Mission
Media and Journalism Research Center (MJRC) is an independent media research and policy think tank that seeks to improve the quality of media policymaking and the state of independent media and journalism through research, knowledge sharing and financial support. MJRC continues the work of the Center for Media, Data & Society (CMDS), which until October 2022 operated as a unit of Central European University (CEU).
Focus
Research is our core activity. We conduct research about the impact of media and information policy on society and practice, particularly journalism. Besides projects that we generate on our own, we partner with think tanks, academics and journalists to conduct joint research projects and investigations.
You can read more about our work in our strategy, covering the period 2023-2025, launched in November 2022.
Education
We use our research to teach and explain media policy. The center runs courses and workshops at a dozen of universities worldwide, provides trainings and organizes exchanges through workshops, lectures and conferences on current developments in the field.
We take the findings of our research into policy debates and forums and share expertise with practitioners, experts and civil society involved in the policy making process.
Expertise
We support regulators and market players by providing them expert analysis about policy and legal developments as well as data and information and about media and journalism.
Our reporting includes:
- Bespoke analysis: firsthand accounts on political changes, regulation and policy developments
- Country profiles and comparative reports: description of regulatory and policy frameworks and analysis of regulatory trends across a range of countries
- Data: information about funding and ownership in media and journalism
Operation
The Media and Journalism Research Center was founded in 2022 by media scholar and journalist Marius Dragomir who continues here the research work that he carried out in the past as director of the Center for Media, Data & Society. The center is operated by Media and Journalism Research Center OU, an Estonia-incorporated company organized as a social enterprise, funded through philanthropic grants and commercial revenue. Media and Journalism Research Center OU invests all its earnings into in research projects.
To date, MJRC has implemented research projects financed by Open Society Foundations (OSF), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), European Union, Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF), Internews Network, Thomson Foundation, Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), and Prague Civil Society Center.
Resources
Annual Reports
Partnerships and collaborations
The research group Novos Medios was born in 1999 at the Faculty of Communication Sciences at the University of Santiago de Compostela. Led by Prof. Xosé López, the group’s main research focus has been from the beginning on studying the impact of technologies on communication, both on production as well as dissemination and reception. In 2012, Novos Medios merged with the research team led by Carlos Ferrás Sexto, known as GIS-T (Grupo de Investigación Sociedad, Tecnología y Territorio), which led to the creation of a group of 21 researchers who work collaboratively to produce academic contributions from a multi-disciplinary perspective. In the past decade, Novos Medios has led more than 20 publicly funded research projects and carried out work for dozens of practice-oriented projects through contracts with private entities.
See more on Novos Medios website.
The Global Media and Internet Concentration Project project brings together a multidisciplinary team of more than 50 scholars and almost a dozen non-academic external partners to more consistently apply existing approaches and create new conceptual and methodological tools to address this question today.
See more on the project’s page.
The Public Media Alliance (PMA) is the largest global association of public service media organisations. The alliance has a specific remit to support and advocate for the role and importance of these organisations – otherwise known as public service broadcasters – in society and democracy. PMA is a non-profit organisation funded by over fifty public media organisations, including the BBC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Zweites Deutches Fernsehen (ZDF), the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and Thai PBS.
See more on PMA’s website.
The Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) is the largest global community for media development, media freedom, and journalism support. Through collaboration, coordination, and collective action our network of 188 member organisations — as well as their dozens of partners — GFMD creates, promotes, and delivers policies and programmes to sustain journalism as a public good.
See more on GFMD’s website.
The Research Group “Political Communication and Citizenship in the Democratic Transition” is part of the Institute of Government and Strategic Development Sciences at the Autonomous University of Puebla, which is one of the top universities in Mexico by QS and THE University rankings.
See more on the university’s website.