In 2023, several meetings of European editors from small scale publications were organized to discuss the issues of media literacy, the challenge of publishing, political polarization and values in the public sphere. These meetings took place as a part of the project “Protecting European Values” which is run by the Jan Nowak-Jeziorański College of Eastern Europe.
The meetings were co-organized with the network “Eurozine” and took place in the following cities:
- June 15-17 2023, Kraków, Poland – hosted by New Eastern Europe
- October 20-22, Gothenborg, Sweden – hosted by Ord & Bild and Glanta
- December 15-16, Sofia, Bulgaria – hosted by Critique and Humanism
The meetings covered a variety of issues that matter to small, NGO media organizations responsible for engaging societies on culture and politics.
These issues include:
- The challenges editors face in current political environments
- How to assess the current role of European audiences, what are the expectations of European audiences?
- How mis/disinformation affects our roles as editors?
- Can AI technology (e.g. ChatGPT, fact-checking tools, etc.) assist or hurt our works as editors?
- What are trends and developments in the fields of distribution and audience building for cultural journals. What models exist in for subscriptions, libraries, independent vs commercial distributors, digitization, print, etc.
- What is the contribution today of smaller scale publications to the wider European public debates? Can they counter the toxic polarization which is often spread by social media and mainstream/tabloid media?
- What is the role of illiberalism in shaping European debates? How are European debates and politics are affected by illiberal and populist discourse and what it means for the future of democracy.
- Political and economic pressures on the media and individual journalists cause the degradation of informational spaces, especially where professional solidarity is weak and where regulatory systems and codes of practice are underdeveloped. As trust in the media vanishes, publics turn to ‘alternative’, anti-systemic and anti-western sources. Culture becomes ‘weaponised’, particularly in relation to memory politics. What do these tendencies mean for cultural journalism? What structures and methods have you developed to resist and reflect on them?
