On October 14 at 12:00 noon, Moscow time, within the framework of the 13th Russian International Studies Association Convention (RISA), a session of the Valdai Discussion Club took place, titled “Is Transparency in the Modern Media Possible in the Era of the Rapid Development of Digital Technologies?”
Modern media have faced a dramatic challenge — the loss of transparency and clarity of understanding of the current media world. This applies to all aspects of the media: from technologies for creating and distributing content to measuring the audience, and from regulating the industry to distributing income for produced content.
The time of opacity that has come is especially acute in the competition between the so-called “new” and “traditional” media. The “new” media are emphatically claiming to be capturing the audience of the “traditional” one. But is it really so? An equally important issue is the management of the creation and distribution of content, and the income from it, especially in the context of the rapid development of delivery technologies. It is no secret that a significant proportion of the content circulating on various platforms is created by professional media. The recent lawsuits in Australia, France and Canada, during which Internet companies were obliged to pay producers of news content, only emphasised the severity of the situation, but it cannot be considered a solution.
How do we find this situation? How can we change the regulation of the media industry so that the situation becomes more transparent and fair, including the competition between different types of media? Is there experience in solving the problems of global media transparency? If we imagine that technology will evolve at the current pace, what new challenges will the media face? These and other issues in the context of the policy of the modern digital state were discussed at the session by leading experts in the field of media and communications.