The project will highlight the important role that press and media councils play in times of decreasing trust towards journalists and media outlets combined with increasing disinformation on online platforms. Press and media councils are key self-regulatory institutions developed before the digital revolution. Therefore, last decades they have witnessed the need to adapt their practices and ethical codes to better adapt to a constantly evolving media landscape. The main goal of the project is to further strengthen the position of press and media councils.

Gent University, working on close relation with project press and media councils, aims to map and compare recent and admissible complaints and decisions by a selection of Media Councils in EU Member States and Candidate Countries. At a second level, the projects intends also to understand and explain how the selected Media Councils in EU Member States and Candidate Countries adapt to new challenges in the digital age. To meet all these objectives, we propose two subsequent activities. The first one (quantitative content analysis) is a comparison of decisions to further our understanding of the functioning of Press and Media Councils in different regions of Europe (Year 1).  The second work package (qualitative content analysis and in-depth interviews) builds on the first one in selecting three important ethical principles that are challenged by recent digital developments. The aim is to compare how they are interpreted by different Media Councils and formulate recommendations to strengthen the European model of media self-regulation (Year 2).