Germany in digital transformation: Challenges and perspectives for a resilient media landscape

The German media landscape is currently undergoing profound changes, triggered by digitalization, economic challenges, and the dominance of large international platforms. Germany is actively addressing these changes, focusing on regulatory measures, innovative digital formats, and stronger networking at the European level. Valuable insights can also be gained for other countries, such as Austria.

Market Structure and Challenges of Concentration: The media landscape in Germany is characterized by strong public and private broadcasters, particularly in the audiovisual sector. ARD and ZDF, RTL, and ProSiebenSat.1 are market leaders, together achieving a market share of approximately 88%. This concentration enables high production quality and broad reach, but also presents significant challenges for smaller and regional media companies. This is particularly evident in the print media sector, where rising production costs and declining advertising revenue are putting particular pressure on smaller, local publishers. Some smaller newspapers are forced to reduce their size and quality, which can lead to an erosion of journalistic diversity in certain regions.

At the same time, however, there are also positive developments: Large media companies like Axel Springer are responding with clear digital strategies and transforming their traditional business models into digital, user-oriented offerings. This demonstrates a dynamic adaptability that is crucial for ensuring high-quality journalism in the long term. Regulatory strategies against digital monopolies: Germany is using regulatory measures to address the challenges of the digital dominance of global tech platforms like Google and Meta.

The German Act against Restraints of Competition (GWB), amended in 2021, allows the Federal Cartel Office to take more effective and faster action against abusive practices by large digital corporations. Companies like Google and Meta are thus subject to stricter scrutiny, which should contribute to fairer market conditions in the long term.

The ancillary copyright for press publishers complements this regulatory strategy. It strengthens publishers by enabling them to negotiate licensing agreements with large platforms. Axel Springer, for example, is cooperating with OpenAI to integrate its journalistic content into AI-based offerings, which opens up new business areas and simultaneously strengthens the role of professional journalism in the digital information world.

Deutsche Welle and the Fight Against Disinformation: In a global context, Deutsche Welle (DW) plays a significant role, particularly in combating disinformation and promoting independent opinion-forming. Especially in regions like Eastern Europe, where local media are often influenced by political or economic interests, DW positions itself as a credible and neutral source of information.

With over 40 language programs and targeted projects like the "Balkan Booster," it supports young journalists and actively contributes to strengthening media literacy. It makes particularly intensive use of social media and digital formats to reach a young, internationally networked audience.

Digital innovations: funk.net and public broadcasting experiments

ARD and ZDF have created funk.net, an innovative and freely accessible online platform specifically tailored to younger audiences. Funk produces exclusively ad-free online content, distributed via social media channels, thus catering to modern viewing habits. This enables targeted communication and the direct promotion of media literacy, as users are guided from engaging content to well-researched, informative resources. Funk.net exemplifies how public service media can remain relevant in the digital age while simultaneously fulfilling their social responsibility.

European Networking and Perspectives: A forward-looking approach for Europe's media landscape comes from media sociologist Volker Grassmuck, who proposes a decentralized, European public sphere. This idea of ​​a distributed digital public sphere could help counteract the dominance of global tech companies while preserving cultural and linguistic diversity. Technical solutions, such as automated translation technologies, could help overcome language barriers within Europe. Initial initiatives, such as the Mastodon instances of ZDF and BBC, demonstrate how this approach could be implemented in practice.

Austria in comparison: Challenges and possible strategies. Austria's media landscape differs significantly from the German situation. The public broadcaster ORF faces legal and political challenges that restrict its digital development. Relatively high political influence and the limited scope for purely online offerings pose particular difficulties. At the same time, Austria is more susceptible to the dominance of large international platforms, which further weakens the position of national providers .

Germany's regulatory and innovative approaches therefore offer important impetus for Austria. Through greater political independence, targeted support for digital innovations, and regulatory measures, Austria could better safeguard and expand its media diversity.

The German media landscape is meeting its challenges with a combination of regulation, innovation, and international networking. This opens up perspectives from which not only Germany, but the entire European media landscape can benefit.