Media Influence Matrix Methodology 2017-2024 (Legacy Framework)
Origins and Purpose
The Media Influence Matrix was created in 2017 to study the forces that shape journalism in an era of profound political, economic, and technological disruption. Rather than approaching media crises as a series of isolated attacks on journalists or newsrooms, the project sought to understand how power operates structurally across the institutions, markets, and digital systems that define the contemporary information environment.
Early conceptual work highlighted the limits of describing media as merely “under attack” or “besieged.” Such metaphors capture only the visible symptoms: harassment, threats, censorship, or regulatory retaliation. They ignore the deeper, slower processes through which entire media systems can be reorganized by political and economic elites, or by technology companies whose incentives rarely align with the needs of democratic public communication. It was this broader recognition, that journalism is shaped not only by what happens inside newsrooms but also by a complex set of forces outside of them, that led to the development of the Media Influence Matrix.
Between 2017 and 2024, the framework became the backbone of a comparative international research program, producing a large body of country reports and thematic studies across several continents. All of these outputs are preserved as part of the MIM Legacy and indexed on this website.
Conceptual Foundations: Beyond Besieged Media
The foundational essay Beyond Besieged provided much of the intellectual inspiration behind the Media Influence Matrix. It argued that the true threats facing journalism were increasingly structural rather than episodic. Media capture, for instance, does not occur through a single intervention but through a series of interlocking pressures: subtle changes in regulation, the concentration of ownership in the hands of politically connected business actors, the strategic use of state advertising, or the opaque policies of digital platforms that determine which information becomes visible and which is suppressed.
Under this framework, the health of a media system depends on the resilience of the institutions around journalism: regulators, courts, funders, technology companies, political parties, and civil society. Understanding their interactions required a methodology that was comparative, multidisciplinary, and capable of capturing both formal rules and informal practices.
The legacy MIM methodology was built precisely to address these needs. It provided a lens through which researchers could analyze not only the conditions under which media are produced, but also the broader power structures that shape journalism’s ability to function independently.
Read Beyond Besieged: Understanding the Media’s Ills, And Finding Cures
Research Design and Evidence Base
The legacy methodology relied on a country-based research model implemented through local teams working with a shared template. This ensured comparability across highly diverse contexts. Each country study followed the same core structure, combining desk research, institutional analysis, stakeholder mapping, interviews, and the examination of financial and regulatory documents.
Country researchers analyzed laws, budgets, company filings, policy documents, audience data, regulatory decisions, and market indicators. They supplemented this quantitative evidence with interviews and case studies that revealed how institutions functioned in practice, especially where formal structures diverged from real political dynamics.
One of the strengths of this framework was its ability to distinguish between what is written in legislation or corporate governance documents and what actually happens inside ministries, regulatory agencies, media companies, and digital platforms. This distinction was crucial in countries where institutions appear formally independent but operate under political or economic influence.
The 2017 research template, later refined in 2020, provided detailed guidance for each pillar, outlining the categories of information to be collected and the analytical questions to be answered. It became the backbone of all MIM country work and remains a valuable resource for understanding the historical evolution of media systems during this period.
Read the project’s original Research Template.
The Three Pillars of the Legacy Methodology
From its inception, the Media Influence Matrix was organized around three analytical pillars: Regulation, Funding, and Technology. Together, these pillars offered a coherent view of how states, markets, and platforms influence media systems.
Regulation and Policy Influence
The first pillar examined the political and legal environment in which journalism operates. It asked whether regulatory institutions were independent, how media laws were crafted and enforced, and how political actors, both formal and informal, exerted influence over public communication. Researchers studied constitutional guarantees, broadcasting and telecommunications law, the structure of regulatory agencies, and the mechanisms through which governments reward or punish media outlets. Just as importantly, they documented the informal dynamics that often shape regulatory outcomes behind the scenes: political patronage networks, elite bargaining, and pressures that encourage self-censorship.
The aim was not merely to describe media law but to understand how regulatory power is exercised in practice.
Funding and Financial Influences
The second pillar focused on the economic foundations of journalism, recognizing that financial dependency is one of the most powerful forms of influence over media content. Research teams analyzed ownership structures, revenue models, state advertising, subsidies, philanthropic support, and the influence of foreign financial actors. This pillar revealed how economic fragility, clientelism, and market concentration can undermine editorial independence even without explicit political interference. It also showed how new actors, such as platforms or philanthropic donors, were reshaping the financial landscape of journalism in many countries.
Technology, Platforms, and the Public Sphere
The third pillar assessed the rapidly evolving role of technology companies and digital infrastructures. This included the influence of platforms on news distribution, audience behavior, advertising markets, and content moderation; the rise of algorithmic curation and data-driven communication; and the ways in which global technology companies became de facto regulators of speech. Researchers looked at issues ranging from platform dependency and misinformation to harassment, surveillance, and the structural vulnerabilities created by the dominance of global intermediaries.
The goal was to capture how the digital public sphere—shaped not by editors or policymakers, but by opaque algorithmic systems—was transforming journalism and public debate.
Read the project’s original Research Template.
Outputs of the Legacy Period (2017–2024)
Over seven years, the Media Influence Matrix produced a substantial portfolio of work, including country-level reports on regulation, funding, and technology, as well as cross-country comparative studies. These outputs documented the rise of media capture in various forms, the decline of traditional media business models, the reconfiguration of public service media, and the growing influence of digital platforms.
The project also generated conceptual analyses that shaped broader debates about the political economy of media, the governance of technology, and the vulnerabilities of democratic information systems. Many of these reports informed advocacy efforts, academic research, and policy discussions internationally.
All outputs from this period are now archived in the Library of Reports and integrated into each country profile on this website. Together, they constitute a comprehensive legacy dataset that informs ongoing work.
Relationship to the MIM 2025+ Methodology
The legacy methodology served as a narrative, research-driven foundation built on qualitative assessments and country reports. The MIM 2025+ framework retains the three-pillar structure but transforms it into a database-oriented, indicator-based system designed for continuous updates and cross-country comparability.
Where the legacy model relied on descriptive chapters and qualitative analysis, the 2025+ model introduces standardized entities, variables, and data structures that quantify the same dynamics identified during the 2017–2024 period. In this sense, the legacy methodology remains essential: it provides the historical context and conceptual coherence for the new schema, ensuring that the transition from reports to databases preserves the analytical richness of the original project.
The legacy period therefore stands as both a research archive and a conceptual foundation, the groundwork on which the next phase of the Media Influence Matrix will be built.