By Luc Steinberg, Head of Operations, MDI Global
Introduction
As we enter 2026, the digital and media landscape is defined by a paradox: 6 billion people are now connected to the internet, yet the “Public Sphere” feels smaller, more captured, and more dangerous for those at the margins.
Central to everything that happened in 2025 was the beginning of President Trump’s 2nd term. Through executive order after executive order Trump decimated long-established norms.
The dramatic breakup in May between Trump and Musk (as the head of the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency) was on everyone’s bingo card in 2024 so no points if you saw that coming.
Meanwhile, something like 268 million dollars in global media support for independent journalism and information integrity was lost when USAID was shuttered in early 2025. This backlash extended to DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programmes.
Many Western European countries, perhaps emboldened by Trump’s retreat from US soft power norms and bound to shifting defence priorities, also reduced their foreign funding commitments.
Meta, meanwhile, seeking to ingratiate themselves with the 2nd Trump administration, dropped its DEI programme completely and nixed its support for third-party fact checkers in addition to allowing more dehumanising speech against minority groups.
In Europe, Al Jazeera Western Balkans shut down, whilst Radio Free Europe barely survived. The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) lost 29% of its funding and let go of 43 staff. Amongst all this Georgia’s FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) and general crackdown on journalists was accompanied by a devastatingly swift demolishing of democratic norms.
With these dramatic shifts and trends from 2025 in mind, what can we expect from 2026?
PREDICTIONS
The Consolidation of “Billionaire Media”
In 2026, the line between media, technology and political influence will continue to evaporate. Capture of news agendas and ‘algorithmic capture’ will dictate the visibility of global events.
We already saw the Paramount-Skydance merger in the US foreshadowing a retreat from liberal values at CBS as David Ellison (son of the second richest man in the world, Larry Ellison) took control and shifted the tone of the masthead by appointing Bari Weiss as Editor-in-Chief. The next big move was a Skydance-Paramount bid for Warner Bros, which would include CNN. This deal has yet to go through, but we can expect more of this consolidation and a shrinking space for liberal voices in US mainstream media.
Meanwhile, Larry Ellison will join a consortium to purchase a stake in TikTok’s US algorithm. Ellison – a major private donor to Friends of the IDF – will likely seek to suppress or shadow ban content documenting the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and other Global South conflicts and drown out the often-underrepresented voices that found refuge on the platform, in favour of US and Israel-friendly narratives.
In Europe, the BBC faced unprecedented pressure, culminating in the resignations of Director-General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness in November 2025 following criticism over how the broadcaster’s “Panorama” documentary edited Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech. Trump sued the BBC for $5 billion (later increased to $10 billion) in damages for defamation, and the BBC apologised for what its chairman called an “error of judgment.”
Prediction: All of this signals further pressure on public and commercial media that will follow us into 2026. Look out for more lawsuits, SLAPPs, and more media capture also in Europe. This will inevitably further sideline already marginalised voices vital for a healthy media and public sphere. But maybe there’s hope for independent media?
Independent media
Social media has soured for publishers and AI summaries in search are measurably decreasing traffic to news sites. Although, bucking the trend, platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit and Bluesky are developing publisher-friendly tools which could prove beneficial in the long run.
For many independent media organisations, survival will mean operating in exile or banding together in collaborative networks to share resources. We joked at IJF in Perugia in 2025 that next year there may be exiled journalists from the US at the festival in 2026, but that could become a reality at least for foreign correspondents in the US who are facing searches of their electronic devices when entering the country. The stakes for independent media are high, but they keep finding innovative and creative ways to fight back.
Prediction: Many more independent media will close but new publications will be born along with new ways of collaborating and greater alliances and solidarity among independents. We may even see a re-bundling of news as people become disillusioned with the multifaceted struggles inherent to freelancing or unhappy with Substack’s extractive business model and its vulnerability to creeping enshittification. More journalists will move to alternative publishing platforms like Ghost which provide publishers with more autonomy and where popular publications like Platformer and 404 Media have already found success.
European Tech Sovereignty & Digital Independence
The conversation around digital sovereignty gained significant traction in 2025 and will intensify in 2026. As American big tech platforms continue to consolidate power and align with specific political interests, European policymakers are increasingly discussing, and occasionally developing, homegrown alternatives.
US cloud providers, platforms and software are in the crosshairs as the EU invests in a €200 billion strategy to create a sovereign AI ecosystem with EU values of safety and trust at its core.
Lots of folks remember the “old web” before it was made of just 5 websites, each filled with screenshots of text from the other 4 and AI slop and non-human traffic took over. This nostalgia for the open web could bring about enthusiasm for more open-source, interoperable and privacy preserving tools and websites.
There are many articles and videos circulating dedicated to de-Googlifying or de-Microsofting your life. And although, switching costs and network effects sometimes forestall people’s efforts to move to new platforms, data breaches, scandals and changes in terms of service often result in usage spikes on apps like Signal. Time will tell if people really move away from the incumbents en masse but alternatives are popping up everywhere and avoiding giant platforms becomes part of the fun.
French President Emmanuel Macron called on citizens to use Le Chat (Mistral’s chatbot) instead of ChatGPT, cementing Mistral’s role as Europe’s strongest AI contender. Mistral announced Mistral Compute, a comprehensive AI infrastructure platform built in partnership with Nvidia, designed to give European enterprises and governments an alternative to US-based cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
European alternatives extend beyond AI to social media. Decentralised platforms and those built with European values of data protection and user privacy in mind represent attempts to create digital infrastructure independent of US tech giants. However, the tension between enabling tech development and maintaining strong protections – particularly as the European Commission considers watering down data protection to facilitate AI development – will be a defining challenge.
X (formerly Twitter) is a mess. An AI image manipulation tool in the X feed allows users to undress photos of women and in some cases children. It is a vile new low but expect to see more fines from the European Commission over violations of the Digital Services Act. There may be regulatory responses elsewhere or even wholesale blocking of X in some countries. The Commission’s decisions to levy fines against Big Tech may precipitate a messy backlash by the Trump administration who views the EU’s attempts to rein in US Big Tech as a threat to US companies.
Prediction: A new generation of decentralised EU-based social media platforms with user-centric values will emerge to challenge US tech dominance, and most of them will be ignored. Mastodon, Eurosky and Monnett are already in play, but we may see the resurgence of some of the platforms that we’ve slept on.
Harmful Age Verification Laws
The push to exclude children from the internet has become very fashionable, but it seems to be mostly about censorship rather than privacy or protection. Laws like the UK’s Online Safety Act and Australia’s Social Media Ban have exposed politicians’ ineptitude around tech so we can hardly expect these laws to roll out without seismic hiccups. In the UK, age verification requirements led support services for addicts, sexual health resources, mental health support, domestic violence assistance, and LGBTQ+ spaces to shut down, further pushing at risk groups to the margins.
Australia’s roll out in December of the under 16s social media ban is full of holes and contradictions. Under 16s cannot have TikTok or YouTube accounts but can continue to stream the content on those platforms without an account. Other platforms like Roblox – famously not safe for children – are excluded from the ban. The ban has been called a national identity verification scheme since it affects everyone because it mandates age verification checks which ultimately changes the way that everyone uses the Internet, not just under 16s. These checks, like the ones enforced in the UK, pose a risk for everyone as verification requires uploading sensitive biometric data and this kind of data is always subject to leaks and breaches. So, expect data breaches of very sensitive data, expect alternative platforms to emerge (Yope is already making waves in Australia although no one really knows what it is), and expect a backlash.
Some who were initially in favour of the ban have switched sides, realising that social media is harmful to everyone and that legislation mandating a move away from toxic algorithms that deliver rage bait and AI slop would benefit the whole of society.
The bans also affect trans and non-binary people as the platforms’ age-gating will employ biometric and facial recognition technology which has an error margin that is much higher for gender-nonconforming individuals (as well as people of colour), leading to digital redlining and misgendering.
Dia Kayyali and Jasmine Mithani at Tech Policy Press, wrote in an article: “All of this means even trans people who are over 18 may find their access to sites as diverse as surgery photo galleries or LGBTQI+ nonprofits cut off, and it is unclear what remedies are available when this happens.”
There was also a 1400% increase in people using Proton VPN to circumvent the verification checks in the UK, indicating at least an increase in overall digital literacy.
Prediction: A patchwork of confusing, contradictory implementations of bans for under 16s in a variety of jurisdictions. Data breaches because of sloppy age verification tools and the rise of new circumvention tools fuelling a further rise in digital literacy that puts lawmakers’ own skills and knowledge of the issue to shame. Or failing that, the youngsters will all go outside and touch grass.
The resurgence of local media
This is not so much a prediction as a ‘nice to have’. Local and community media have been disappearing everywhere, but we can start to imagine a kind of resurgence.
Many people are reporting that there is an increased need for real connection. Social media feeds are geared towards social fragmentation and polarisation because that drives engagement and puts eyeballs on ads. Local media can offer an antidote to this by prioritising deliberation and community. One example of this is live journalism events and initiatives that place citizens at the centre of the journalism process.
Prediction: Greater cooperation between local media and civil society to bring communities together and “radical collaboration” and “radical authenticity” become the new norm.
Content Creators
Content creators need to be taken more seriously by everyone including publications, lawmakers, press councils, and by media development organisations. They are not going away and pretending they don’t exist is undermining media development missions.
Many content creators focus heavily on authenticity and provide avenues for feedback and two-way communication that traditional media often lacks, and their role in shaping public discourse – particularly among younger audiences – can no longer be ignored.
Prediction: Similarly to local media, look out for content creators banding together for support, protection, and demanding to be taken seriously by platforms and lawmakers. A union, perhaps?
Election Interference and Platform Responsibility
There are fewer big elections in 2026 than in 2025, but everyone will be watching coverage of the US midterms to see how foreign interference plays out in the media sphere.
Likewise, Russia and the US will seek to influence elections in Hungary and after the dramatic annulment of elections in Romania due to apparent Russian interference (primarily on TikTok), we might see some kind of constitutional crisis pan out there. Whatever happens, there is still going to exist a large Fidesz-influenced media apparatus which could do even more damage with Fidesz on the outside.
Prediction: The EU will have a close eye on Hungary’s election and a scandal over interference on social media will strengthen the EU’s resolve to enforce the DSA (Digital Services Act), TTPA (Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising Regulation) and push the Democracy Shield. We can also expect fines in tow triggering another standoff between Brussels and Trump.
Techlash intensifies
Following a year where Gen Z protests erupted worldwide, in places like Morocco, Nepal, Madagascar, Serbia, Peru, Indonesia and Kenya, there will be a reckoning for big tech.
Young people are tired of being arbitrarily silenced by social media platforms, of censorship, of mainstream media narratives vilifying them, of billionaires. Following Daniel Ek’s investment in an arms company there was a lot of pushback with articles and reels explaining the exploitative nature of Spotify and presenting people with alternatives.
We also saw a hint of a reckoning when Musk’s DOGE exploits and dismantling of the government were met with torched and vandalised Teslas. As the talk over sovereignty heats up so will a backlash against the tech titans.
Prediction: Some manifestation of a Gen Z movement will force at least one big platform to implement policy changes – maybe even returning to human-centred trust and safety.
From Crisis to Agency
We are fully ensconced in an era where publishers must fight to remain visible and the very tools they use are being used against them – as a barrier between their work and their audience. This media environment has generated its own vocabulary of dysfunction – algorithmic capture, digital redlining, the Splinternet, polycrisis – terms for problems that didn’t necessarily exist a decade ago. Heading into 2026, some of these predictions read more like a wish list, but there is room for cautious optimism.
2026 will be the year we decide what kind of Internet we want, and how journalism is situated within that ecosystem, will frame which voices are heard and which ones are pushed to the margins. What remains non-negotiable: The historical record of 2026 needs to be written by humans, not machines optimising for engagement.
