Book review: media regulation: governance and the interests of citizens and consumers by Peter Lunt and Sonia Livingstone

In Media Regulation, Peter Lunt and Sonia Livingstone examine the challenges of regulation in the global mediated sphere. The book explores the way that regulation affects the relations between government, the media and communications market, civil society, citizens and consumers. Dr Petros Iosifidis finds that the book’s elegant but rigorous analysis and use of case studies from all over the world make it an essential tool for undergraduate and graduate students in the field of media and communications

The Greek broadcaster ERT: a state or public service broadcaster?

From being abolished in 2013 to being relaunched in 2015, the Greek public broadcaster ERT has undergone a tumultous few years. In this post, Petros Iosifidis of City, University of London, who recently spoke at an event at the LSE on public service media in Europe, will shed light on the reasons why ERT has been widely perceived to be a state broadcaster rather than one fulfilling public service obligations and explain how – despite its flaws – ERT has shown a surprising level of adaptability

Media Plurality Series: European Level Inertia is not Justified

In the next post in our Media Plurality Series curated together with the Media Power and Plurality Project, Petros Iosifidis of City University London looks at developments at the European level and calls for action to set criteria for two kinds of measurement mechanism

Social Media, Public Sphere and Democracy

Social media is said to radically change the way in which public communication takes place: information diffuses faster and can reach a large number of people, but what makes the process so novel is that online networks can empower people to compete with traditional broadcasters or public figures. This book critically interrogates the contemporary relevance of social networks as a set of economic, cultural and political enterprises and as a public sphere in which a variety of political and socio-cultural demands can be met. It examines policy, regulatory and socio-cultural issues arising from the transformation of communication to a multi-layered sphere of online and social networks. The central theme of the book is to address the following questions: Are online and social networks an unstoppable democratizing and mobilizing force? Is there a need for policy and intervention to ensure the development of comprehensive and inclusive social networking frameworks? Social media are viewed both as a tool that allows citizens to influence policymaking, and as an object of new policies and regulations, such as data retention, privacy and copyright laws, around which citizens are mobilizing

Ofcom’s “Must Offer” Review Should Ensure More Competition in Sports Rights Market

Following the recent announcement from Ofcom that it would review the obligations on BSkyB to offer its sports content to other operators, Toms Evens of Ghent University and Petros Iosifidis of City University London argue that to promote competition those obligations should be boosted rather than reduced

Petros Iosifidis on competition policy and media plurality

Petros Iosifidis, Reader in Media Policy at City University, questions the role of competition policy in addressing media plurality issues. Petros shares chapter 4 of his 1996 PhD thesis, ‘Media Concentration Policy in the European Union and the Public Interest’, which closely resemble current plurality debates

Growing pains? The transition to digital television in Europe

This article argues that national policies for digital television (DTV) are largely determined by markets, political contexts and supra-national influences, notably European Union (EU) audiovisual policy, which puts pressure on member states to speed up digital switchover.This creates a tension between the push of the EU to harmonize the switchover process and set target dates and the struggle of some of the countries to comply with this policy. In terms of the strategies that could be employed to accelerate digital uptake, the article points to setting a prompt date for analogue switch-off, subsidizing the relevant equipment to receive DTV, offering triple play services, ensuring active management to complete conversion effectively and, above all, adopting free-to-view DTV. The wide reach free-to-air model, in which public broadcasters have a leading role, ensures that the universality principle is maintained in the digital age

Greek ERT: State or Public Service Broadcaster?

The chapter examines the state of public service broadcasting in Greece. While most Southern European public broadcasting systems are to some degree subject to political influence and dependence, in the case of Greece, public broadcaster ERT is, after four decades of deregulation and the break-up of its broadcasting monopoly, still considered by many as ‘state’ rather than a ‘public’ broadcaster. This wide public perception stems from ERT’s one-time role as a mouthpiece of government propaganda. As both radio and TV broadcasting were launched under dictatorships (the late 1930s Metaxas dictatorship and the mid-1960s Colonels rule respectively), they have been regarded as ‘arms of the state.’ Post-dictatorship politics and the restoration of Parliament in 1974 saw the Conservatives (New Democracy) and Socialists (PASOK) dominating the political scene, accusing each other of exercising too much government control over state broadcasting media. Today’s left-wing SYRIZA government also attempts to influence ERT’s output, which is at odds with the digital, deregulated electronic media landscape and consequent abundance of channels. This situation has arisen largely from the political tensions in Greek society since the Second World War. These tensions, combined with the absence of a strong civil society and the market, have made the state an autonomous and dominant factor in Greek society that has to take on additional politico-ideological function. The state plays an active role in the formation of the Greek economy and policy and it is relatively autonomous from society. This makes the system less self-regulatory than countries with developed capitalism, such as northern EU states, Britain or the US. Lack of self-regulation spurs the state to intervene in the politico-ideological sphere and thus diffuse its repressive mechanisms. It is in this context that the chapter explains the rise of power of the media, and the decline of power of journalists and, of course, of ERT itself