1) Economic consolidation in the digital advertising market poses a threat to media plurality as a small number of large tech companies like Google and Facebook dominate online advertising revenue. 2) Technological changes introduced by digital platforms could threaten quality of information by reducing the diversity of news sources and enabling the spread of disinformation. 3) The MPM 2020 project aims to update the existing Media Pluralism Monitor to better assess new digital-age risks to media plurality from factors like social media microtargeting, algorithmic news personalization, and filter bubbles.

1. Monitoring media pluralism in Europe: between old risks and new threats
NEW THREATS TO MEDIA PLURALISM IN
THE DIGITAL AGE: THE MPM 2020
Pier Luigi Parcu, CMPF
Brussels, 7 December 2018

2. Agenda
● Economic threats to media
plurality
● Technological threats to quality of
information
● The MPM 2020

3. Economic threats to media plurality

4. Economic threats to media plurality
• The US and most other developed countries’ industries have
become more concentrated since the beginning of the century
(Grullon et al 2017):
• Higher profitability but not higher productivity;
• Increasing completion rates of mega M&A transactions;
• Significant decline of antitrust enforcement.
• This process interests particularly the cultural, information and
communication industries

5. • The acknowledgement that GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook
Apple and Microsoft), dominates digital markets is common
sense (Moore 2016; Moazed-Johnson 2016; Smyrnaios 2018;
Galloway 2017; Barwise-Watkins 2018; Moore-Tambini 2018;
Mannoni-Stazi 2018)
• These enterprises are the most valuable companies in the
world in terms of market capitalization, a parameter that
normally anticipates the future
Economic threats to media plurality

6. • The business strategies that these companies typically
implement consolidates GAFAM’s distance from potential
competitors through:
○ gathering and exploiting vast quantities of user data;
○ creation of proprietary standards;
○ realization of massive investments in R&D, both
organically and through acquisitions;
all these in reality is raising tangible barriers to entry to
newcomers. Digital quasi monopolies don’t look more fragile
than previous network monopolies.
Economic threats to media plurality

7. But how digitalisation is disrupting traditional media:
1. separating information distribution from the physical
originating media (non-rivalry of digital goods);
2. changing pricing decisions and giving decisive relevance to
different (non-monetary) metrics (data acquisition and
attention loads);
3. reducing (close) to zero the marginal costs of storage,
processing and distribution of large amounts of information;
4. reducing transaction costs of the economic exchanges in all
markets.
Economic threats to media plurality

8. • In summary, digitalisation negatively affected the two
main source of revenue of traditional media: sales to
readers/viewers and advertising revenue
• Data reveals a continuous migration of advertising
towards the digital environment (2017 was the first time
online advertising spend surpassed the combined total of
TV, broadcast and cable advertising)
• In digital advertising Google and Facebook get the lion's
share: 57% of US digital market in 2017 and over 70% of
UK market in 2016, in other EU countries this share is
even higher
Economic threats to media plurality

9. Analogic platforms have an hard time
to survive in an era of digital platforms

10. Technological threats to quality of information

11. Technological challenges to quality of information
• The centrality of few Internet giants (with global reach) in the
key functions of mediating interpersonal communication and
disseminating contents have serious implications for the
quality of information
• Recent events have led many scholars to “question the role of
social media seen as responsible for distributing fake news
(Allcott and Gentzkow 2017; Tambini 2017), using manipulative
psychometric profiling (Cadwalladr 2017), undermining
authoritative journalism (Bell, 2018; Allcott and Gentzkow,
2017) and, ultimately, jeopardizing the fairness and
transparency of elections” (Tambini 2018)

12. Technological challenges to quality of information
• Some specific threats for democratic processes: voters profiling
and micro targeting, social bots and disinformation
• there is still limited scientific certainty about how widespread
is the “information disorder” (Wardle and Derakhshan 2017),
and on what is the dimension of the real impact on individuals
choices and behaviours
• Some insights come from (Vosoughi et al. 2018): “false” news
on Twitter are typically retweeted by many more people, and
far more rapidly, than “true” news, by a factor higher than 10

13. Technological challenges to quality of information
In general terms, 3 kinds of new threats to information emerge:
1) The presence of only a few gatekeepers and the
disappearance of many traditional and local media, may be a
driver towards the excessive standardization and
homogeneity of the sources of news and qualified opinions,
which thus negatively affects the quality of information. The
situation is exacerbated by a substantial absence of editorial
control and editorial responsibility in the distribution model
of information typical of major internet players;

14. 2) The polarization of opinions (filter bubbles) created by
the sociological and technological dynamics, can further
impoverish the democratic dialogue and cause the
exclusion of middle ground and conciliatory occasions for
debate. These developments could change the way in
which political consensus is reached and maintained, even
in otherwise democratic environments;
3) The “information disorder” has fuelled the reach and
impact of hate speech, which has now become a common
pattern of political propaganda, even in even
democracies, targeting minorities, women, migrants,...

15. The MPM 2020

16. The MPM 2020
Certain elements of the digital environment are already part of
the MPM:
 Freedom of expression online
 Filtering, monitoring, blocking or removing online content in an
arbitrary way by the State or ISPs
 Digital safety of journalists
 Market concentration of ISPs and ICPs
 Net neutrality
 Internet access and digital skills of users
 Role of online media in democratic electoral processes

17. The MPM 2020
But important sources of risk to media pluralism need to be
considered:
Social media electoral micro targeting in electoral processes
Algorithm driven media news leading to political or social bias
Data-driven news personalisation and recommendations systems
Filter bubbles and echo chambers effects
Disinformation and misinformation, hidden behaviors
Concentration of digital advertising
Absence of editorial responsibility in social media
Polarization of opinions and debates

18. The MPM 2020
• The project start with a thorough Study on Indicators to assess
risks to Information Pluralism in the Digital Age
• Introduce new digital-related variables along the already
existing ones, i.e., explore digital issues but still address
traditional sources of risks to media pluralism
• Provide a holistic picture of the state of play of media pluralism
both online and offline, but provide a general risk score and a
specific digital risk score
• Maintain a modular and manageable tool, i.e., substitute
variables don’t simply add them

19. Thanks you for your attention!