Media systems have been extensively restructured since the emergence of the internet which increasingly supplements and replaces the use of former media infrastructures, distribution services, aggregators and content.
This paper presents a methodological framework for mapping digital media systems and thereby analyzing how and why regulatory structures differ across national contexts.
Following the current ‘turn to infrastructure’ in media studies (Sandvig 2013; Musiani et al. 2016; Plantin and Punathambekar 2019), we analyze media systems as technological, economic and political structures that enable and constrain mediated communication in a society.
As opposed to common media system analyses that relies on the framework developed by Hallin and Mancini (2004) and studies differences between news media systems and the conditions for practicing journalism in different parts of the world (e.g. Brüggemann et al., 2014), we take individual media users as our theoretical point of departure and ask how their communicative capabilities are regulated.
In order to exemplify how the framework can be applied, we describe the methodological steps in an analysis of the Danish media system.
In conclusion, we discuss the overall findings that the method uncovers as well as its implications for future comparative research projects.