ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Media Governance and the Public Sphere
Media Self‑Regulation in Albania, 2018–2025: Institutions, Practices, and Complaint-Handling Pathways—A Process‑Tracing Study
Provisionally accepted
- European University of Tirana, Tirana, Albania
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This article applies theory‑testing process tracing to assess how media self‑regulation functions in Albania and how it interacts with statutory oversight. Building on a documentary corpus (codes of ethics; institutional rulebooks; complaint decisions; regulator bulletins; EU/CoE/OSCE reports), the study reconstructs three sequences: (A) a 2025 cluster of Albanian Media Council/Alliance for Ethical Media ethics decisions concerning legacy online coverage and privacy-related claims (voluntary pillar); (B) a 2023–2024 run of Audiovisual Media Authority complaints culminating in sanctions/warnings in high‑audience reality/talk formats (statutory pillar); and (C) the 2019–2024 policy trajectory of the "anti-defamation" package aimed at extending administrative oversight to a broad range of online publications and resources. Across cases, we probe a hypothesized mechanism in which clear procedural rules, an empowered complaint-handling body, and timely, public, reasoned decisions are expected to increase accountability visibility-approximated through observable indicators such as accessibility of decisions, public communication of outcomes, and verifiable remedial action by outlets. Working with documentary sources, we operationalize accountability through observable proxies such as the visibility of decisions, outlet‑side corrections, and complaint‑routing patterns. Evidence suggests that the voluntary pillar issues reasoned, public decisions but faces publication‑and‑compliance visibility gaps, while the statutory pillar provides faster, visible redress (warnings/fines) that may crowd out voluntary mechanisms. The policy‑process case shows how international standards and domestic veto points constrained the design of the proposed defamation package extension, shaping the feasible configuration of oversight.. Implications include stabilizing and standardizing transparency practices for self-regulatory outcomes (e.g., building a public registry of self‑regulatory decisions and compliance logging) and clarifying coordination and referral practices between the statutory regulator and voluntary bodies in line with EU standards, including the European Media Freedom Act.
Keywords: Albania, anti‑defamation, Audiovisual Media Authority, complaints, EMFA, Press council, process tracing, self‑regulation
Received: 25 Nov 2025; Accepted: 28 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Budini and Xhaferaj. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Belina Budini
Anjeza Xhaferaj
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