DIACOMET: Fostering capacity building for civic resilience and participation: Dialogic communication ethics and accountability

The DIACOMET international research group organized a total of 87 focus group discussions in eight countries – Austria, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Slovenia – with more than 500 participants to learn about their views on ethical issues in public communication and the media environment in their countries. The country reports summarizing the results of the empirical research are available here.

Representing the Hungarian European Society and the DIACOMET project, Erik Uszkiewicz participated at the World Journalism Education Congress, which took place in San Francisco between 8-10 August 2025. He made a joint presentation with Tobias Eberwein, researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the DIACOMET project, entitled "Tomorrow never knows: On the role of ethical codes and guidelines in journalism’s uncertain future". The two authors presented the results of a content analysis of altogether 429 media regulatory documents from eight European countries.

On 17 June 2025 the DIACOMET NGO network held its subsequent online event. The participants discussed and tested the FORUM concept and its platform for analysing media ethics dilemmas as well as learned about the freshly developed GAME methodology. The international network will continue its work with a third online meeting in September 2025.

The DIACOMET consortium held its first online NGO meeting organised by the Hungarian Europe Society and Praxis from Estonia on 23 April 2025. The key objective of the network is to coordinate the work of civil society organisations active on the field of media accountability, media literacy and education, self-regulation and communication ethics.

István Hegedűs held a presentation entitled "Strongman and Illiberalism - Pushing Back Against the Enemies of Liberal Democracy in Hungary" at the Annual Conference of the Austrian Political Science Association entitled "Pushing Back Against the Enemies of Democracy" at the Central European University in Vienna on 29 November 2024.

As a preparation for the task of designing the Principles of Good Communication Conduct, the DIACOMET project has completed a systematic collection of existing codes of ethics and guidelines for public communication. They are presented to the public in the form of a searchable online database that is integrated in the DIACOMET project website. It is now available online.

István Hegedűs and Erik Uszkiewicz travelled for the kick-off meeting of the EU-funded DIACOMET project held on 13-14 June 2023 in Kaunas, Lithuania.