The Network of Audience Councils, aims to encourage civil society organizations to act in a consolidated and a coordinated fashion to advance the communication rights vulnerable groups in the mediatised public sphere, ensuring their access to the media policy making processes and guaranteeing their adequate representation in the media.
The Network was initiated and strategically structured by the RESIS Institute earlier this year, after a lengthy research process which defined the problem and detected the communication needs of vulnerable communities in North Macedonia.
In the course of October and November 2020 the RESIS Institute provided methodological support to the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law for assessing and comparing civil society environments in the Eastern Partnership countries.
The RESIS Institute started an initiative for advancing the standards in media literacy research in our country. At the last conference of the Media Literacy Network, RESIS proposed Guidelines for Ethics in Media Literacy Research which was publicly discussed and approved by the members of the Network in November 2020.
The findings of the RESIS’ Study “Pluralism of media ownership in the new media environment” were presented at an online workshop with representatives of the regulatory body, broadcasters, operators of public communication networks and NGOs in the media field.
The three research studies presented by RESIS Institute on the Day of Civil Society Organisations are of fundamental importance for the development of media research in North Macedonia.
The media usage habits in today’s digital environment have an increasing impact on the advertising market. The advertising revenues of the traditional media are in a constant decline, while the revenues from online advertising are constantly and rapidly growing.
One of the findings of this study which analyses the gender aspects of children’s programs on national television broadcasts is that in the programs from an in-house production, the public service as well as private national televisions, is dominated by social values that are typical for a patriarchal social system.
Communication with the public and journalists is the pivotal element that is accomplished with the Communication strategy 2020-2023 for the State Audit Office – which at the end of last year was designed with a significant participation of RESIS Institute and Western Balkans Democracy Initiative.
RESIS Institute, as a part of the institutional grant provided by CIVICA Mobilitas, a program funded by the Swiss Government, conducted an Assessment of the vectors of communication between the CSOs that are advocating the rights of vulnerable groups, the institutions relevant in the media field and self-regulatory media bodies. The Assessment is the base on which RESIS Institute, in the future period, together with s local CSOs, will work on building the Network of Audience Councils.
The RESIS experts made the first assessment of the situation of pluralism in the media sphere of Macedonia, based on the methodology of the Center for Media pluralism from Florence.
