Right-wing populists are gaining ground in Western democracies. Surveys show that they often distrust established media and public service media (PSM) in particular, claiming that they are biased against them. This paper examines how they have challenged PSM and proposes some potential responses to these challenges. The paper is based on an analysis of a number of recent and long-standing surveys of public attitudes towards the media, combined with an analysis of support for right-wing populists. It focuses on three purposively sampled national case studies: Austria, Germany and Sweden. We show several commonalities among PSM in these three countries, including similar right-wing populist attacks on PSM. The findings crystallise around two points: First, the impartiality and objectivity of news media has generally become less taken-for-granted in a ‘high-choice’ media environment offering various news products of different quality. Secondly, historical left-right distinctions have become less clear-cut, also because right-wing populists challenge them. Consequently, the role of PSM in creating a shared national conversation which represents the diversity of society has also come under siege. At the same time, partisan websites and social media platforms enable certain groups to showcase content that is more aligned with the perspectives of right-wing populists. The paper concludes by asking if right-wing populists are a growing threat to PSM and whether this threat is isolated or potentially indicative of a broader and more sustained pattern.

For decades, public service broadcasting has played an important role in the provision of news and information in many European countries. Today, however, public service media (PSM) are confronted with numerous challenges, including the need to legitimise their role in an increasingly digital media environment. Against this background, this study examines the audience perspective on the topic with an international comparative approach. It analyses the population’s assessment of, and attitudes towards, the performance of PSM. The aim is to identify what relevance is attributed to PSM by the public in the digital age and how they see PSM’s role in comparison to other more recent (digital) media offerings. An online survey was conducted in three specifically selected countries: Germany, France, and the UK. Overall, the findings show that respondents attribute a clear role to PSM and distinguish it from other media offerings in the increasingly digital media environment. They rate the information quality offered by PSM as higher than that of most other media offerings. Respondents are more likely to value social media platforms for entertainment purposes than PSM. The findings also reveal differences in the evaluation of PSM depending on PSM news use, interest in news, political interest, as well as on demographic variables. On the other hand, differences between the individual countries overall were surprisingly small, pointing to the fact that PSM across the countries sampled are—with deviations—perceived to be performing better than (most) other media, despite being confronted with changes and challenges in their environment.

This article presents an analysis of how different major news media with different funding models (public service versus private sector media) and different organizational legacies (broadcast versus print) in six different European countries approach the social media platforms that they increasingly rely on for some of their online reach. Based on interviews with senior editors and executives in a strategic sample of 20 news organizations and analysis of their social media activities on Facebook, we find the following: all these organizations have invested significantly in social media, even as they explicitly recognize platforms as ‘frenemies,’ combining characteristics of a friend and an enemy, and they do so in ways that differ in part according to their funding models (public service versus private sector) and legacy roots (broadcast versus print). We argue that publishers’ agency and strategic priorities play a substantial role in determining how individual news organizations adapt to the increasing power of platforms, although structural factors, including power asymmetries and algorithmic incentives, also lead to similarities across otherwise different organizations with different strategies in different countries.

This study provides insights into the role of political social media influencers (PSMI) as relatively new actors in political communication. It examines their content and motives in the context of elections. Considering the German federal election in 2021, it uses content analysis of 20 PSMI offers with 301 pieces of content and a supplemental online survey to explore how PSMI communicated on various platforms/formats (Instagram posts/videos, podcast episodes, TikTok, YouTube) in the 2 months before the election. The findings show that the PSMI in this sample, who were all nominated for an award, provided (basic) political knowledge for a broad target audience without significant prior knowledge. In line with this, the findings further reveal that while the content of the PSMI overall was characterized by a high density of information, their density of opinion or self-presentation was comparatively low, with platform affordances influencing these characteristics. This corresponds to the motives stated by the PSMI in the supplemental online survey. While the findings for the PSMI in our sample are to some extent in line with role conceptions of journalists in Germany—the sample spans from professional journalists to influencers without any connection to journalism—they diverge in other respects from routines of the profession. The findings of our country-specific contribution allow for a more systemic understanding of PSMI, especially in the context of elections, by highlighting that they can add to information sources available by offering (basic) political education, especially for a young target audience on social media.

The impact of public service media (PSM) on media competition has become a topic of debate in many European countries. Some argue that PSM could starve commercial media, or discourage them from entering markets in the first place because they shrink commercial audiences, lowering both advertising income for free commercial television and willingness to pay for commercial products. Despite its prevalence as a policy argument, there has been limited research about the crowding out concept – and almost no research that is independent, comparative, and considers broadcasting as well as online markets. This article addresses these shortcomings by examining whether there is any evidence to support the crowding out argument by analysing national broadcast and online markets in all 28 European Union countries. More specifically, we focus on data on market resources, audience performance and payment for digital news. The analysis reveals little to no support for the crowding out argument for broadcasting and related online markets.

In this paper, we examine to what extent public service media (PSM) in six European countries have integrated or are integrating their newsrooms in order to adapt to an increasingly digital media environment. Based on 67 interviews over two years with senior editors and managers, this study constitutes the largest comparative analysis of newsroom change among PSM organizations conducted to date. Despite much talk of “convergence”, our empirical analysis shows that full newsroom integration remains the exception in this sector. Although all of the PSM studied experience pressure to reorganize across platforms, only two have achieved high levels of newsroom integration. Our findings suggest that centralizing online news under a single operational roof — only recently undertaken and still incomplete at several PSM — is a necessary first step to more thorough editorial reorganization across platforms. Our data also shed light on the complex ways that internal and external variables combine to shape organizational change: in addition to organizational challenges, we highlight broader historical, political, and economic factors affecting how PSM have responded to rapid technological shifts in the media environment.