1) The study compares rankings of media pluralism and freedom of expression in EU countries from the Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM) to those from Reporters Without Borders (RWB) and Freedom House (FH). 2) The MPM uses a comprehensive questionnaire across 4 areas and 20 indicators to assess risks to media pluralism, while RWB and FH use fewer questions across legal, economic and political environments. 3) Preliminary statistical analysis found moderate correlations between the indexes' scores and rankings, and less correlation between MPM scores and country characteristics like population and GDP compared to RWB and FH.

1. A comparison of a new index based on the Media Pluralism
Monitor with some other indexes ranking freedom of expression
in EU countries
FSR Comms and Media, FCP and CMPF
Annual Scientific Seminar
22 March 2018
Elda Brogi and Pier Luigi Parcu

2. Scope and aim of the research
§ more than 200 organisations in the world (mostly NGOs)
support and, in many cases, monitor media freedom
violations and produce rankings, indexes or reports on the
levels of freedom of expression in a single or many countries
§ Reporters without Borders (RWB), Freedom House (FH) are
some of the most popular studies that provide numerical
scores and rankings for the analysed countries and cover the
EU
§ CMPF regularly applies the Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM)
to assess the risks for media pluralism in a given EU country
and some Candidates

3. Scope and aim of the research
§ The aim of this paper is twofold: a) to present, for the first
time, a ranking of European Union Member States,
Montenegro and Turkey, in terms of media pluralism, deriving
it from the results of the Media Pluralism Monitor conducted
by the CMPF at the EUI (2016 round, published in 2017);
§ B) to compare this new MPM ranking with the scores and
rankings provided by the indexes of Reporters without
Borders and Freedom House published in 2017 for the same
EU and accession countries.

5. The MPM Methodology
§ A tool to assess the risks for media pluralism in a given country
§ holistic
§ Comprehensive questionnaire:
§ 4 areas - 20 indicators - 200 variables (qual. and quant.)
§ National expert teams
§ Primary sources and secondary data
§ Interviews (experts in media literacy, minorities)
§ Peer review (group of experts)
§ Online platform for data collection
§ Algorithm to calculate the risk (balance between legal, economic
and socio-political variables)

6. The MPM Methodology
Areas and Indicators

7. Risk-based approach
Traffic light system:
–High
–Medium
–Low

8. MPM2016 “ranking”
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
France
Germ
any
Sw
eden
Denm
ark
Belgium
Portugal
Netherlands
United
Kingdom
Slovakia
Finland
Ireland
Estonia
Spain
Austria
Croatia
Cyprus
Lithuania
Czech
Republic
Italy
M
alta
Greece
Luxem
bourg
Poland
Rom
ania
Slovenia
M
ontenegro
Bulgaria
Latvia
Hungary
Turkey
MPM
MPM

9. Comparing MPM methodology with RWB and FH
Areas Number of
questions
Type of
questions
Aggregation method Narrative
reports
MPM Basic Protection
Market Plurality
Political
Independence
Social Inclusiveness
200 (20
indicators)
Legal (e, i),
economic,
socio-political
Average of the score for different types of questions Comparat
ive report
and
narrative
per
country
RWB pluralism,
media
independence,
media environment
and self-censorship,
legislative
framework,
transparency,
quality of the
infrastructure that
supports the
production of news
and information
87 Mostly
requests of
evaluations
ScoA = 1/3ScorePlur+1/6
(scoreInd+ScoreEA+ScoreCL)+1/12(scoreTra+ScoreInf
)
ScoB=1/5scoreExa+4/15scorePlur+1/15(scoreInd+sco
reEA+scoreCL)+1/15(scoreTra+ScoreInf)
No
analysis
reports
FH Legal environment
Economic
environment
Political
environment
124 (23
« methodolog
y questions »
Legal,
economic,
political
Sum of:
Legal environment: 0-30 points
Political environment 0-40 points
Economic environment 0-30 points
Short
comparati
ve report.
Shorts
country
reports

10. RWB and FH scores

11. Country scores intervals

12. Comparing MPM scores with FH and RWB average

13. Comparison
of rankings and scores

14. Correlations
Correlation of scores between the three Indexes
MPM/RWB MPM/FH FH/RWB
0.69 0.69 0.96
Correlation scores between the three Indexes rankings
MPM/RWB MPM/FH FH/RWB
0.67 0.68 0.92

15. Correlations (scores and ranking position)
Correlation of scores between the three Indexes
MPM/RWB MPM/FH FH/RWB
0.69 0.69 0.96
Correlation between the three Indexes rankings
MPM/RWB MPM/FH FH/RWB
0.67 0.68 0.92

16. Correlations
• Correlation of the three Indexes scores with country population
• And GDP per capita

17. Conclusions
-MPM different methodology from RWB and FH. RWB and FH
are more similar
-the different scope of analysis matters
-the MPM provides results that, according to a preliminary
statistical analysis, look less biased than the others

18. Thank you.
Elda.Brogi@eui.eu
Pierluigi.Parcu@eui.eu
@CmpfEui