Arquivos mensais: Agosto 2026

Portugal: awaiting the promised Media Code (Código da Comunicação Social)

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The 2026 Media Pluralism Monitor report identifies structural vulnerabilities in the Portuguese media sector and offers recommendations across four core areas. Here is a brief summary of some of these recommendations.

Fundamental Protection highlights the urgent need to approve the new Media Law Code and fully implement the national Media Action Plan. It recommends decriminalising defamation, adopting anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) legislation, and strengthening whistleblower protection. It also calls for a coordinated national strategy to combat disinformation and FIMI (Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference), with stronger transparency obligations for platforms and clearer reporting requirements for VLOPs (Very Large Online Platforms).

In Market Plurality, the report urges swift approval of the new Media Law Code and rapid discussion of the revised Media Transparency Law. The regulator (ERC) should strengthen oversight of commercial pressures on journalism and ensure greater public disclosure of media ownership. Public service media must fulfil their mission effectively, while private companies should innovate beyond traditional business models.

On Political Independence, the report calls for a robust public policy approach to address the media’s structural crisis, protect journalism, and combat political disinformation, including AI-generated content targeting younger audiences. Regulators must remain independent. The governance of Lusa and the restructuring of RTP require close scrutiny. Journalists should strengthen ethical standards, avoid publishing daily tracking polls, and promote greater methodological transparency to prevent distortions in public debate.

In Social Inclusion, the report recommends effective mechanisms for assessing equality policies, stronger support for local and regional media, full implementation of the National Media Literacy Plan, and improved systems to monitor and combat online hate speech. Media organisations should adopt gender-equality and diversity policies, and the regulator should raise minimum accessibility standards, including audio description.

The European MPM general report is available here:

https://hdl.handle.net/1814/95479

The Portuguese full report can be read in English or Portuguese at the following link:

https://hdl.handle.net/1814/95501

Platform power and media pluralism: reassessing regulatory and methodological strategies focusing on Portugal

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This communication addresses the European Union’s long-standing failure to treat media concentration as a key democratic issue, a problem exacerbated by the rise of digital platforms, VLOPs, and generative AI. Despite recent regulatory efforts – EMFA, DSA, DMA, and the AI Act – the EU’s response remains fragmented and slow relative to technological advances, thereby allowing platform dominance, algorithmic gatekeeping, and disinformation to weaken media diversity. Using a mixed-methods approach that includes historical-legal analysis, a review of key literature, and 10 years of Media Pluralism Monitor data (2015–2025), the study examines the tension between concentration and diversity, using Portugal as a case study shaped by EU-level constraints. The paper also assesses new AI-supported methods and emphasises the need for deeper computational research to understand content dynamics. It concludes by calling for stronger, more coordinated regulation to protect democratic resilience and promote sustainable, diverse media ecosystems in the digital and post-digital age. Digital media, especially the news media, is a priority for strengthening control over biases and harmful practices that disrupt the public sphere and spread disinformation, thereby threatening traditional public discourse. This presentation examines how to manage this disruption and proposes a mixed-methods approach and in-depth research to achieve this.

Conference by F. Rui Cádima at the 25th European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies – ECRM 2026. 6 August, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town.