Panel Report: Media Accountability Goes Online

© Jakub Plíhal

Chair: Heikky Heikkilä, University of Tampere, Finland


Speakers:

Michal Glowacki, University of Warsaw, Poland
Michal Kuś, University of Warsaw, Poland
Judith Pies, TU Dortmund University, Germany
Bissera Zankova, Bulgaria

Media should be transparent and accountable. But are they? Heikky Heikkilä and his team tried to find it out and they did a large research between journalists and workers in media on this topic. They made 98 interviews in 14 coutries (8 in Europe, 4 in Arab World and the rest in the USA). In this panel, they introduces empirical findings about, whether and how the implementation of online instruments fostering media accountability in proceeding  in different parts of the world.

Heikky Heikkilä speaks the first and explanes how they did the research. He and his colleague made interviews which you can find in their new book (which is not finished yet). They asked respondents: Who are you? Why we do this, how, with whom? How do you taky criticism?

© Jakub Plíhal

Michal Glowacki explains that they were focused on processes in media, role of advertisers, policy-makers and on public.They were interested mainly in the difference between journalistic field and the politic field, influence from the economic field and institutions for self-regulation. And one of the result is that "media accountability is not exclusively a normative or technological issue. It is an object of cultural struggle about the future of journalism."

Michal Kus continues and then Judith Pies speaks about some important blogs and bloggers from Germany, USA and other countries.

The last speaker is Bissera Zankova who compares accountability of online media in Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece. In Turkey, for example, there is centralized media systém, nationalistic and biased media environment, and censorship on the Internet. "The problem of censorship is not settled yet," she underlines.

If you want to know details of this project, click here.