We are thrilled to announce the publication of a special double issue of the International Communication Gazette (Vol. 88, No. 1–2, February–March 2026), guest edited by Dwayne Winseck, Guy Hoskins, Min Jiang, Philippe Bouquillion, Terry Flew, and Ana Bizberge, and featuring ten articles from GMICP contributors around the world.

The issue is titled “Networks of Power: Media and Internet Concentration, Platform Capitalism, and the Future of Democracy,” and it represents the most comprehensive, empirically grounded international examination of media and internet concentration published in years.

The issue opens with an introductory essay by GMICP Principal Investigator Dwayne Winseck which lays out the project’s conceptual framework, methodology, and some of its headline findings.

The ten contributing articles bring GMICP’s international scope to life:

  • “Contributions of GMICP to the Analysis of Concentration Dynamics in France and Their Political Issues” (Philippe Bouquillion and Bruno Lefèvre)  examines concentration dynamics in the French media landscape and their political stakes, situating France within the broader GMICP framework.
  • “From Laissez-Faire to Regulatory Winter? Regulating Chinese Platforms at the Crossroads of Antitrust, Industrial Policy, and Geopolitics” (Xiaofei Han and Min Jiang) traces how China’s approach to platform regulation has shifted, and how geopolitics now shapes the treatment of its biggest internet companies.
  • “Performative Competition: The U.S. Wireless Communication Market and the T-Mobile/Sprint Merger” (Pawel Popiel, Christopher Ali, Hendrik Theine, and Sydney L. Forde) argues that the appearance of competition in the U.S. wireless market has masked policies that consistently favour incumbents’ economic interests over the public good.
  • “Continuity and Change in Media and Telecom Concentration and Regulation: Unpacking the Complexity of the Mexican Case” (Rodrigo Gómez) navigates the particular regulatory and ownership dynamics of Mexico, one of the world’s most concentrated media markets.
  • “How Do Platforms Matter? Media Power, Platform Power and the Digital Domination of Australian Media” (Terry Flew and Cameron McTernan) examines how global platforms have reshaped the structure of power in the Australian media system.
  • “South Korea’s Network Media Economy: Growth, Concentration and Upheaval, 2010–2022” (Dal Yong Jin and Seoyeon Park) charts a decade of dramatic change in one of the world’s most digitally advanced media economies.
  • “Sub-Saharan African Region: Dominant Firms in the Pay TV Markets” (Tokunbo Ojo) maps the dominant players in Pay TV across Sub-Saharan Africa, a region often underrepresented in global media concentration research.
  • “Concentration in the Media Ecosystem: The Case of the Spanish Media and Telecommunications Industries” (Jessica Izquierdo-Castillo and Juan Carlos Miguel-de-Bustos) provides a detailed account of concentration trends across Spain’s interconnected media and telecoms sectors.
  • “A Way Out of the Twentieth Century: Reviewing the Evolution of the Italian Media Industries from the Perspective of an (Inter)national Media Company — The Case of Sky Italia” (Mattia Galli) uses Sky Italia’s gradual transformation into a broadband ISP as a window onto the broader restructuring of Italian media.
  • “Streaming Against the Current: Reframing Media Power in Central and Eastern Europe Through the Rise of a Regional Media Giant” (Petr Szczepanik) shows how conglomerates like PPF have leveraged local brands, language, and bundling strategies to push back against global streaming dominance in the region.
  • “Australia’s Television Streaming Market and the Battle Over Prominence” (Cameron McTernan and Scott Fitzgerald) examines how competing platforms are fighting for visibility and position in Australia’s fast-changing streaming landscape.

Open access and public data

Consistent with our commitment to public scholarship, all GMICP data is freely available at our public Dataverse repository, and we recently launched a new data visualization Dashboard. We want researchers, journalists, policymakers, and advocates to use this work — that’s the point.

We are grateful to the International Communication Gazette, our contributors across more than two dozen countries, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for making this possible. This is a project in progress — we are slated to continue through 2028, and we invite collaborators to join us.

The full issue is available at journals.sagepub.com/home/gaz.

The Global Media and Internet Concentration Project (GMICP) is based at the School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. For inquiries, contact Principal Investigator Dwayne Winseck at dwaynewinseck@cunet.carleton.ca.