By Katja Lehtisaari

Discussing communication rights at the IAMCR 2019 conference

How are communication rights presented in different countries in Europe? A pilot study, titled “Communication for everyone: Communication rights and their differing contexts” was presented at the IAMCR 2019 conference in Madrid 10 July 2019.

This working paper presents a way to operationalize communication rights, including a systematic framework for analysis, and a pilot study of comparative application in several national contexts. The pilot study builds on operationalisation of communication rights, presented in the article Operationalising communication rights: the case of a “digital welfare state” (Internet Policy Rewiev, 2019). For the pilot study  concluded in spring 2019, five countries were selected for examination: Finland from Northern Europe, Germany and the United Kingdom from Western Europe, Italy from Southern Europe, and Slovakia from Central and Eastern Europe. The aim is to look at differing media systems in Europe and examine how and to what extent the interplay between national capabilities, cultures, histories, policies, politics, resources, and structures, and global forces influences communication rights in the digital era. While there are global trends and challenges, we can also observe highly differing national responses and developments. These will be looked more closely when the project proceeds further.

The presentation was prepared by Katja Lehtisaari, Hannu Nieminen and Minna Horowitz, in collaboration with Alessandro D’Arma (Westminster University), Marius Dragomir (Central European University), Christine Horz (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), and Claudia Padovani (University of Padova) and the members of Helsinki Media Policy Research Group, including several Cordi researchers: Marko Ala-Fossi, Anette Alén-Savikko, Jockum Hilden, Johanna Jääsaari, and Kari Karppinen.

Altogether, this year’s IAMCR conference welcomed 1.785 participants from 5 continents and 83 countries.

The presentation slides are below: