European Journal of Communication

This article analyses how the role and remit of public service media (PSM) and its relationship to current media and societal developments are framed in recent media policy discourses in Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, countries often described as Media Welfare States (MWS). Employing the framework of discursive (media) institutionalism and frame analysis as a method, we analyse policy documents covering a 10-year period to identify differences in national PSM framing. Our findings confirm shared challenges related to platformisation, disinformation, audience fragmentation, and competition with commercial media. More interestingly, clear national differences emerge in how PSM is framed. Comparing these national findings to the four pillars of the MWS, we identify a recent paradigm shift where the consensus on the societal role and remit of PSM has weakened. We argue that future policymaking should consider these developments when discussing how best to safeguard Nordic PSM.

This article argues that a European media industry has failed to materialize despite sustained policy efforts by the European Union. Apart from film and TV production groups, European broadcasters/streamers are more nation-centric and less regionally integrated than in the late 20th century. The first section charts the international expansion of European broadcasters and documents how their regional integration began to unravel in the 2010s. Looking at the determinants, the second section argues that legacy broadcasters struggle to lift their digital revenue and are under immense pressure from streaming giants whose scale has created an uneven playing field. Using the global value chain (GVC) framework, the article draws a distinction between European lead firms (broadcasters and streamers) and their suppliers (e.g., film and TV content production groups). It contends that while the EU legislative framework supports the latter, it does not protect the former from global market forces.

This study examines how digital parties differ from traditional parties in their external political communication on Facebook during the French 2022 presidential election. Using a supervised machine learning method, we analysed posts (N = 17,060) published on the Facebook pages (N = 544) of French parties during the campaign. Our findings show that digital parties use Facebook intensively to mobilise their activist base, confirming their reliance on online participation. However, contrary to expectations, they do not structure their communication more around their party leader than traditional parties, nor do they systematically generate higher engagement levels. Instead, they grant greater autonomy to their members’ Facebook pages, particularly at the regional level, where activists adapt national campaign strategies to the local context. Finally, while digital parties use Facebook to amplify their candidate's media coverage, they rely less on diverse content formats such as videos and images, challenging previous assumptions about digital campaigning strategies.

Research on opinion leadership has gained new relevance in the digital age, where information is increasingly curated by networks, algorithms, and individual preferences rather than traditional journalism. While opinion leadership has been used to characterize individuals engaged in specific issues, mainly political communication, it is also crucial to apply this concept to scientific contexts due to the societal prominence of science. Although scientific information differs from opinion or news, its prominence supports this application and raises questions about how much science opinion leaders trust science or believe in conspiracies. This study addresses this by examining science opinion leadership using data from an online survey in Germany (n = 2435). We confirm the relationship between science opinion leadership, interest, perceived knowledge, and media use for receiving and disseminating information. Additionally, trust in science and disapproval of conspiracies and populist media were less pronounced and more varied than expected.