Standing Firm? Measuring Resilience to Malign Foreign Influence in European & Eurasian Media

A strong and independent media bolsters democracy and increases government accountability to citizens, civil society, and other stakeholders. In practice, this requires that journalists and media outlets have the freedom and capacity to report effectively without fear of censorship or reprisal. However, the openness of media systems creates unanticipated challenges, as countries must mitigate their increasing vulnerability to political capture and malign influence. In this technical report, we debut a new media resilience index developed to quantify and monitor the ability of E&E countries to responsibly manage external influence in their media markets. The index, titled Media Resilience to Malign Influence (MRMI), has been designed to enable policymakers to assess changes in media resilience in a single country over time, as well as comparatively vis-à-vis others in the region.