Italy: Overregulation, media concentration, political transparency, and economic crisis

The contemporary Italian media ecology!– as elsewhere!– has been rapidly changing. Though this change is recurrently motivated by technological transformation, it is determined by an interaction with political, economic, and cultural aspects. The Italian political system is currently characterized by an increase in populism attitudes (both from the political supply and demand side). From an economic point of view, Italy sees a continuous economic crisis for the press and a reconfi guration of the Italian journalism culture. Concerning media transparency, this turmoil raises two questions: (i) Are media accountability instruments (MAIs) strengthening their impact ( Fengler et!al., 2015 )? And (ii) is the need for media transparency becoming (discursively) more legitimate ( Vos!& Craft, 2017 )? Each of the four elements mentioned (technological, political, economic, and cultural layers) brings mixed results, both in terms of the e" cacy of the MAIs and the legitimization of media transparency.