New CEU Student Cohort Joins Media Influence Matrix

A new cohort of CEU MA students has joined Media Influence Matrix Project, a project that the Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS) has been carrying out since 2017. The students are conducting research work in line with the common methodology and research template used in the project. Most of the students are pursuing MA degrees at the CEU School of Public Policy (SPP).

“The success of this project among students in the previous year encouraged us to further engage them in this project,” said Marius Dragomir, the director of CMDS. “They learn how media systems work by researching themselves the intricacies of these systems.”

The project gives the students the opportunity to engage with government officials, policymakers, media owners, donor organizations and investors who spend money in media companies. The students collect and tabulate data, carry out interviews and write analytical reports about trends in news media and journalism, based on the information they gather in their work.

CMDS welcomes other CEU students interested in media research to join this effort.

Media Influence Matrix was envisaged to publish over the course of three years (2017-2019) a series of articles, analytical papers and datasets. They feed into the project’s final output, which is a collection of country reports and comparative overviews. The growing interest in the reports from a diverse range of audiences (including journalists, policy experts, politicians and researchers) prompted CMDS to expand the project to over 25 countries worldwide, including Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, Moldova, Pakistan, Romania, Russia and Slovakia. More country chapters are likely to be launched this year.

CMDS is running this project as part of a global research and advocacy alliance, the Media and Power Research Consortium, consisting of more than 40 organizations, including academic institutions, advocacy groups, journalist networks and NGOs. The main goal of the research project is to investigate the profound impact that rapid shifts in policy, sources of funding and technology companies are having on journalism today.

The Media Influence Matrix Project is covering three main areas as following: politics and policy, funding of journalism and technology. Focused on news media, the project is building on the goals set by CMDS in its 2017-2019 strategy, which is up for renewal this year. One of the center’s main strategic goals is to grasp the key shifts in the relationships between media, politics and technology. Research is one way to achieve that.