Portugal – (E6) Content monitoring instrument

There are four main entities that regularly deal with media monitoring issues:

• ERC (Entidade Reguladora para a Comunicação Social) This is the official regulatory body for the media, with its members elected by the Parliament by a minimum majority of 2/3 of the votes. Apart from other activities (licensing, regulating, sanctioning), ERC also has a monitoring function to check whether the general rules and obligations (for example, in the Public Broadcasting Service) are fulfilled. Besides its annual report, including a great deal of data on the media field, it regularly publishes a newsletter and conducts – in partnership with universities – studies on specific issues about media activity and performance.
• OBERCOM (Observatório da Comunicação) Although private, this observatory has great involvement in public institutions connected with the media and uses State facilities to carry out its work. The most important associations and media companies are partners. It regularly publishes a “Yearbook” with a detailed description of the media business in Portugal, and leads (or funds) studies and research projects aimed to achieve “better knowledge of the communication area”. It also publishes an online scientific refereed journal.
• MARKTEST This private company is responsible for monitoring activities regarding media audiences and audiometric, either in television or radio, the press or the Internet. The results of its monitoring work are regularly used when anyone wants to describe the state of the media, from the point of view of its reception and audience. Some major figures from its findings go public regularly, but the detailed information must be paid for.
• APCT (Associação Portuguesa para o Controlo de Tiragem e de Circulação) This is also a private entity, created by the voluntary association of the press companies, and was designed to permanently monitor the number of copies printed, diffused and actually sold. Membership is voluntary, but all the relevant print media (with one single exception) joined it.

Besides the regular activity of these institutions, some media monitoring work is also done by research groups at universities² and by individual or collective blogs concerned with the media business. Not to mention the increasing debate over these issues in the social networks, particularly Facebook (with its three million users).