European Media Database

The Institute of Media and Communications Policy plans to expand its existing media database mediadb.eu by quantitatively and especially qualitatively encompassing and analyzing the European media markets. The overall concept is designed to make the media-related power structures more transparent and accessible.
Unlike similar efforts by academic institutions that evaluate numbers and facts in a strictly scientific way, in the long run mediadb.eu plans to encompass the media landscapes of all 28 European member states by applying far more accessible and popular means of presenting results.
The pilot project, which is currently in its beta-version, takes an in-depth look at the media markets of Greece, Spain and Poland. In contrast to well-documented cases such as Germany, France, and Great Britain, the media markets of these countries are rather unknown to broader European audiences. Also they each represent peculiar types: In Greece the publishing and television market is controlled by a handful of corporations. Insufficient media regulation and corruption often prevent transparency in regard to exposing the degree of media concentration. In Spain the recent financial crisis has severely affected the media sector and especially the newspaper landscape. In both cases is crucial to examine how the recession and the accompanying mass unemployment will affect the media and public discourses. In the case of Poland - a concise example for the post-cold war development of the eastern European media sector - the transformation from state-owned into privately-held media outlets led to a predominantly corporate media culture which is nonetheless at times influenced by state actors and political parties.
National as well as regional media markets in Europe are increasingly dominated by media corporations, companies and conglomerates that operate internationally. Thus the database plans to cover and portray the biggest and most relevant places of location for the media industry in each of the three countries.