Meer van hetzelfde? Content sharing bij Vlaamse DPG Media-kranten

Abstract

Content sharing at DPG Media’s Flemish newspaper brands Belgium’s Dutch-speaking region Flanders has seen a wave of mergers & acquisitions (M&As) in recent years, leading to, according to the government-owned media watchdog, a highly concentrated Flemish media market (). The latest newly founded company is DPG Media, in which the majority of all commercially owned major Flemish news outlets has seen its newsrooms merged into the same Antwerp-based building in early 2020. In this paper, we assess content homogeneity between the print and online versions of the two main newspapers of DPG Media by coding and analysing a sample of articles from 2018, 2019 and 2020. Results reveal only limited increases in shared content for the time being. Through distinguishing betweeninternaland external media concentration, the study serves as a steppingstone towards further content analysis research, in Flanders and beyond.