Project description
National media impact on transnational policy issues
Research in political economy has revealed that the media may impact several economically and politically relevant outcomes. However, existing empirical work focuses on a few countries and their politics, paying limited attention to the frictions between national media, national politics, and transnational policymaking. The EU-funded MEGEO project will define to what extent national media undermine issues of global policymaking, such as climate change. The project will develop a comprehensive and consistent novel data resource measuring what and how national media reports and how other countries are represented in each other's media. MEGEO will identify how national media may affect policymaking in domains with clear transnational relevance.
Objective
"Research in political economy has documented a vast number of different “media effects” suggesting that the media can have a profound impact on a range of economically & politically relevant outcomes. Yet, the existing empirical work is significantly skewed towards a few countries, raising concerns about the generalizability & broader cross context relevance of the empirical findings. Further, given the predominant focus on individual countries and its politics, this implies limited attention is devoted to the frictions between national media, national politics and transnational policy making in the myriad of areas that require collective and coordinated global action. To what extent the primarily national media has concrete effects undermining global policy making across a broad range of areas - or on the specific issue of climate change - is an important empirical question that requires both suitable data and suitable research designs. MEGEO will deliver on both dimensions and in the process catalyse research across multiple disciplines.
The overarching objectives of MEGEO are:
1) To develop & make available a comprehensive and consistent novel data resource measuring what national media reports on and how and to what extent other countries are represented in each other's media
2) To characterize the extent to which national media may affect policy making in domains with clear transnational relevance that has previously been mostly ignored
3) To quantify the extent to which skewed reporting on foreign countries may have tangible economic & political impacts
The work is organized across three work packages that will provide a systematic ""Topology of Media Focus"" across countries; answer the question of ""What, where and why does news spread to?; study ""(How) Does National Media Shape Transnational Politics?""; and explore ""(How) Does National Media Affect Cross Border Economic Activity?"" using a range of novel applications and leveraging proprietary secondary data."
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-AG - HORIZON Action Grant Budget-BasedHost institution
53113 Bonn
Germany