Media and Journalism Research Center

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

08/10/2026

We were especially delighted to see research from our centre on media capture, including important work by Marius Dragomir, cited in a new paper by Peter Hanák.
Among the works cited is Marius’s “The Architecture of Media Capture: Typologies, Global Patterns, and the Tech Threat,” which examines how media capture takes shape across different political and media environments.
In his new open-access paper, published in the Global Media Journal - German Edition special issue on Media Capture, Peter Hanák takes the discussion further by proposing a new “Captured Model” for understanding media systems.
Drawing on developments in Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe since 2008, the paper looks at what happens when democratic backsliding and media capture progressively undermine media pluralism. Rather than fitting neatly into the existing Polarised Pluralist or Authoritarian models, Hanak argues that some countries are developing into a distinct and relatively stable “Captured Model” associated with electoral autocracies.
The paper uses Hungary and Serbia as examples, while pointing to signs that other countries may be moving in the same direction.
We’re very pleased to see our centre’s research contributing to this ongoing conversation about how media systems change under political pressure and how we can better understand the new realities emerging across Europe.
Read the full open-access paper in the Global Media Journal - German Edition special issue on Media Capture.

Is there a Captured Media System? Advancing the Typology of Media Systems through the Cases of Hungary and Serbia Authors Peter Hanák DOI: https://doi.org/10.60678/9c9twd79 Keywords: media capture, media systems, Hungary, Serbia, captured model Abstract This article extends theoretical debates on m...

02/10/2026

Academic publishing has three open secrets and many in the communication research field know them. We're launching a platform that stops pretending about all of them.
The Media and Journalism Research Center has launched the Media and Information Research Commons, a new home for media and communication research built on three breaks with convention.
First, AI use is declared, not hidden. Everyone in the field is already writing, coding and analysing with AI. Most journals ask authors to whisper it in a footnote or deny it outright. On the Commons, every record carries a full public AI protocol: at which stage AI was used, how, and who checked it, with a named person signing for every claim. Readers judge the work for what it is.
Secondly, the money goes to reviewers, not overheads. Peer review is the most valuable labour in scholarship, and the least paid (or unpaid). The Commons pays the reviewers and nothing else. No article processing charges, no subscription fees, no publisher margin. The people who assess the work are the ones compensated for it.
And thirdly, the article is optional. Serious research doesn't only come as a 7,000-word paper. The Commons publishes the research itself as a Verified Research Record: data, methods, findings, protocols and tools, with policy briefs, research notes and, yes, articles as optional additions. Every element is reviewed and citable on its own. Publish the form your idea actually takes.
Everything remains fully open: peer-reviewed, free to read, free to reuse, and open to any researcher who wants to build on it (as long as they cite the original author of the Verified Research Record).
If you have work that doesn't fit the old container, or you're tired of reviewing for free while someone else invoices, come build this with us:

https://journalismresearch.org/2026/09/media-and-information-research-commons-a-new-way-to-publish-research-is-launched/

The Media and Journalism Research Center (MJRC) has launched the Media and Information Research Commons, a publishing platform on which research is reviewed and published as a verified record rather than as an article. The platform went live in June 2026 and is open to institutions and individual re...

01/10/2026

Our latest Audio Brief is now out on Spotify!
This episode takes a closer look at Marius Dragomir’s The Architecture of Media Capture: Typologies, Global Patterns, and the Tech Threat and asks a question that feels increasingly important: what does the rise of media capture mean for the future of journalism?

Across our case studies, we’ve seen how media capture can work in subtle ways, not necessarily by telling journalists what they cannot publish, but by shaping what gets funded, what feels safe to investigate, and what ultimately reaches the public.
We also look at the growing influence of technology billionaires, the challenges facing regulation such as the European Media Freedom Act, and what all of this could mean for journalism’s ability to serve the public interest.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6TnUZvnM78796RqkK32hOt?si=84c0dc7b15c74521&nd=1&dlsi=458c2ddd05da4698

30/09/2026

As part of our 2026 State Media Monitor update, we published State and Public Media in Asia where we mapped 111 active state-linked media organisations across 26 Asian jurisdictions. The Asia database contains 125 records in total, including organisations now recorded as closed, merged, inactive or removed from the active scope.

A preview: "The most important conclusion from the 2026 Asian cycle is that the sharp decline in the State-Controlled count does not represent a comparable decline in political control."
https://statemediamonitor.com/2026/09/state-and-public-media-in-asia-in-2026/

30/09/2026

For our Czech speaking friends.

What do fairy-tale characters have to do with disinformation?
Quite a lot, as our expert Jonáš Syrovátka explores in a new article for Seznam.cz

At the end of August, a manipulative campaign sought to stir tensions between Czechia and Poland. It relied on familiar tactics: a social media account impersonating the Czech ambassador to Poland, a fake iRozhlas website, and a Polish newspaper whose content had been manipulated by hackers. An inauthentic profile even appeared to call for a demonstration in Třinec against Polish demands.
The response was very different: simple images of fairy-tale characters celebrating the friendship between Czechs and Poles began appearing on social media. Instead of getting drawn into the provocation, the response used something people could immediately understand, relate to, and share.

In the article, our expert looks at what this episode tells us about responding to information manipulation and why communication doesn’t always need to be complicated to be effective.

https://medium.seznam.cz/clanek/jonas-syrovatka-pohadkove-postavicky-hrave-porazi-manipulativni-kampane-nekdy-315435

V reakci na manipulativní kampaň poškozující česko-polské vztahy se na sociálních sítích objevily obrázky pohádkových postaviček demonstrujících dobré vztahy obou zemí. Tato odlehčená a srozumitelná komunikace dokázala provokaci snadno přebít.

25/09/2026

📣 Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, in cooperation with the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) Central and East European Network is organizing the 16th Central and Eastern European Communication and Media Conference CEECOM 2027 from September 16-17, 2027 in Belgrade, Serbia.

👉 The theme of the Conference is hashtag and Freedom.

Keynote speaker at CEECOM 2027 is Marius Dragomir, from the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela & Media and Journalism Research Center.

This conference will address key issues including but not limited to:
💠Freedom of Expression, Communication Inequalities, and Human Rights
💠Communication and Academic Freedom;
💠Press Freedom and Democracy;
💠Media Ownership, Freedom, and Capture;
💠Communication in Social Movements, Protest, and Civic Resistance;
💠Journalistic Innovation, Sustainability, and (De-)Capture;
💠Narrative Control and Contested Freedoms;
💠Political Communication, Attention, Visibility, and Agenda Control;
💠Public Service Media, Governance, and (De-)Capture;
💠Journalistic Autonomy, Precarity, and Safety;
💠Communication, Democratic Backsliding, and Institutional Resilience;
💠Digital Rights, Platforms, and Algorithmic Power;
💠Organizations, Digital Spaces, and Online Free Speech;
💠Media and Algorithmic Literacy, Information Disorders, and Audience Agency.

We invite researchers to submit abstracts for upcoming conference. hashtag accepts individual paper presentations, pre-constituted panels, and roundtable proposals.

🌐 All submissions should be made through the online submission form, check the link below.

🎯 Important Dates
🔸 Abstract submission deadline: 1 February 2027 (23:59 CET)
🔸Notification of acceptance: by 1 April 2027
🔸Early-bird registration: 1 April – 31 May 2027
🔸Regular registration: 1 June – 15 July 2027 (23:59 CEST)
🔸Conference: 16–17 September 2027

Further details about the conference can be found on the conference website:

Sep2202616th Central and Eastern European Communication and Media Conference CEECOM 2027: Communication and Freedom16–17 September 2027Belgrade, SerbiaOrganized by the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgradein cooperation with the ECREA Central and East-European NetworkC...

24/09/2026

We’re really glad to share news of a new open-access paper by our expert Adriana Mutu, PhD, co-authored with Teodor Raileanu-Olariu.

Published in Behavioral Sciences MDPI, the paper looks at an important question: how do different dimensions of authoritarianism shape the way people detect fake news and respond to conspiracy claims?

Drawing on two Romanian samples collected during the 2024–2025 electoral cycle, the findings suggest that the relationship between authoritarianism, misinformation, and conspiracy beliefs is more nuanced than a simple “authoritarianism effect.” What stood out is the broader question behind the research: why do some people accept certain claims as credible while others are more likely to question them? Understanding these psychological mechanisms can tell us a lot about how people navigate an increasingly complex and fragmented information environment.

This research also contributes to the wider European conversation around democratic resilience, particularly at a time when elections, political polarisation, and geopolitical tensions are reshaping the public sphere.

Congratulations to Adriana and Teodor on the publication! 👏

Adriana Mutu, together with Teodor Răileanu-Olariu, has published a new open-access research paper in Behavioral Sciences, examining how distinct dimensions of authoritarianism are associated with fake-news detection and conspiracy-claim endorsement. Titled “Differential Associations of Authorita...