Self-Regulation and Co-Regulation as Governance Solutions (Volume II)

This is the second Research Topic of a series. The first volume can be found here.The governance of media infrastructures has always been a particularly complex affair, and it is no longer the business of states and media owners alone. Governance, unlike governability, turns the responsibility of a media organization outwards, towards the audiences, professional bodies, platforms, and public authorities that now act as stakeholders. Media companies carry economic and legal obligations, and they are now expected to answer for their social performance as well.Since the previous Research Topic was published, the catalogue of rules has grown, and, as it has grown, it has absorbed the instruments of the profession. Codes of ethics, press councils, ombudsmen, and stylebooks were long what the profession did instead of being regulated. These instruments now sit inside binding regulatory frameworks, and co-regulation is how they get there: a code of practice earns a presumption of conformity, a self-declaration unlocks procedural rights against platform moderation, and a technical standard or a certificate acquires statutory weight. The European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), at an early stage when Volume I was published, now applies across the European Union, and comparable instruments are appearing in very different institutional settings. Whether this raises the standing of self-regulation or leaves voluntary arrangements with as little force as they had before is contested.The evidence that these instruments produce accountability is thinner than their spread suggests. They are described far more often than they are tested, and relevant research is seldom written in the vocabulary of self-regulation, so it rarely reaches this debate. The same instrument may deliver genuine redress in one system and amount to a formality in another. It is not prima facie clear, either, whether media independence can or should be regulated—some would go further and call the attempt a contradiction in terms—or how much pluralism there should be inside a committee whose job is to judge information pluralism.The European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA) has given way to the European Board for Media Services, whose remit reaches beyond audiovisual media to the press and digital platforms. This has opened a new front for journalistic ethics, and the measures that follow pull in different directions: some limit the power of Big Tech to remove or demote content; others set national rules for public-sector advertising.Who governs the digital public square, algorithms or codes of ethics? This Research Topic investigates self-regulation and co-regulation as governance solutions for the media and asks what they actually deliver. Evidence of what an instrument achieves is more useful than an account of its existence. Work from any jurisdiction is welcome, whether comparative or focused on a single system. Specific themes to be addressed include, but are not limited to, the following:• how legal norms and media deontology coexist, with examples from different countries• codes of ethics and stylebooks, and newsroom guidelines for artificial intelligence• self-regulation mandated, supervised, or displaced by the state• the effectiveness of accountability instruments—press councils, ombudsmen, fact-checking standards, and certification• platform governance and content moderation as co-regulation• transparency, governance, and accountability in algorithmic news recommendation and generation• the provenance, watermarking, and labelling of synthetic content• media literacy, audience participation, and demands for external control• the independence of media regulators and the transparency of media ownership• the protection of journalistic work against abusive litigation, surveillance, and harassment• the self-regulation of the internet for the challenges of the next decade• the European Board for Media Services and the new architecture of European media oversight• state and public-sector advertising, transparency, and media sustainability• soft censorship and the chilling effects of litigation and political pressure• the tension between protecting journalism and enabling disinformation.Information and Instructions for AuthorsManuscript summaries (Frontiers' name for abstracts) of up to 500 words will be considered until 30 January 2027. Authors are strongly encouraged to submit a manuscript summary before submitting a full manuscript.Please note that this Research Topic accepts submissions via Frontiers in Communication only. Topic editors: José Sixto-García, Ana María López Cepeda, Alberto Quian Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/86532/self-regulation-and-co-regulation-as-governance-solutions-volume-ii