Media Development at a Crossroads

Power, Funding, and Futures Beyond the Donor Era

An IAMCR pre-conference

Organised by: The IAMCR Media Sector Development Working Group in partnership with the University College, Dublin, Clinton Institute.

Media development as a field is at a turning point. For more than three decades, international donor funding, whether driven by geopolitical priorities, democracy promotion agendas or shifting development assistance frameworks, has shaped the contours of independent media support around the world. Today, that model is under profound strain.

Aid budgets are contracting. Long-standing bilateral and multilateral donors are retrenching or realigning. Philanthropy is fragmenting. At the same time, media systems face mounting pressures from platform dominance, AI-enabled manipulation, political capture, surveillance capitalism, and democratic backsliding.

This pre-conference asks a fundamental question:

What happens to media development in a post-aid world?

Why This Pre-Conference, and Why Now

The media development field is facing a convergence of crises:

The contraction of international development assistance and donor exit from long-term media support
Uncertainty about how much funding actually remains for media development globally—and where it is flowing
Shifting forms of power and influence, including soft power, private philanthropy, corporate actors, and technology platforms
Growing pressure to “rebrand” the field through concepts such as information integrity, digital democracy, public interest media, and trust and safety, and often without clear evidence, theory, or accountability

Yet these disruptions also open space for new forms of cooperation, solidarity, and locally grounded models of media support.

This pre-conference creates a dedicated space, separate from the main conference programme, for deep, candid, and forward-looking dialogue across research and practice.

Convened by the IAMCR Media Sector Development Working Group in partnership with the University College Dublin Clinton Institute, this pre-conference brings together scholars, practitioners, donors, and policy thinkers to critically examine shifting forms of power, funding, and influence—and to explore what must be reimagined to sustain rights-based, independent, and pluralistic media ecosystems beyond donor-driven models.