More than 1000 citizens, firms and associations took part in the online consultation on a discussion paper that aims to further develop the Interstate Broadcasting Treaty into an Interstate Media Treaty. The Broadcasting Commission of the Lander had issued a respective invitation and is now analyzing the various comments. In addition, it will hear affected parties in expert talks during the winter months. The planned Interstate Media Treaty is essentially about the following. Firstly, the licensing regime for broadcasting is to become more flexible and liberal. Secondly, platform regulation is to be extended to all user interfaces that structure access to broadcasting; a privileged rule for finding certain content is also under discussion. Thirdly: media intermediaries shall be included in the regulation of the Interstate Treaty, transparency rules and non-discrimination requirements have been proposed for them.

Btw: There are still a few square [brackets] in the draft which indicate a lack of consensus among the Lander – observers are curious as to whether and how opinions will change after the analysis of the submissions.

Twitter is often seen as a kind of mood barometer, even by journalists and politicians. But who actually creates the mood? Dr. Sascha Hölig, Senior Researcher at Hans Bredow Institute in Hamburg, compared active twitterers with the total population on the Internet. The groups differ significantly from each other: active twitterers have stronger personalities, they are more extroverted and less anxious than the other Internet users – and they have a higher tendency to narcissism. Men are strongly over-represented. The political orientation of active twitterers is broadly distributed and includes a significant proportion of extreme left and right positions. The other Internet users, in contrast, group themselves more homogeneously around the political center; extreme orientations are the exception here.

Hölig’s conclusion: Twitter is “rather unsuitable as a barometer of mood for the concerns of society”.
Click here to learn more about the study.

Photo: Hans Bredow Institute

In the digitalised communication about politics and society, imbalances have occurred – at the Media Dialogue Hamburg 2018, possible solutions were discussed intensively. Hamburg’s first mayor, Dr. Peter Tschentscher, had invited top decision-makers from the media and communications industries. The focus was on the responsibility of content providers, advertisers and digital intermediaries for shaping a democratic public sphere and safeguarding journalistic diversity and quality. The discussion revolved around the current priorities in media policy: the proposal for an Interstate Media Treaty, the planned e-privacy regulation of the EU and the relationship between public service broadcasting and private-sector providers.
Keynote speaker at the Senate reception in the City Hall was US professor and technosociologist Zeynep Tufekci. Also op-ed writer for the New York Times, she has received international recognition with pointed contributions on the effects of social media, algorithms and artificial intelligence.

Grothe Medienberatung supports the conception and implementation of the Media Dialogue Hamburg.

Photo: Marcelo Hernandez