Accelerating Adoption of a Digital Intermediary Tax

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-148
Author(s):  
Elda Brogi ◽  
Roberta Maria Carlini

The role of the digital platforms as intermediaries to the news has deeply changed the media environment. The chapter focuses on the economic threats to media pluralism, related to the concentration of the market and the disruption of the news media industry, resulting from the digital platforms’ business model; and argues for the role of fiscal policy in redistributing part of the tech dividend and in supporting media plurality. The policy proposal is a digital tax designed to support news media viability and media pluralism. The need for a reform of international corporate tax rules to tackle tax avoidance in the digital economy has been largely debated at OECD and at EU level, with different proposals of a digital tax; less attention has been given to the use of the revenues raised by such a tax. We argue that earmarking part of the digital tax’s revenue to sustain professional journalism is a way to finance a public good that, in the new digital environment, risks being undersupplied. Public media policies should be carefully designed to guarantee fair, objective and non-discriminatory distribution of the resources, to avoid media being captured by political interests. The search for resources to fund the post-Covid economic crisis in most of the EU countries could act as an accelerator of the adoption of a digital tax; to use part of its revenue to support media pluralism may be a structural way to counteract the ‘infodemic’.

Author(s):  
Musharaf Zahoor ◽  
Najma Sadiq

Being newsworthy, conflicts attract much of the media attention. The interaction between the media (print or electronic) and the armed conflicts has taken multiple forms in history, and different journalists or news organizations have approached different armed conflicts differently. In the backdrop of the constant debate over morality and objectivity in journalism, this study investigates the evolving academic debate around the relationship of media and armed conflicts, especially with the advent of new communication platforms. The digital platforms that allow the sharing of multimedia content, including social networking and microblogging websites, facilitate disseminating the news content and serve as essential tools for newsgathering. The instantaneous nature of these platforms and unlimited outreach make them attractive tools to be used by traditional news organizations. They gain even more importance in the conflict zones — where it is difficult for them to have their correspondents on the ground. Therefore, the present paper outlines new technologies by the traditional news organizations that have reshaped the relationship between conflict and media. It also discusses the role of news media in shaping public opinion and policy.


Author(s):  
Julia Partheymüller

It is widely believed that the news media have a strong influence on defining what are the most important problems facing the country during election campaigns. Yet, recent research has pointed to several factors that may limit the mass media’s agenda-setting power. Linking news media content to rolling cross-section survey data, the chapter examines the role of three such limiting factors in the context of the 2009 and the 2013 German federal elections: (1) rapid memory decay on the part of voters, (2) advertising by the political parties, and (3) the fragmentation of the media landscape. The results show that the mass media may serve as a powerful agenda setter, but also demonstrate that the media’s influence is strictly limited by voters’ cognitive capacities and the structure of the campaign information environment.


2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110298
Author(s):  
Ida Willig

Media agencies have become one of the key actors in the contemporary media industry: by channelling marketing budgets to some media and some platforms and not to others, media agencies play an important role in creating the digital media infrastructure and laying the tracks of the public sphere. Yet we know very little about these commercial middlemen between advertisers and audiences, what they do, and how we should understand their role in the digital media ecology. This article discusses the role of media agencies in relation to platformization with a focus on the news media sector. Based on interviews, publicly available material and trade journals, the article depicts an industry deeply engaged in digitizing, tracking and commodifying media audiences, while at the same time aware of ethical challenges of the digital media infrastructure. This leads to a call for more political attention and critical research on the democratic implications of the new value chains between platforms, advertisers, audiences, media agencies and news media as well as the many tech companies providing derived digital services and products.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Brosius ◽  
Erika J van Elsas ◽  
Claes H de Vreese

Over the past decade, the European Union has lost the trust of many citizens. This article investigates whether and how media information, in particular visibility and tonality, impact trust in the European Union among citizens. Combining content analysis and Eurobarometer survey data from 10 countries between 2004 and 2015, we study both direct and moderating media effects. Media tone and visibility have limited direct effects on trust in the European Union, but they moderate the relation between trust in national institutions and trust in the European Union. This relation is amplified when the European Union is more visible in the media and when media tone is more positive towards the European Union, whereas it is dampened when media tone is more negative. The findings highlight the role of news media in the crisis of trust in the European Union.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 330-339
Author(s):  
Abdul-Karim Ziani ◽  
Mokhtar Elareshi ◽  
Khalid Al-Jaber

Abstract Many critical questions concerning the relationship between the news media and political knowledge involve the extent to which the media facilitate learning about news, war and politics. Political awareness - via the news media - affects virtually every aspect of citizens’ political attitudes and behaviours. This paper examines how Libyan elites adopt the news media to access news and information regarding the current Libyan war and politics and how they use political communication and new media to build/spread political awareness. With the expansion of private and state-owned television in Libya, concern has grown that these new TV services will survive in providing information about citizens’ interests, including the new, developing political scene. A total of 134 highly educated Libyan professionals completed an online survey, reporting their perceptions of issues covered by national TV services. This account centres on how those elites consume the media and what level of trust they have in the media and in information and what the role of the media in their country should be. The results show that most respondents, especially those who live outside the country, prefer using different Libyan news platforms. However, 50 per cent of these do not trust these channels as a source of information regarding the civil war, associated conflicts and politics in general. They have grown weary of coverage that represents the interests of those who run or own the services and consequently place little trust in the media. Spreading ‘lies as facts’ has affected the credibility of these services. Politically, these respondents wish the media to discuss solutions and act as a force for good, not for division. They also differed in the number and variety of national news sources that they reportedly used. This paper also highlights the role of social media, mobile telephony and the Internet, as well as the rapidly proliferating private and national media. These findings are also discussed in relation to the growing impact of online sources in Libyan society, social and political change and the emergence of new media platforms as new sources of information.


ZBORNIK MES ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanja Stankov ◽  
Aleksandar Rakić ◽  
Jasmina Bajić

Why are the media important? The role of the media is to send messages; they are those who have taken on a public role to provide information to citizens, to explain, analyze, interpret in various ways, however, the problem is that critical thinking is lost to events and information, but it is news they only make it without any analysis, but always so that the citizen has the minimal basis for something to conclude about the quality and objectivity of this information. Whether it’s a marketing or media industry, this paper aims to present subtle and non-so-subtle tactics of mass manipulation that affect our conscious and unconscious mind that affects our thinking and behavior.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-212
Author(s):  
Patrick Craddock

Media, Information and Development in Papua New Guinea is one of the most interesting books I have on Pacific media. It is a collection of different writers, some of whom are current or former journalists. Several of the authors have direct media links as staff working with the Divine Word University in Madang, a private Christian institution. For the uninitiated, the opening chapter gives an outline of the media landscape in PNG. Other chapters explore media ownership, journalism education and the role of media national development. 


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 207
Author(s):  
Valgerður Jóhannsdóttir ◽  
Þorgerður Einarsdóttir

The news media are the most influential sources of information, ideas and opinion for most people around the world. Who appears in the news and who is left out, what is covered and what is not and how people and events are portrayed matter. Research has consistently shown that women are underrepresented in the news and that gender stereotypes are reinforced in and through the media. The 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action recognised the relationship between women and media as a major area of concern in achieving gender equality in contemporary societies. This article presents Nordic findings from the 2015 Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), which is the largest and longest-running study on gender in the world’s media. The findings show that women account for only 1 in 5 of the people interviewed or reported on by Icelandic news media and that women’s overall presence in the news has declined compared to the last GMMP study in 2010. The proportion of women as news subjects is also considerably lower than in other Nordic countries. We argue that the number of women who are journalists, managers in the media industry and decision makers in society has increased, but this shift has not automatically changed the representation of women in the news, either in numbers or in their portrayal. This discrepancy indicates that the relationship between gender and the news media is complicated and needs to be approached from different perspectives.


Author(s):  
Yangkun Huang ◽  
Xiaoping Xu ◽  
Sini Su

Over the past decade, China has witnessed fast-paced technological advancements in the media industry, as well as major shifts in the health agenda portrayed in the media. Therefore, a key starting point when discussing health communication lies in whether media attention and public attention towards health issues are structurally aligned, and to what extent the news media guide public attention. Based on data mined from 73,060 sets of the Baidu Search Index and Media Index on 20 terms covering different types of cancer from 2011 to 2020, the Granger test demonstrates that, in the last decade, public attention and media attention towards cancer in China has gone through two distinct phases. During the first phase, 2011-2015, Chinese news media still held the key in transferring the salience of issues on most cancer types to the public. In the second phase, from 2016-2020, public attention towards cancer has gradually diverged from media coverage, mirroring the imbalance and mismatch between the demand of active public and the supply of cancer information from news media. This study provides an overview of the dynamic transition on cancer issues in China over a ten-year span, along with descriptive results on public and media attention towards specific cancer types.


2004 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Rodrick

This article begins by outlining what the principle of open justice is intended to achieve. It then investigates the nature of the relationship that exists between the courts and the media, and between the media and the public, and suggests that these relationships are not always conducive to realising the aims of open justice. While the reporting role of the traditional news media will undoubtedly persist, at least for the foreseeable future, it is argued that, since courts now have the means to deliver to the public a fuller and truer picture of their work than the media can, they should seize the opportunity to do so.


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