Media Ownership Database Now Openly Available through the Slovenian Social Science Data Archives (ADP)

The Media ownership database, a collection of on ownership shares in Slovenian media field is now openly accessible through the Social Science Data Archives (Arhiv družboslovnih podatkov, ADP) at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. First, developed as the empirical foundation for the network analysis conducted within the AFEMED project, the database provides key information on media ownership structures in Slovenia. It includes data on media outlets, publishing companies, and ownership chains that extend beyond the Slovenian media landscape into other national media systems.

Researchers are now kindly invited to access, use, and further analyse the published data in future research projects, reports, and scholarly publications. By making the dataset publicly available, the AFEMED project contributes to greater transparency and methodological openness in media research. Open access allows the wider scientific community to reconstruct and assess the research process underlying the project’s analyses, while also facilitating the refinement and expansion of media ownership data collection in future studies.

The database served as the basis for an article published in Communication & Society (2026). In the article, Marko Ribač, Doruk Şen, Lori Šramel Čebular, and Mojca Pajnik combine the data from the database using social network analysis to examine the structure of Slovenia’s four largest media groups. They also asses the scale of transformations of the local media field within the attention economy, and uncover the patterns of ownership concentration across media sectors over recent decades.

An earlier version of the database, subsequently adapted for public online release, also played a central role in developing the 2022 interactive map of media ownership in Slovenia. The platform provides publicly accessible visualisations of business, familial, and political connections embedded within the ownership structures of Slovenian media organisations.