Watch all the videos in the series on Facebook, including Lindsay Green-Barber, Founder and CEO of Impact Architects talking about how media outlets can get useful data to understand their audience and which tools help to successfully engage with them; Ros Taylor, Research Manager of the Media Policy Project at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) talking about what outlets can do to re-gain the trust of their audience and Marius Dragomir, Director of the Center for Media, Data and Society sharing his thoughts about successful ways to engage audiences.

Romania’s media market seems vibrant and diverse, but in reality, the local environment hardly enables independent journalism to thrive. Independent journalism survives thanks to a string of small online outlets that are struggling financially and grappling with a low level of trust and a public unwilling to pay for media content. Learn more about the Romanian media market, download the full Media Influence Matrix Romania report that was written using probably the most complex methodology to date used to measure media and power.

Facebook will apply labels to pages connected to state-sponsored media, to inform people whether these outlets are under government’s control. The company consulted experts representing leading academic institutions, nonprofits and international organizations around the world specializing in media, governance, human rights and development to develop its definition of state-sponsored media. The Center for Media, Data and Society is proud to be among these institutions. Even the New York Times covered the developments.

The latest project of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, China Cables is an investigation into the surveillance and mass internment without charge or trial of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang province, based on leaked classified Chinese government documents. The leak reveals the operations manual for running the mass detention camps in Xinjiang and exposes the mechanics of the region’s digital population control and "predictive policing," as well as how using a popular app can get someone thrown into a camp. More than 75 journalists from ICIJ and 17 media partner organizations in 14 countries joined together to report on the documents and their significance, including Dean Starkman, Fellow at the Center for Media, Data and Society, who served as the project editor of the team.

Misusing personal data costs less than US$ 60 per user worldwide and a piffling 65 cents in Britain, hardly an incentive for social networks to take privacy seriously. At least one million Brits had their data unfairly collected via Facebook, and very likely some of these reams of data were used in the Brexit political campaign. Tampering elections doesn’t cost much.

India has recently seen a massive growth in video streaming services, but this came in a regulatory vacuum. Self-regulation by the industry alone, without the interference of the government, would be the right approach, a new CMDS policy paper argues.

APPLY TO OUR 2020 SUMMER COURSE

Journalism is facing two, interrelated crises: a deep crisis of public trust, most visible in the form of the proliferation of misinformation; and the financial crisis that has clobbered news media over the course of the past decade. The two are deeply connected, that is why the CMDS 2020 Summer School will focus on building audience trust and sustainable funding models for journalism. Applications are now open!

MEDIA INFLUENCE MATRIX

CMDS’ flagship project, Media Influence Matrix now covers more than 50 countries. The main goal of the project is to investigate the profound impact that rapid shifts in policy, funding and technology are having on journalism today. New reports on Indonesia, Slovakia, Georgia and Kazakhstan will be published in the next weeks.

THE BUSINESS OF MISINFORMATION

While it is hard to remember a media studies topic that has ever attracted so much time and money, there is still little research on the business side of misinformation, on who hides behind the liars. Our The Business of Misinformation project keeps track of individuals and companies that own them and their links to institutions, political parties and other individuals. New country reports covering Serbia and Romania are expected soon.

The Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS) is a research center for the study of media, communication, and information policy and its impact on society and practice. Founded in 2004 as the Center for Media and Communication Studies, CMDS is part of Central European University’s School of Public Policy and serves as a focal point for an international network of acclaimed scholars, research institutions and activists. In support of promoting the values of an open society CMDS produces scholarly and practice-oriented research addressing academic, policy and civil society needs, coordinates course offerings at CEU, provides trainings and consulting services and organizes scholarly exchanges through workshops, lectures and conferences on current developments in the field.