Eric Karstens

Category: Internet

  • Communicating Europe: The State of Play

    Europe is making headlines. In the current decade, there has in fact been a surge in media attention for EU-related topics. What previously appeared next to impossible in most Member States, front-page stories involving the European Union in mainstream news outlets, has almost become a matter of course. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not unequivocally favourable.

  • Why Google’s Digital News Initiative might fail

    The European journalism sector needs a boost to catch up with the technological skills as well as the contents-related prowess of the globalised competition. But will Google’s Digital News Initiative really help?

  • The Digital News Initiative: What Should Google Do?

    Google’s Digital News Initiative directly affects the grey area between the commercial interests of Google itself, the commercial interests of European journalism outlets, and the public at large. Therefore, it requires a governance model at arm’s length from both Google and its launch partners in the news industry, and a well thought-out setup.

  • Dark social is the new black

    Over the din of social media marketing we tend to overlook that perhaps the greatest amount of what we have been taught to call “sharing” still happens outside of the likes of Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

  • Medienregulierung 2.0 und die Zukunft des Fernsehens

    Vorschau auf die 3. Auflage des “Praxishandbuchs Fernsehen”: In absehbarer Zukunft dürfte der der eigentliche Regulierungsgegenstand der Medienaufsicht, nämlich der Rundfunk mit linearen Programmen, gar nicht mehr existieren. Was dann?

  • Google tax: Have the cake and eat it?

    There is a lobbying and political initiative to introduce what could be termed a Google tax. More accurately put, the proponents of the initiative demand special copyright royalties from search engines, which are supposed to be paid to newspapers. Does it make sense?

  • Is blogging coming of age?

    Like so many things in our current media environment, accrediting bloggers alongside with journalists is more difficult, requires more effort, and entails more risks than sticking to the old ways. It is worth the while, though, seeing that blogging seems to be coming of age.

  • Why I want my newspaper to go out of business

    The notion of intellectual property resonates with the idea that the original authors – journalists, writers, translators, photographers – deserve protection. However in fact, a substantial part of the copyright regime is in place to protect an intermediate industry that feeds off the creativity of the original authors.

  • WikiLeaks, the Cloud, and Internet pluralism: A roundup of emerging lessons learned

    There is an oligopolistic infrastructure emerging on the Web that facilitates the manipulation and exploitation of the public as well as censorship and obstruction of inconvenient content at a mere whim of a handful of private companies, or by – more or less stealthy – government influence.

  • The EU’s Digital Agenda (part III): Stakeholders Day

    Perhaps there just are no stakeholders of the Digital Agenda as a whole, only stakeholders of a number of particular Digital Agenda subsections. Is the Agenda therefore too encompassing a policy after all?