by Damian Tambini

The Open Society (Soros) Institute launched its new Mapping Digital Media project today, with a report on media in Romania and the reference series paper “Online Media and Defamation”

[Declaration of interest: I work as an editor on this project, so I have read drafts of the papers and helped design the methodology template.]

The idea of the project is to examine some common themes related to the transition to digital media with a focus on “Open Society” themes – such as pluralism and access to communication. The project will be publishing up to 60 detailed reports on countries all over the world and also focused handbooks on a wide range of key technical issues such as Internet Content Liability, Net Neutrality and Digital Standards. So watch these spaces.

Some relevant links:

Mark Thompson and Marius Dragomire write a blog entry on the project

The Media Program.

And dedicated url: www.mappingdigitalmedia.org

More country reports and reference papers will follow soon, both on soros.org and on www.mediapolicy.org