Historically, news media have been ascribed different roles in sustaining and promoting democracies, considering both liberal and republican traditions. This paper addresses the structural conditions for the fulfilment of these roles, focusing on continuities and changes in the 2010 decade. It follows the approach of the research project Media for Democracy Monitor, originally established in 2011 (d’Haenens et al., 2009; Trappel et al., 2011; Trappel & Meier, 2011) and further developed in 2021 (Trappel & Tomaz, 2021a, 2021b). In this framework, democracies are understood as political systems with solid institutional support for the progress of three main goals: freedom, equality, and accountability (Diamond & Morlino, 2004). Considering several normative accounts of media roles in democracies (Baker, 2004; Christians et al., 2009; Dahlgren, 2007; Glasser, 2009; McQuail, 2009; Zaller, 2003), this triple goals can be translated into a mandate for the media to respectively inform (freedom), mediate different interests (equality), and report wrongdoings (accountability, control). In the MDM, we apply 30 qualitative indicators out of these triple mandate to empirically assess to what extent current media conditions foster or impede those democratic goals. Both in 2011 and 2021, data was collected in participating countries that display the political characteristics described above, allowing for a longitudinal comparison in 9 countries, namely Australia, Austria, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom. Data was collected by national teams of scholars by means of semi-structured interviews with representatives of leading news media (media owners, editors, reporters), research experts and union representatives, as well as the use of secondary sources, such as the Digital News Report and other national or local reports. Though the MDM indicators are qualitative, quantitative grading is added to facilitate comparison. While thematic findings of longitudinal comparisons were addressed in several chapters of a book volume published in the Winter 2022 (Trappel & Tomaz, 2022), this paper presents an overall assessment. The most important finding is an overall stability in the last decade, despite the disruptions caused by digitalisation. The recent technological developments predicted at least some erosion of the conditions for a meaningful contribution of professional news production to democracy, but taking these normative roles as reference, our data shows that leading news media still provide a similar contribution. But structural conditions for some roles have worsened, such as patterns of news consumption (from 83% to 74% of the total points in a cross-country assessment). Affordability of news media (97% to 89%) and the existence of content monitoring instruments (63% to 56%) have also experienced a retreat. Most criteria, however, remained stable, with some remarkable improvements, such as internal democratic practices in newsrooms (47% to 56%), diversity of news formats (77% to 85%) and professionalisation standards (measured in several indicators). Roles related to the broader mandate of accountability and control presented the biggest improvement in the last decade.
| Period | 21 Oct 2022 |
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| Event title | ECREA Conference 2022: Rethink Impact |
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| Event type | Conference |
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| Location | Aarhus, DenmarkShow on map |
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| Degree of Recognition | International |
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- 508 Media and Communication Sciences