Media pluralism

[1][2] Media pluralism is often recognized by international organizations and non-governmental organizations as being an essential part of a democratic state, Reporters Without Borders considers "access to a plurality of editorial lines and analyses [as] essential for citizens to be able to confront ideas, to make their own informed choices and to conduct their life freely".

[3] According to the UNESCO report on world trends in freedom of expression and media development, a sharper division in the way we use news is coming up due to the interaction between consumption habits, changing economic models and technical systems.

Traditional business models for the news media continue to be disrupted, leading to vertical and horizontal concentration and introduction of new types of ownership.

To address the issues with zero-rating, an alternative model has emerged in the concept of ‘equal rating’ and is being tested in experiments by Mozilla and Orange in Africa.

Another study, covering Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, found Facebook's Free Basics and Wikipedia Zero to be the most commonly zero-rated content.

[8] In the Arab region, geopolitical interests has contributed to the growing reach of state-owned global news broadcasters and has determined the launching of Arabic-language channels.

[16] According to the Arab Youth Survey, in 2016, 45 per cent of the young people interviewed considered social media as a major source of news.

[18] The Internet has challenged the press as an alternative source of information and opinion but has also provided a new platform for newspaper organizations to reach new audiences.

[22] Media systems are built from a variety of economic models including mixes of market, public service, community and state entities.

Nonprofit public service and community media can help achieve internal pluralism by incorporating social and cultural diversity in the content they produce.

They are also characterized as "independent and governed by and in the service of the communities they serve"[25] and represent what UNESCO calls[26] the "third pillar" of the media with commercial and public broadcasters.

[29][30] The New York Times in the United States, or the Mail & Guardian in South Africa use extensions or variations of existing schemes such as pay-walls created by publications considered to be of particularly high quality or addressing a particular niche.

In 2015 for example, the New York Times opened its Virtual Reality Lab, seeking to provide original perspectives on issues ranging from the war in Iraq, to the conflict in South Sudan, to the thinning of the ice cap in Antarctica.

[35] Reaching two billion daily active users in June 2017, Facebook has emerged as the most popular social media platform globally.

However, a concentration phenomenon is occurring globally giving the dominance to a few online platforms that become popular for some unique features they provide, most commonly for the added privacy they offer users through disappearing messages or end-to-end encryption (e.g. WhatsApp, Snapchat, Signal, and Telegram), but they have tended to occupy niches and to facilitate the exchanges of information that remain rather invisible to larger audiences.

[37] Graham, Straumann, and Hogan say that increase in the availability and diversity of content has not radically changed the structures and processes for the production of knowledge.

[38] The proliferation of online sources represents a vector leading to an increase in pluralism but algorithms used by social networking platforms and search engines to provide users with a personalized experience based on their individual preferences represent a challenge to pluralism, restricting exposure to differing viewpoints and news feed.

With the help of algorithms, filter bubbles influence users choices and perception of reality by giving the impression that a particular point of view or representation is widely shared.

Research on echo chambers from Flaxman, Goel, and Rao,[39] Pariser,[29] and Grömping[40] suggest that use of social media and search engines tends to increase ideological distance among individuals.

[42] A study conducted by researchers from Facebook and the University of Michigan, for example, has suggested that individuals’ own choices drive algorithmic filtering, limiting exposure to a range of content.

[46] The nature of trust depends on the assumptions that non-institutional forms of communication are freer from power and more able to report information that mainstream media are perceived as unable or unwilling to reveal.

Declines in confidence in much traditional media[47] and expert knowledge[48] have created fertile grounds for alternative, and often obscure sources of information to appear as authoritative and credible.

[49] Internet companies with threatened credibility tend to develop new responses to limit fake news and reduce financial incentives for its proliferation.

While a large proportion of the European press initially articulated a sympathetic and empathetic response towards the humanitarian crisis caused by the conflict in Syria, according to Georgiou and Zaborowski, this sentiment was gradually replaced by suspicion and, in some cases, hostility towards refugees and migrants.

[53] Gábor and Messing consider that a portion of the press, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, turned to systematic hostility towards migrants and refugees.

[55] Harlow and Johnson consider that in the case of protests, demonstrations or conflicts, established institutions and elites tend to prevail as news sources.

[56] Although novel media operations and actors have had a smaller impact on mainstream reporting, they have been instrumental in animating intermediate spaces, which aggregate content in ways that can reach broader audiences.

A few initiatives already exist in the field: Tuchman, Daniels, and Benoit (1978) use the term "symbolic annihilation" (originally credited to George Gerbner) to describe women's relationship to and visibility in mass media.

[75] Researchers from the US, Harp, Bachmann, and Loke, show that while women journalists are writing on a wider range of topics, they are still a minority of columnist at the major dailies.

[76] In terms of presenting on broadcast news, the 2015 GMMP found that the global proportion of women was 49 per cent, the same as in 2000 and two percentage points below the 1995 finding.