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.