CA23105 - Language Plurality in Europe’s Changing Media Sphere (PLURILINGMEDIA)

Protecting Europe’s linguistic plurality and increasing multilingualism is a clear aim of the European Union and the Council of Europe, balanced against the concern of increasing dominance of larger languages – most prominently English. The challenge is also present in the media which is facing increased global competition and changing consumption trends, threatening media spheres in official national languages and even more so for regional and minority languages.

PLURILINGMEDIA intends to advance collaboration and bring coherence to the field of European media from the perspective of language plurality, encouraging involvement of scholars in related disciplines and facilitating knowledge transfer between academics and practitioners. This incorporates the digitalisation shifts affecting consumption and provision of media, providing opportunities and threats to journalists, as well as influencing policymakers, educators and other stakeholders. Academics working on these topics mostly work on singular linguistic spheres and there remains a deficiency of knowledge transfer across the dimensions of academic discipline, career-stage, geography and industry. 

Spreading instances of good practice will be of particular relevance to smaller linguistic spheres and lesser-funded media outlets, who may be able to benefit from certain elements of digitalisation. Moreover, involving individual content creators with institutional actors will also bring further plurality to media spheres, aiming to determine the benefits of this convergence of actors on the same platforms and share methods of reaching younger audiences. Through all of this, PLURILINGMEDIA plans to demonstrate the plurality of a given regional or minority language sphere, empowering use of the language through media.