The Important Role of Media to Safeguard Democracy

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Hello and welcome to Season 6 and Episode 104 of the Public Sector Marketing Show.

In today’s episode, I’m getting serious. Serious about the disruption of mainstream media, attacks on journalists and the threats to our democracy.

Online hate is increasing, politicians are hanging up their political boots as it has become too much and decision-makers fear backlash and personal attacks.

I’ll talk about the challenges to democracy and the role of media, social media, and the challenges governments, politicians and the public sector are facing right now.

I really do worry about the future of democracy, and it is something we cannot take for granted. I really understand that people are angry and that social media has democratised society in a way like never before. We can all have our say on any issue and reach tens of thousands of people on our own social networks.

But while citizen journalism has added a new dimension to media as we know it, we need strong and independent as well as strong state media outlets like never before.

I speak to an expert in this field, Marius Dragomir, who is the Director of the Center for Media, Data and Society.

Let’s dive in!

Column – Is democracy at threat because of social media or a more untrustworthy mainstream media?

This is a really big question, and probably not one I can answer in a 40-minute podcast. However, what I can say, is that I have been studying media, journalism and social media for over 20 years and I have seen how its evolution is re-shaping society.

First of all, let’s look at some evidence. Research by Reuters and University of Oxford. Mainstream media is and will continue to be disrupted.

314 news leaders from 56 countries surveyed:

🎯News avoidance and news fatigue remain a major concern.

🎯63% are worried about a sharp decline in referral traffic to media websites from social media. Chartbeat data shows traffic to news sites from Facebook fell 48% in 2023, with traffic from X/Twitter declining by 27%.

🎯Shift in content formats a priority - more video (+64), more newsletters (+52), more podcasts (+47)

🎯Shift in focus on core social networks

💠Facebook (-38 net score) 💠Twitter (-39) 💠TikTok (+55)

💠Instagram (+39) 💠 YouTube (+44) WhatsApp (+61)

🎯Interest in TikTok reflects a desire to engage with under 25s, and experiment with vertical video storytelling.

Consulting – The important role of journalism in society

Journalism asks questions of our governments, our politicians, our public sector, it asks questions off big business, pharma, NGOs.

Their job is to ask questions, to scrutinise and probe and investigate. I used to be a journalist and I really relished my role in researching and reporting on stories in the public interest.

But journalists or media companies are not the sole owners of stories and news anymore.

In fact an European Parliament Research Service study of 2016 stated that news and media is now a commodity owned by anyone willing to create it.

A recent Core Media report in Ireland showed that the media advertising market is worth 1,533.6 million in 2024, up 4.1% on 2023.

Digital taking the biggest slice of the advertising pie!

Total media spend across offline media is expected to contract by 1.9% to €549.1 million in 2024, while digital channels will increase by 7.9%.

Media is being disrupted, journalism needs to hold firm and as citizens we must realise the importance and impact of our own voice online.

For what is at stake, is democracy, something we cannot take for granted as war rages in the Middle East, Europe and beyond.

Interview | Marius Dragomir

Marius Dragomir is the Director of the Center for Media, Data and Society. He previously worked for the Open Society Foundations (OSF) for over a decade. Since 2007, he has managed the research and policy portfolio of the Program on Independent Journalism (PIJ), formerly the Network Media Program (NMP), in London.

He has also been one of the main editors for PIJ’s flagship research and advocacy project, Mapping Digital Media, which covered 56 countries worldwide, and he was the main writer and editor of OSF’s Television Across Europe, a comparative study of broadcast policies in 20 European countries.

Marius has spent the past decade in the media research field, specializing in media and communication regulation, digital media, governing structures of public service media and broadcasting, spectrum management, and ownership regulation. He has authored expert studies and articles on journalism and media policies that have been published and translated in more than 60 countries.

He started his career as a journalist some 25 years ago in his native Romania where he worked for several local dailies, radio, and TV stations. Since 1999, he has been working for English-language media.

In 2015, with a group of journalists and researchers, he co-founded MediaPowerMonitor, a community of experts in media policy covering trends in regulation, business, and politics that influence journalism.