Media and Journalism Research Center

17/10/2026

A new article by Adriana Mutu, PhD (ESIC Business & Marketing School) and Mireia P. (ESIC Business & Marketing School), published by VIA Empresa, looks at where influencers fit into Europe’s increasingly complex digital regulatory landscape and asks a bigger question: who actually regulates the digital ecosystem?
Influencer activity now sits at the intersection of several areas of regulation, from audiovisual media and consumer protection to platform rules and AI.
The challenge isn’t necessarily a lack of rules. It’s how different frameworks, including the AVMSD, DSA, consumer protection rules and AI regulation, overlap, interact and are ultimately enforced.

The article is in Spanish, below:

L'activitat dels 'influencers' se situa en la intersecció entre la regulació audiovisual, la protecció dels consumidors, la regulació de plataformes i altres àmbits com la IA

16/10/2026

Our latest study from the Global Media Finances Map looks at where Google’s money is flowing across Europe and where it isn’t.

Written by Marius Dragomir, the study draws on company registries and audited accounts from 36 Google companies across 21 European countries.

For journalism, the findings point to five important trends: Google’s own properties are growing faster than its publisher network; the relationship between search and news is becoming less valuable to publishers; experiments with the value of news to Google’s advertising business leave important questions unanswered; AI is creating a new battleground over rights and compensation; and regulators are taking action, but slowly.

Together, these trends offer a clearer picture of how Google’s growing role in the European information ecosystem is affecting journalism.

Find out more below!

Google Ireland Limited reported €86.6bn in turnover in 2024, yet the Google companies that news publishers can inspect in their own countries say little about the advertising markets they share. That gap is the subject of Booked in Dublin: Google's European Finances in 2024, published by the Media...

15/10/2026

Un avance significativo de nuestro proyecto State Media Monitor: uno de los mayores organismos públicos de radiodifusión de Europa ha salido de la categoría de medios controlados por el Estado por primera vez en años. La revisión de State Media Monitor de septiembre de 2026 reclasifica a RTVE, que pasa de la categoría de medio controlado por el Estado a la de medio independiente financiado y gestionado por el Estado. Es decir, pasa de estar fuera del grupo de medios independientes a formar parte de él.
¿Qué significa este cambio? La categoría de medios controlados por el Estado se reserva para aquellos cuya línea editorial es impuesta o aprobada por las autoridades estatales. La nueva clasificación describe a un organismo financiado y gestionado por el Estado, pero cuya actividad periodística no está dirigida por las autoridades. Se trata de una evaluación de la práctica editorial, y esta reclasificación refleja una mejora de su independencia.

Análisis completo en la web de State Media Monitor.

In the spotlight State Media Monitor Upgrades Spain’s RTVE to the Independent Category October 1, 2026October 1, 2026 State Media Monitor has moved Spain’s public broadcaster, RTVE, into a better classification. In its September 2026 review, SMM reclassified RTVE from State-Controlled (SC) to In...

15/10/2026

A significant development from our State Media Monitor project: one of Europe's largest public broadcasters has moved out of the State-Controlled category for the first time in years. State Media Monitor's September 2026 review reclassifies RTVE from State-Controlled to Independent State-Funded and State-Managed: from outside the independent group to inside it.

What it means: State-Controlled is reserved for outlets whose editorial line is imposed or approved by state authorities. The new category describes a broadcaster funded and managed by the state, but whose journalism is not directed by it. It is a judgment about editorial practice and the reclassification is an improvement of its independence.

Full analysis on the State Media Monitor site.

In the spotlight State Media Monitor Upgrades Spain’s RTVE to the Independent Category October 1, 2026October 1, 2026 State Media Monitor has moved Spain’s public broadcaster, RTVE, into a better classification. In its September 2026 review, SMM reclassified RTVE from State-Controlled (SC) to In...

14/10/2026

Our latest issue of New Ideas in Media and Communication features a new study looking at how major European news outlets covered the climate crisis.

In “Framing the Climate Crisis in European Media: A Comparative Study of Five Major News Outlets,” MJRC research fellow Tanveer Abbas analyses 112 articles published by DER SPIEGEL, Le Monde, la Repubblica, Gazeta Wyborcza and El País between 2022 and 2025.

One finding stands out: national sovereignty was the most common way these outlets framed climate change, appearing in 39 articles, compared with 29 that foregrounded scientific urgency.

Sovereignty was the dominant frame in the German, French and Italian outlets, suggesting a pattern that cuts across the usual north-west/south-east divide often used in research on European media.

The full article is available to read free of charge on the New Ideas in Media and Communication journal page. MJRC charges neither authors nor readers.

A new article published in New Ideas in Media and Communication, the academic journal of the Media and Journalism Research Center, finds that national sovereignty, not scientific urgency, is the single most common way five of Europe's leading newspapers framed climate change between 2022 and 2025. I...

14/10/2026

We’re happy to share a new publication by our expert Bouziane Zaid, whose article “Structural Media Capture: Rethinking Media in the Global South” has been published in Communication Theory/ International Communication Association

At the heart of the article is a question about how we think about media systems in different parts of the world. Media theory has often used the liberal-democratic model as the main point of reference, which can lead to media systems in the Global South being described mainly through what they are missing or how they differ from Western models. Bouziane takes a different approach. He argues that we need to look more closely at the histories, institutions, and political realities that have shaped these media systems, rather than measuring them against a single model.

The article is an early look at ideas that will be explored in greater depth in his forthcoming book, Structural Media Capture: A Framework for Journalism, Politics, and Platform Power in the Global South, to be published by Indiana University Press in February 2027.

Abstract. This article develops Structural Media Capture (SMC) as a theoretical framework for rethinking media power in postcolonial settings. Challenging

09/10/2026

As part of our autumn State Media Monitor update, we’re pleased to share our new 2026 mapping of State and Public Media in Eurasia.

This year’s update covers 60 active media entries across 12 Eurasian jurisdictions: Russia; the five Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan; Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the South Caucasus; and Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine in Eastern Europe.
The findings paint a stark picture. 58 of the 60 entries (96.7%) belong to the non-independent family. This includes 49 State-Controlled Media outlets, six Captured Public or State Managed/Owned Media outlets, and three Captured Private Media outlets.

Only two entries (3.3%) are classified as independent: Moldova’s Teleradio-Moldova and Ukraine’s Suspilne. There are currently no independent-family entries mapped in Russia, Central Asia or the South Caucasus.

The State Media Monitor is the most comprehensive database of state and public media available, tracking ownership, control and independence across media systems worldwide.
Read more about the 2026 Eurasia update below.

https://statemediamonitor.com/2026/09/state-and-public-media-in-eurasia-in-2026/

09/10/2026

Our colleagues at MediaPowerMonitor just published a brief article about the machine-assisted academic literature and the key players in this industry. It also mentioned our newly launched Media and Information Research Commons that proposes a new way of academic publishing.

https://mpmonitor.org/the-machine-assisted-literature-how-ai-took-over-academic-publishing-and-who-is-getting-paid-for-it/

In the spring of 2025, Jacqueline Ewart, a professor of communication at Griffith University in Australia, received a Google Scholar alert for a paper she recognized. She had reviewed it months earlier for the Journal of Radio & Audio Media and recommended rejection: the writing sounded machine-gene...

08/10/2026

We’re pleased to see our research on Google’s financial and market footprint in Europe cited by People vs Big Tech.
Our research examined Google’s business in the EU between 2020 and 2023, drawing on company filings and national statistics from all 27 EU member states to build a clearer picture of the company’s economic footprint across Europe.
People vs Big Tech, a movement of people and organisations working to challenge the business models of the world’s largest technology companies, has now drawn on this research in a new article examining Google’s revenues in the EU.
The article highlights new figures showing that Google generated an average of €288 million in revenue in the EU every day in the year after the European Commission found that the company had breached competition law.
We’re glad to see our data contributing to the wider conversation about Big Tech’s economic power, competition, and accountability in Europe.

One year on from EU ruling it’s “big business as usual for Google” with Trump fears holding back action 4th September 2026, Brussels - Google generated an