NEWSLETTER #4

Dr. Tanya Lokot, MEDIATIZED EU’s Project Coordinator and Dr. Sonia Boulos, one of the co-leaders of the work package “Cross-Country Comparisons & Policy Recommendations”, participated in a policy round table titled “Evolving European media landscapes and Europeanisation: Emerging trends and key policy challenges”, co-organised by MEDIATIZED EU and other Horizon 2020 research projects, EUMEPLAT, MEDIADELCOM, and MediaFutures, at the European Research Executive Agency, Brussels. The representatives of the projects presented information about their progress and key scoping policy updates. Dr. Lokot discussed the distinctive contribution of MEDIATIZED EU, the theoretical framework, the findings of the desk research, and the preliminary insights from the media analysis for each target country, while Dr. Boulos outlined preliminary insights for scholarship and policymaking.

Read the report on the event on our website.

Our MEDIATIZED EU project coordinator Dr. Tanya Lokot spoke to the European Commission’s Horizon Magazine (EU Research and Innovation Magazine) on the importance of media for a healthy democracy and our project’s role on media discourses and disinformation in shaping perceptions and representations of Europeanisation and the European Union on Democracy Day.

Source: EC-The EU Research and Innovation Magazine, 2022.

Read the report on our website.

The MEDIATIZED EU Project was featured in the European Commission’s September 2022 Factsheet “Media and Democracy: EU research & innovation protecting media integrity” as one of the key EC-funded projects contributing in this area.

The factsheet is available here.

Following the completion of the Media Analysis for each project country, our researchers took part in an internal workshop to familiarise with Q methodology which is part of the next research phase. Currently each team is conducting in-depth interviews with politicians and journalists in their respective countries. While every team is engaged with the interviews, researchers from Estonia, Georgia, Hungary and Spain came together to discuss the dominant media discourses in an online panel organised by the Center of Social Sciences (CSS).

Analysis of Media Discourses

The MEDIATIZED EU teams have finalised the Media Analysis stage of the research in order to reveal the dominant discourses, as well as the adjacent and counter discourses on the European Union and Europeanisation in the media of the seven target countries. Between July 2021 and March 2022, our researchers collected and analysed the selected offline and online media outlets using quantitative and qualitative content analysis, and critical discourse analysis.

Q Methodology Workshop and Elite Interviews

Before proceeding with the interviews with the political and media elites, the MEDIATIZED EU teams had a 3-hour workshop on Q Methodology on the 7th of October, organised and led by Dr. Lika Tsuladze, Executive Director of the Centre for Social Sciences (CSS) of Georgia. The intensive three-hour workshop included, among other things, the history of Q Methodology, Q Analysis, a case study on the Europeanisation of Georgia, and Ken-Q software usage.

Following the workshop, each team transformed the most dominant and widely circulated media discourses into Q statements and has been recruiting up to 25 media representatives and 25 political elite and policymaker representatives to share their views on Europeanisation in an interview using this innovative methodology. Analysis of the results is ongoing and we expect to share key insights in our next newsletter.

Pathways to Europeanization: Dominant Media Discourses in Estonia, Georgia, Hungary and Spain

Four MEDIATIZED EU partners discussed dominant media discourses and Europeanisation in an online panel organised by the Center of Social Sciences (CSS). Following Tanya Lokot’s (Project Coordinator) introduction on research objectives, Lia Tsuladze (Center for Social Sciences, Georgia) introduced the project’s solid and innovative theoretical framework, and then joined Attila Melegh (Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary), Barbi Pilvre-Storgard (Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia), and Sonia Boulos (University of Nebrija Madrid, Spain) to discuss the preliminary research results in each country and provide some cross-country observations.

Next steps in our research

The MEDIATIZED EU teams are currently engaged in in-depth interviews with political and media elite actors in each project country. Following this phase, our researchers will work on coding, categorising, and analysing the interview results. Each country team will then conduct a population survey to gather public opinion data. Stay tuned for more updates!The MEDIATIZED EU teams are currently engaged in the media analysis phase of our project, in each of the seven target countries. Next, we will interview political and media elites based on the findings of the previous phase, when we will ask these actors about their opinions on topics related to the European project and the pressing issues with which the European Union and European citizens have been faced recently. Finally, we will conduct a survey with the general population in each of the countries, and then hold civic discussion forums to promote a public debate on our results. Stay tuned for more updates!