Journal of Digital Media & Policy - Online First

Nordic broadcasters have created guidelines that will shape their future radio and audio offerings. As large international enterprises occupy increasing shares of national audio markets, Nordic broadcasters are reconsidering their relationships with third-party platforms. For example, the Finnish Yleisradio (Yle) decided to close one of its FM radio channels. At the same time, the company removed its podcasts from third-party platforms. Currently, Yle aims to substantially increase its podcast offerings on its own digital platform. This comparative study of four public service media (PSM) organizations in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway and their audio strategies shows that the experts responsible for developing audio services have increasing doubts regarding the distribution of their content on third-party platforms. This study suggests that PSMs’ relationships with third-party platforms have become more complex than before, challenging the core PSM value of universalism. The study also argues that national media policies are incapable of regulating international audio distribution.

This article assesses the viability of RTÉ, Ireland’s main public service media (PSM) organization, as an institution and media organization against the backdrop of the largest challenges affecting PSM today. It questions the extent (1) the presence of global platforms, (2) shifting media use and (3) (continued) government support have affected the programming, structure and legitimacy of the Irish public broadcaster. The analytical framework that serves as the basis for our analysis combines a media policy and political economy approach with cultural-sociological analysis. Using expert interviews and document analysis, we show that many of the challenges of RTÉ are generalizable in a European context and a wider international context. We argue that while the government may not be directly undermining RTÉ, its funding position may become so eroded that it would no longer be able to deliver what one of our interviewees describes as a ‘BBC-sized mission in a small jurisdiction’.

Two-way communication between the government and the public requires advanced information and communications technology (ICT). As a participatory platform, social media can facilitate public engagement and assist the authorities in introducing co-production of services with higher quality and at lower cost. This study examines the possibility, potential and challenges of digitizing the government and implementing two-way communication via social media in order to improve government information provision in an evolving digital ecosystem, using the Kurdistan regional government (KRG) as a case study. The study has adopted a survey method that gathered questionnaire responses from public servants working for the KRG, usually referred to as ‘employees’ in the Kurdistan region of Iraq (KRI), carried out between February 2019 and June 2019 (n = 1215). The findings suggest that, at present, individual KRG employees use social media on their own initiative without following structured policies or coordinated plans involving the whole of government. As a result, this study recommends that the government develop structured criteria and a formal policy for using social media across all government institutions.

This article provides a contribution to knowledge on the growth of online news commenting in Nigeria. Specifically, it accounts for factors that influence the character of the often-fractious online discursive behaviour in evidence and what communication policy understandings might be developed from this. The article innovates by deploying a combined political economy–communication policy approach with two purposes in mind. First, drawing inspiration from the criticality of political economy, it shows how the ‘representational’ role of online news media sets the context for the nature of the discourse in evidence premised on the long-established assertion that media content is not value-free but shaped by ideological positions. Second, underpinned by a recently resurfaced argument espousing the value of a combined utilization of the critical and administrative approaches to communication research, the article puts forward a set of policy-related findings for media change in Nigerian polity often characterized by significant societal disquiet.

Due to the media goods’ dual economic and cultural role, merger and acquisition (M&A) assessments are complex and differ from M&As in other sectors. An additional layer of complexity is added to the assessment when various authorities are involved. An even more complicated matter is when the authorities have different remits. These authorities mostly comprise National Competition Authorities that enforce competition law, focused on economic considerations, and National Regulatory Authorities that enforce and oversee the application of media law, focused not only on setting rules and limitations on the media market but also on considering non-economic elements such as plurality. In certain countries, ministries and government authorities can intervene in these assessments. There have been discussions on the need for cooperation between authorities, however, mostly at the international level. Thus, little is known about the current cooperation procedures at the national level. The article proposes a typology of cooperation at the EU member states level and the United Kingdom and introduces the concept of the ‘power pyramid’ to represent the hierarchical relationships between authorities. Cooperation proves that competition policy and mediaspecific regulation are intertwined and are complementary. Furthermore, the article shows that having more than one authority assessing media M&As leads to media pluralism being more often explicitly one of the criteria used in the assessments, and thus providing a more holistic approach.