Media and Democracies at Risk: Aware but Largely Disengaged Citizens
In this second cycle of the research within the project Future of Media, we examined perceptions of media and democracy among media professionals, the general public, and citizens with high cultural and social capital and influence, in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey. The focus groups participants, citizens, and professionals alike, expressed scepticism about the state of democracy in their respective countries, as well as about the capacity of the media to uphold standards of quality and independent journalism.
Citizens largely recognize the pivotal role of media in forming public opinion and consequently, democratic life. At the same time, they point to systemic factors that limit media freedom and independence and undermine the media’s democratic role. Political capture and pressure, unfavourable media policies, the crisis in media funding, and changing media use patterns are most frequently cited as reasons for the decline in media quality, reach, and impact. Disinformation, saturation with superficial and repetitive information, lack of coverage of issues that matter, lack of pluralism, and the absence of investigative journalism are mentioned as defining features of today’s media and communication landscape. With the withdrawal of international assistance, quality media content is being further marginalized, with the recent termination of US funding for media in the region hitting the already financially challenged independent media particularly hard.
Besides losing funding, media outlets face growing challenges in reaching audiences in a highly fragmented communication environment. The citizens who participated in this research spoke of profound changes in communication practices, in the position of the media, and in the relationship between media and democracy. While media outlets occupy a central place in the imagery of democratic functions, in practice their role is increasingly marginalized. Many are used less frequently, are perceived as insufficiently trustworthy, and lack the capacity and commitment required for quality journalism. This media crisis is accompanied by fragile and, in some cases, declining democracies, characterized by weak public-interest policies and authoritarian tendencies that restrict media freedom and thrive on media capture.
In these circumstances, distrust towards the media can be understood as a response to the realities of media capture, lack of credibility and integrity, and low-quality content. However, focus group discussions also reveal a tendency to overgeneralize mistrust and to dismiss even those media outlets
that demonstrate integrity and professionalism. Although some focus group participants identified specific media outlets they consider credible, the overall conclusion is that citizen engagement with, and support for, quality media outlets is low.
Across the region, several focus group participants described experiencing information fatigue and news avoidance. The growing use of social networks as primary sources of information, in particular among young people but increasingly across all age groups, contrasts with the relatively low levels of trust in information placed in social media content. What stands out across the region is increased use and/or trust towards platforms of individuals, be they influencers, journalists, politicians, or other actors, including those spreading harmful content. Traditional media outlets are therefore frequently bypassed in contemporary communication processes, along with their watchdog and public service functions. This situation points to a broader disengagement from the pursuit of accurate information and suggests that facts have largely lost their currency in public life. Such shifts in the communication landscape can, and already do, as evidenced in both regional and global contexts, work in favour of populist policies that rely on sentiment and gut-feeling, fuelled by polarizing, fear-inciting, and exclusionary politics.
Media professionals and citizens with high cultural and social capital and influence who participated in our research described media laws and policies as both enabling and constraining media freedom. The use of legislation to imprison political dissidents, including journalists (in Turkey), represents the most extreme example of media policy failure. Other shortcomings range from adopting laws that can be used to silence dissident voices, such as re-criminalization of libel in Republika Srpska, BiH, to regulatory failures to establish policies that would enable the functioning of independent, quality media, such as failure to limit concentration of media ownership in Montenegro.
Citizens contrast this picture of media decline with vivid expectations of what journalism should be. They describe its role as informing, representing, educating, and holding power to account. Citizens emphasized the need for public interest content, inclusive narratives, meaningful public debate, specialized content, diversity, depth, and quality. As noted in the Turkey report, some participants even called for reimagining media as both “educational space and a strategic field of democratic struggle”.
From the public’s perspective, the future of the media remains uncertain. Media organizations are seen as operating within unfavourable policy environments, unsupportive markets, and evolving technological conditions, while facing disinterested citizens. Public sentiment regarding the future of our media and democracies ranges from pessimism to cautious optimism. However, most participants share the view that a bright future for both media and democracy
is conceivable only if radical reforms take place. Suggested reforms cover various domains. Some participants focused on improvements in policies pertaining to media ownership, funding, and competition. Others mentioned the need to improve journalistic practices, media integrity, and education of journalists. Several participants also highlighted the importance of improving citizens’ capacities to respond to numerous communication challenges, while others pointed to the necessity of political reform and shifts in power structures.
The research results confirm that the citizens are well aware of the media and democratic backslide and about the necessity of reforms, but that they are yet to assume their own responsibility in making the media and democratic institution “their own”. Initiatives aiming at media democratisation need to step up, to engage citizens in crucial political debates and to build coalitions based on solidarity and agency.
REGIONAL OVERVIEW 2026
Sanela Hodžić & Sandra B. Hrvatin
Authors
Executive Summary
Our Media, Our Democracy, Our Future
In an attempt to inform debate on the future of the media and democracy in the Western Balkans and Turkey, we have developed a map of key indicators, collected data, and provided analyses on journalism, media, and democracy in seven countries – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey. As decidedly as ever, we conclude that the media in the region are in a state of systemic, perpetual crisis, manifested in how they are defined, regulated, owned, financed, and managed. The state of crisis is reflected in the capacities of professional journalists and journalism to produce public interest content, and in how citizens relate to the media. The crisis is deeply entrenched in the fabric of our media and political systems and marked by the privatization of public communication and lack of strategic commitment to the public interest on the side of political and economic power.
The results of the research conducted in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey suggest that the key determinants for the future of our media and democracies are the following:
The poor socio-economic status of journalists and their exposure to pressure and attacks, coupled with modest support mechanisms, cripple the ability of journalists to promote the public interest, report on key issues of public interest, and hold power to account. In the most extreme cases, the pressure involves imprisonment, interrogation, surveillance, and lawsuits aimed at silencing journalists.
The lack of consistent monitoring and registration of cases of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) in the region, with dozens of lawsuits against journalists filed by political officials and their affiliates.
A growing number or media outlets, but a declining number of journalism students, highlighting concerns about the future shrinking of staff numbers in media newsrooms and about the growing automatization of journalist work. The most drastic drop was in North Macedonia, with the number of journalism students in 2023 amounting to only 11% of the number from ten years ago and 50% of the number from 2000.
The number of media outlets is growing, mostly in the online sector, while print media outlets are becoming increasingly endemic.
A worrying trend of overt concentrationof media ownership in the hands of a few media conglomerates, often tied to national or foreign governments, that takes a toll on media freedom and pluralism.
The dominant instrumentalization (through ownership and funding) of media (including private and public) for particular political and/or business interests limits the space for editorial independence and integrity.
Non-profit media are still a rarity in the region, with only a few non-profit radio broadcasters in some countries, and an unknown number of online platforms of civil society organizations with some community-focused mission.
Lack of transparency of media sector, particularly the lack of accessible and reliable information concerning the media industry and media market.
Advertising is a main source of revenues in the media sector, with total revenues ranging between EUR 12 million in Montenegro and over EUR 4 billion in Turkey.
The TV sector still acquires the highest, although declining, share of total advertising revenues, while social media’s share is increasing, and in Turkey it amounts to as much as 45.7%.
The tech giants such as Google and Meta are an increasingly dominant competitor for media outlets in the region, jeopardizing the future sustainability of national and local media outlets and potentially curbing political pluralism in public communication.
Public funding for the media, including funding of public broadcasters (declining in four out of seven countries), grants, and subsidies for media outlets and government advertising, amounts to several to dozens of millions of euros per country, taking up an important share of media revenues, but without proactive transparency, effective guarantees of editorial independence, well-defined purpose, and evaluation, the opportunities to make public funding for the media an important instrument of media democratization remain under-used.
The representation of different age, gender, ethnic, religious, and other groups in media content and in newsroom staff is limited. In multiethnic communities, some policies promote ethnic diversity of media content, while other identity axes are largely neglected and pluralism in public communication is very limited. Women are an important, and in many countries even dominant, workforce in media, but remain underrepresented in managerial posts.
Mechanisms for complaints concerning media content exist, and the number of complaints to the self-regulatory bodies on the national levels has been growing over the past three years. However, the mechanisms for participation of citizens in the work of media outlets, in the form of complaints, suggestions, providing support, etc., remain underused and limited mainly to user comments under the published content.
TV remains the main source of information across the region, although its use is slightly declining, while in Turkey, online news media platforms and social media have already taken over the leading role and now are the most used sources of news.
The trust in media is relatively low, ranging between 15% of citizens (in BiH) and 53% of citizens (in Albania) who trust media to some extent. A decline in trust in the media, particularly evident in Turkey and Serbia, possibly reflects both the growing awareness of interference in media editorial policies and the increasing scepticism towards all institutions and the democratic system as a whole, registered on the global level.
Growing use of social media, accompanied by the lack of media literacy and lack of citizen trust in the media and other institutions, is likely to have devastating consequences on the capacities of citizens to access relevant and reliable information, to engage in communication, and to participate in democratic processes.
The region is still facing polarizing rhetoric, political instability, high corruption, and authoritarian tendencies of the ruling parties. Recent indications of progress in some areas of democratic functioning in some parts of the region, such as certain advancements in the institutional fight against corruption, speak of some, albeit limited, potentials.
Voter turnout in the region is relatively low, amounting to between 46% and 59% at the last parliamentary elections in six countries of the region, and it has been declining in four out of seven countries over the past three years. By contrast, Turkey has traditionally had a high voter turnout for decades, reaching 87% in the last parliamentary elections. The growing use of social networks for accessing information is associated with the potentials for higher mobilization of voters, due to higher reach of online campaigns and the exposure of users to increasingly one-sided information.
Solving isolated issues of the media crisis cannot reverse the effects of decades of privatization of public communication and cannot assure a better future of our media and our democracies. In our research we show that all elements of the crisis have an impact on each other and on our future. We are in need of all-encompassing reforms, radically centred on the public interest, involving democratization of both the media and the political system.
