The Palgrave Handbook of European Media Policy

K. Donders, C. Pauwels, J. Loisen, K. Donders, C. Pauwels, J. Loisen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137032195
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Containing state-of-the-art contributions on the various domains of European media policies, this Handbook deals with theoretical approaches to European media policy: its historical development; specific policies for film, television, radio and the Internet; and international aspects of the fragmented policy domain.

1

Introduction: European Media Policy as a Complex Maze of Actors, Regulatory Instruments and Interests

Karen Donders, Jan Loisen and Caroline Pauwels

European media policy: What’s in a name?

Everybody agrees on the mounting relevance of European media policy, also referred to as European audiovisual and media policy. By this we do not mean the individual media policies of the separate member states of the European Union (EU) but rather media policies elaborated at the level of the EU. Admittedly, these policies are developed in close collaboration with the member states. As can be read on the European Commission’s (EC’s) website,¹ European media policy is implemented by the EC in four ways. First, there is the harmonization of rules applicable to audiovisual media services. These rules are part of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (a 2007 amended version of the 1989 Television without Frontiers Directive), which is transposed into over 28 national and subnational jurisdictions. Their main objective is to achieve an internal market in audiovisual media services while protecting the interests of minors and enforcing public interest objectives, such as diversity and quality. Technical standardization also falls under these objectives of creating an internal market for communcation and information technologies, infrastructure and devices. Second, there are media-specific programs to stimulate the production and distribution of audiovisual media services. The industrial support program MEDIA, which is designed to add to the professionalization of the film and television industries, is the most important support program. Third, the EC formulates policies on media literacy and media pluralism. For these topics the axis of policy lies with the member states, however. Fourth, there is an external dimension to European media policy when the EC defends European cultural and economic interests in, for example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and, on ocassion, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). Complementary to these policy lines and actions is competition policy. Indeed, competition law is applied across all sectors. This horizontal application has allowed for sector-specific recommendations regarding subsidies to film and public broadcasters, and it has certainly not prevented the application of rules on unfair agreements, the abuse of a dominant position, and mergers in the media sector. On the contrary, European media markets have been affected significantly by the competition rules. All of the abovementioned parts of European media policy are elaborated upon in this book. It comprises five parts. Part I frames the field theoretically. Part II is devoted to contributions on the historical development of European media policy. Part III elaborates on sector-specific policies. Part IV discusses the width of application of competition rules in the media sector. Part V touches upon the external dimension to European media policy.

A complex maze …

There are numerous relevant scholarly works on, or related to, a particular aspect of European media policy. As pointed out by Loisen (2012, pp. 46–54) and Künzler (2012, pp. 58–59), (media) policy research has developed three approaches for the analysis of complex, multifaceted policy issues, as, in general, commitments to policies are due to a mix of ideas, interests and institutions (Bhagwati, 1993, p. 17). The institutional approach itself can be subdivided into several categories: historical institutionalism (looking at the sequence of events), legal institutionalism (taking ‘the law’ as the core of its analysis) and social institutionalism (taking a rather constructivist approach and often overlapping with the ideas approach). Also, European media policy studies can be categorized – albeit not always ‘neatly’ because several studies combine (e.g., a focus on interests and institutions) – according to these three approaches.

There are few contributions that capture the whole of European media policy. One of the first overarching contributions on the subject was Broadcasting and Audiovisual Policy in the Single Market by Richard Collins (1994). Several updates followed (see, e.g., Pauwels, 1995). Harcourt’s (2005) The European Union and the Regulation of Media Markets, and Harrison and Woods’ (2007) European Broadcasting Law and Policy, provide for an historical account of European media policy, focusing on important changes to the relevant legal frameworks. In Governing European Communications: From Unification to Coordination, Michalis (2007) adds to these analyses, offering a historical institutionalist perspective as well, while also incorporating broader political-economy considerations into the analysis. Taken together, these contributions give a fairly accurate view of the most important events, legal and policy documents, and actor positions that constitute the area of European media policy.

Overall, accounts of European media policy or related areas are numerous. Often focusing on legal aspects, their analysis targets:

• specific issues, sectors and institutions;

• specific regulatory instruments;

• the balancing of different and often diverging goals in European media policy;

• or interinstitutional and multilevel governance dialectics.

An organization that has received considerable attention in relation to European media policy is public service broadcasting. In Public Broadcasting and European Law, Katsirea (2008) sketches the relevance of several domains of European law for public service broadcasting, while at the same time relating European law to six national jurisdictions. In Public Service Media and Policy in Europe, Donders (2012) tackles the contentious issue of the application of state aid rules to public service broadcasting from a historical and legal institutionalist approach, devoting attention to the clash of ideas between the EC, member states and public broadcasters. Several other contributions by Jakubowicz (2004), Dörr (2005), Humphreys (2007), Moe (2008) and Bardoel and Vochteloo (2012) also center on this issue, taking an approach that sets out from ideas mainly (with the exception of Dörr’s article ‘Öffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunk und die Vorgaben des Europarechts’, which is to be situated within a legal institutionalist strand of research).

Next to specific sectors or organizations, there are several legal studies or research efforts that take a legal institutionalist approach on specific regulatory tools to deal with the media sector. Elaborate research exists on the Television without Frontiers Directive and its successor the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. Some contributions take the lack of clearly defined concepts in the directives as their focal point of attention (e.g., Valcke & Stevens, 2007); others focus more on the difficulty of aligning enforceable legal provisions on market integration with more vaguely defined prescriptions on the protection of local content, cultural diversity and so on (e.g., Collins, 1992; Curwen, 1999; Regourd, 1999; Craufurd-Smith, 2004; Burri-Nenova, 2007; Dörr & Wiesner, 2009). Several studies – for example, Broadcasting and Audiovisual Policy in the Single European Market (Collins, 1994) – describe the evolution of audiovisual policies, taking the subsequent directives and amendments as the basis of their analysis (see also Pauwels & Donders, 2011). Whereas the Television without Frontiers and Audiovisual Media Services directives are sector-specific regulation to deal with broadcasting (and in extenso audiovisual media services), there is a quite developed strand of scholarly work on the relevance of competition law as a horizontally applying regulatory instrument (hence applying across sectors) for the media sectors in Europe. Next to contributions on public service broadcasting (cf. supra) and film policies, and European state aid (Pauwels & De Vinck, 2007), the other pillars of competition law also need mentioning – that is, anti-trust (Nikolinakos, 2006; Van Rompuy & Lefever, 2009; Van Rompuy, 2012) and mergers (Doyle, 1998; Pauwels & Cincera, 2001; Arino, 2004; Doyle, 2007). Extensive empirical work has been conducted relating to the application of anti-trust and merger rules to media, highlighting once again the conflicting values that arise when applying horizontal policies to European media. It is highly interesting to see how even most legal institutionalist studies (in other words, taking rules as the unit of analysis) almost always conclude on the relevance of ideas in the shaping of European media policy.

The Integration of Cultural Considerations in EU Law and Policies by Psychogiopoulou (2008), and Nitsche’s (2001) Broadcasting in the European Union: The Role of Public Interest in Competition Analysis, are examples of contributions that are not so much focused on a particular sector, institution or legal instrument but instead are more concerned with the difficulty of balancing economic goals in European media policy with public interest objectives (pluralism, cultural considerations, universality, etc.). Also, Van Rompuy’s (2012) Economic Efficiency: The Sole Concern of Modern Anti-trust Policy studies the balancing of economic and non-economic goals of European competition law as applied to the media sector. Taking sports broadcasting rights as his main empirical focus, Van Rompuy shows that non-economic objectives are taken into account in the application of competition law, but rather implicitly in the EC’s argumentation so as to avoid overly harsh criticism of the European Courts in this regard. Whereas Craufurd-Smith, Nitsche and Van Rompuy address the reconciliation of diverging values from a dominantly legal perspective, Venturelli (1998) and Ward (2002) widen the scope of their analysis by having a look at, respectively, the convergence or divergence between European liberalization efforts in the media sector and public sphere considerations; and the democratic deficit in developing European media policy (which is arguably to the benefit of economic goals and to the detriment of public interest objectives).

Academic work on the external dimensions of European media policy is focused on what the EC defines as implementing EU audiovisual and media policy outside the EU, especially defending European cultural interests in the WTO.ⁱ The so-called cultural trade quandary has sparked research interest since the first negotiations on film policy in the framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. With the Uruguay Round (1986–1994) leading to the establishment of the WTO and the General Agreement on Trade in Services in particular, audiovisual and media policies became part of the multilateral trade framework, indicating a more liberal approach to the media and cultural sector on a global policy level, similar to what was happening in Europe with the 1989 Television without Frontiers Directive. The process and results of the WTO interference in media policy are ambivalent, however, and have generated a series of analyses of the interplay between ideas, interests and institutions regarding trade and culture as well as the EU and member states’ role therein. In terms of the historical process of incorporating media and culture into the multilateral trade framework (Waregne, 1994; Falkenberg, 1995; Gualtieri, 2002), and the seemingly opposing ideas between two power blocs – the USA adhering to a ‘culture as commodity’ view, and the EU and Canada considering ‘culture as dialogue’ (Sauvé & Steinfatt, 2003) – the picture is relatively clear. On how this relates to shifting interests, especially in a further globalizing and digitalizing media environment, and is institutionally translated in rules and procedures, remains quite unpredictable (Pauwels & Loisen, 2003; Pauwels et al., 2006), especially since in UNESCO the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions was adopted in 2005. Whereas in media studies predominantly very critical analyses of the WTO interference in media policy, and of the role played by the EU, appear occasionally (Wheeler, 2000b; Freedman, 2003, 2005; Magder, 2004; Puppis, 2008), a large stream of legal analyses consider the many aspects of the interinstitutional dialectics between the WTO, UNESCO and their member states (e.g., Graber, 2004b; Bernier, 2005; Hahn, 2006; Neuwirth, 2006; Craufurd Smith, 2007; Voon, 2007; Burri, 2010). Albeit that currently not that much seems to be happening in the WTO, and the UNESCO convention is only slowly being implemented, recent research has focused on the EU’s involvement in mainstreaming (Loisen et al., 2013) its position internationally through bilateral trade or cultural exchange agreements that further amplify the complexity and unpredictability of EU media policy actions outside its borders (e.g., Loisen & De Ville, 2011; Hanania, 2012; Harcourt, 2012).

Besides all of the abovementioned contributions, there are several monographs (e.g., Humphreys, 1994; Collins & Murroni, 1996; Levy, 1999; Chakravartty & Sarikakis, 2006; Hitchens, 2006; Charles, 2009; Iosifidis, 2011; Just & Puppis, 2012) and edited collections (e.g., Dyson & Humphreys, 1988; McQuail & Siune, 1998; Calabrese & Burgelman, 1999; Pauwels et al., 2009; Raboy & Padovani, 2010; Mansell & Raboy, 2011) on media policy, cultural policy, cultural industries and so on that contain relevant chapters on singular aspects of European media policy as well. It would take us too long to list all of them but the fact that many edited collections in media studies contain at least one contribution that can be captured by the domain of European media policy exemplifies its relevance and cross-cutting nature.

Obviously, much can be said, researched and analyzed with regard to European media policy. Scholarly work conducted so far teaches us that there is in fact no clearly defined field of European media policy; no single competent authority responsible for it; no single law with which European media sectors need to comply; no unified actor interests; and no shared objective underlying European media policy. In fact, it would be more accurate to talk of European media policies. To assist some readers in this regard, this introduction will provide a brief description of the actors, the regulatory instruments and interests that interact in the area of European media policy. Of course, more elaborate and in-depth discussions of these will follow in distinct chapters as the book attempts to capture the apparent complexity in European media policy and also theoretically frame it. Indeed, Part I is dedicated to key concepts in and theoretical approaches to European media policy research. Hilde Van den Bulck and Karen Donders (Chapter 2) address (the lack of) methodologies to scientifically study aspects of European media policy. Their contribution largely focuses on the value of advocacy coalition research for the field. The following chapters are dedicated to key concepts in European media policy. Michael Latzer (Chapter 3) focuses on ‘convergence,’ ‘co-evolution’ and ‘complexity’; Katharine Sarikakis (Chapter 4) on...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction: European Media Policy as a Complex Maze of Actors, Regulatory Instruments and Interests
• Part I: Key Concepts and Theoretical Approaches
• Part II: The Development of European Media Policy
• Part III: Sector-Specific Policies
• Part IV: Competition Policies
• Part V: International Aspects of European Media Policy
• Index