of the Edition 2020. Where you are logged in our forum, you can see them here: http://euromediagroup.org/mdm/2020-country-reports/. As this is rather for internal work, you will not be able to see these reports without being logged in. It's not public yet.

Please bear in mind that this is work in progress. We'll discuss it further over the workshop and next weeks.

Best,

Tales

We agree that some indicators relate to the entire media system. This is, however, necessary to understand and explain the performance of the media. E.g. media ownership concentration indicators are important for each media company.

Translate into national context: Yes, this is necessary and should be done carefully. Problems are addressed in the Salzburg workshop (we put it on the agenda)

Indicator E4: This indicator now refers to both, minority AND alternative media, and information should be given on both. Also credits should be awarded with respect to both aspects.

Indicator C9: In our understanding, watchdogs do investigations, and investigations constitute watchdog journalism. We cannot clearly divide the tasks here. When in doubt, please focus on investigative journalism, and the resources needed for it.

• we realize that some indicators are quite general and relate to the media system, while others are specific and speak to the individual company;
• in some cases we need to 'translate' for the national context the language and approach of indicators - methodological caution will certainly be discussed in Salzburg
• indicator E4 includes two different 'realities': in fact 'minority media' is not the same as 'alternative'. In the previous edition we realize this has been understood as mainly 'minority' and related to languages spoken in the country. We shall nevertheless also work out a paragraph on 'alternative', which is quite relevant to reflect on the overall democratic situation;
• in a similar vein, C9: we believe 'watchdog' as a function is  different from 'investigative journalism'. It would be good to have some feedback on this...

Best Claudia

The first interviews with journalists /editors are scheduled by the end of this week, and we have a question regarding confidentiality.  In the Research manual: Interview guidelines we are asked to list all interviews (persons, company, date etc) for reference.  Is that a list that will be published? Or can we promise our interviewees that what information they give us will be in confidence?

We can promise confidentiality. What we would like to publish is simple the name of the media companies we talked with. But not the names of the individual journalist.

==

Question:

Regarding the number of interviews and media outlets: Should we understand that, for every communication media included in our sample, we should conduct two interviews? That is, if we have decided to use a sample of 8 media, should we have 16 interviews?

There is no need for formally sticking to the number. This is qualitative research and what counts is the information gathered. If you consider that you have gathered the relevant information, there is no need to do more interviews (up to the point of saturation).

Lars Nord is professor and chair of political communication at Mid Sweden University in Sundsvall. His main research interests are election campaigns, political journalism and media policy. He co-edited Euroflections. Leading academics on the European elections 2019  (DEMICOM, 2019)

Torbjörn von Krogh is a former reporter and editor turned media researcher, affiliated to  Mid Sweden University. His interests concern media criticism, media ethics and media accountability. He wrote the chapter on Sweden forThe European Handbook of Media Accountability (Routledge, 2018).

Claudia Padovani is Associate Professor in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Padova (Italy). her main areas of interest concern the transformation of political processes in the global context and their connection to the evolution of communications and its governance, with a special focus on gender equality issues and communication rights.

(In both ways, the files are stored in servers from the University of Salzburg.)