The massive changes to the political public sphere brought about by digitalisation are of considerable relevance to the development of democratic societies. A functioning democracy requires its citizens to be able to form their own opinions freely, a process that is primarily facilitated by the work of journalists. This is best achieved when there is a diversity of opinion in public discourse; for this reason, the state establishes appropriate media regulations designed to safeguard media diversity and to intervene through regulation in the event of excessive concentration of influence over public opinion. The current system for controlling media concentration, with its focus on television and its exclusive emphasis on audience reach, no longer appears appropriate in the context of media convergence and, in particular, the increased relevance of the internet as a source of information.

This interdisciplinary consortium project, in collaboration with LMU and the Technical University of Munich, addresses this gap and focuses on the question of how the influence of opinion on the internet can be measured and regulated in a way that is appropriate to the modern age. Across three sub-projects, the aim is, amongst other things, to develop proposals on how the influence of intermediaries can be assessed and taken into account in regulation. Sub-project I (Project Leader: Prof. Dr Carsten Reinemann, LMU Munich) will develop a typology of non-journalistic content providers with political relevance and examine their contribution to diversity. Sub-project II (Project Leader: Prof. Dr Simon Hegelich, TU Munich) will develop an automated method for estimating opinion power, capturing both the receptive and communicative resonance of providers. Sub-project III at JGU focuses on diversity as a central objective in the regulation of media concentration. It addresses the question of what influence the communication logics of intermediaries exert on the diversity of content on offer and how this should be assessed in the context of user diversity.

The expected outcome – the development and testing of tools for identifying various politically relevant providers, alongside methods for the automated assessment of opinion-shaping power amongst intermediaries – is not only of interest to key areas of communication studies research and journalistic practice, but is also intended to be presented to media policymakers as recommendations for the contemporary regulation of media influence.

Project manager:

• Prof. Dr. Birgit Stark

Project team members:

• Daniel Stegmann M.A.

Partners:

• Prof. Dr. Carsten Reinemann
• Prof. Dr. Simon Hegelich

Funding:

• Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt)
• Bavarian State Office for New Media (BLM)

Duration:
2019–2023