Frozen 2: Communication Rights and the Thaw of Public Funding in Small Media Systems

This contribution investigates how public funding of media can be reinterpreted to fit a communication rights–based approach to media policy. To this end, it describes and evaluates current public funding in small democratic-corporatist European media systems. While public funding is no longer “frozen” in its late twentieth-century state, as funding mechanisms have undergone significant change, when held against a rights-based approach, it appears there is a need to shift the basis for funding from safeguarding the survival of media industries to safeguarding the communication rights of citizens, allowing media to become “enablers” in executing these rights.