Ways to Establish Self-Regulation on the Part of the Albanian Electronic Media in Coherence with European Union Prospects

Abstract

The electronic media in Albania are among the most competitive and developed actors in society and the media performance in industrial and commercial terms, is greater than ever before. However, their role as dynamic social institutions is neglected and the understanding of their contribution to democratic values and principles through their professional approach is often limited. Due to such an important role to play in a democratic society, the bureaucratic regulation from outside is necessary, but not the only way to achieve democratic standards, in coherence with the European Union directives regarding electronic communications. This paper tries to argue that for this end, it is of great importance to look at the implementation aspects related to processes of self-regulation on the part of the electronic media operators as well as continual and functional dialogue with the public authorities of the electronic media from a public interest approach. For this purpose, the methodology used to conduct the research is basically the media agency analysis and textual analysis. First, this paper is going to identify the media instruments and media practices at work that inhibit self-regulation on the part of the media itself. Secondly, public discourses on the part of the public authorities of the electronic media shall be discussed. In theoretical terms, in the area of media studies, this stance is fueled by the phenomenological tradition and the socio-cultural tradition. From within these combined approaches it is of most importance to look at the way the information is produced in terms of codes of practices as well as the interpretations of the texts produced. This objective-interpretative stance with ethnographic traits in qualitative terms should enable this paper to retrieve results such as the negative correlation between a lack of a Journalistic Code of Practice and a possible self-regulation prospect in professional terms, but also flaws in institutional and democratic standards expected. The analyses at a theoretical level begin with Berger and Luckmann’s theory of the “Social Construction of Reality”, go on with the notions of the social production of news, tracing back from authors such as Herbert Gans on “Deciding what’s news” or Michael Schudson on “The Sociology of news”. Finally the paper shall propose ways to establish a dialogue among the involved actors in order to raise the democratic standards and values in terms of social and public responsibility taking, through a professional approach to questions of ethics and quality of the media content.