In June, the Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO) launched the first wave of a new opinion tracking project called V4+5, focused on comparing attitudes across nine EU countries. This unique project includes the Central European countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary) as well as Slovenia, Finland, Estonia, Germany, and France. With this broad scope, CEDMO is truly able to investigate attitudes from all corners of Europe, significantly expanding our informative reach compared to existing CEDMO Trends projects.
The results of the first wave show for example that television broadcasting remain the dominant source of news consumption, especially in France, Germany, and Poland. Online news channels rank second. Although social media use is very common across the surveyed countries, there is also a significant degree of scepticism regarding their influence, particularly in France. In Hungary, doubts about the credibility of public service news are prevalent.
A specific focus area of the first wave of the CEDMO V4+5 survey was the public’s perception of the Digital Services Act (DSA). Only a fifth of people across all nine countries were aware of this regulation. Hungarians and Finns are the best informed, but overall, the belief that there is insufficient information about the DSA prevails.
Across all participating countries, people agree that child pornography is the most harmful online content. Conversely, they consider copyright infringement to be the least dangerous issue.