José Sixto-García ^1* Bella Palomo ² Carmen Peñafiel ³

• ¹ University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
• ² University of Malaga, Málaga, Andalusia, Spain
• ³ University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain

Editorial: [Self-Regulation and Co-regulation as Governance Solutions]The concept of governance starts from its political meaning in Greece, which goes back to Plato's definition of how to govern citizens. Nowadays the governance of media infrastructures has always been a particularly complex affair. A notable factor contributing to this complexity is a framework that features a dual-funding model, where public and private media exist side by side. Increasing concerns over the politicization of the media as well as the lack of transparency concerning their ownership have made things even more complex. For example, the European Union's Media Pluralism Monitor has highlighted the weaknesses of information pluralism in a context where researchers are compelled to study the role that artificial intelligence and automation is playing in both the creation of content and the development of spyware technologies for the surveillance of journalists.How is the coexistence of legal norms and media deontology? What role do audiences play in the context of governance? What are the ethical and deontological conditions for the practice of journalism? How do e-commerce and user trust match? What requirements are required for the influencers on social networks? Why is it so important that journalism and national and supranational institutions continue to search for an antidote to disinformation? These are just some questions that are answered in this special issue.Journalistic deontology is in a second generation. During the 20th century media outlets and journalistic organizations developed their first models of ethics codes. However, in this second generation the field of action of deontology was expanded to other scopes such as suicide, gender violence or disability. 53 Spanish documents are analyzed, and it is pointed to the need to improve the recognition of citizen contributions or co-creation (Aznar, Mercado-Sáez and Álvarez-Villa, 2024). However, it is also confirmed that there is no type of relationship between the most consumed media and those that offer more options for audiences to participate (Sixto-García, Duarte-Melo and Andrade, 2024).A literature review for examining all the legal documents related to the regulation of the media in Spain published between the Spanish transition 1977 and 2024 is also incorporated in this monograph (Seijas-Costa, Barredo-Ibáñez and Cea-Esteruelas, 2024). The influence of the European Union and the preservation of the narrative established during the transition to democracy are decisive in this evolution, while finding a balance between protection, flexibility and non-intervention should characterize the new policies of communication.Precisely, the EU's policy for digital internet intermediaries is the object of study of the research that Seamus Simpson (2024) contributes to this special issue. By comparing the 2022 Digital Services Act with the 2000 Directive on E-Commerce, it is diagnosed that the new EU platform regulation system is closer to the neoliberal model of telecommunications governance than the private interest proposals that emerged at the beginning of this third millennium (Simpson, 2024).In the digital context, one of the figures under the magnifying glass are influencers. Legislation and self-regulation in 24 EU countries are analyzed and the it is diagnosed a lack of unanimous criteria among the different states, in addition to the fact that only France and Spain legislated on these particularly relevant users (González-Díaz, Quiles-Soler and Quintas-Froufe, 2024).Disinformation also constitutes a threat to democracies in the sense that it undermines citizens' right to receive truthful information. Another work valuates the incidence of this scourge in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru (Suing, 2024). Regulation, selfregulation and media literacy are necessary to face this great current challenge that worries the EU itself as well as supranational organizations such as UNESCO.The seriousness of disinformation is accentuated if it refers to health issues, such us the disinformation during COVID-19. Through 1,800 surveys, it was discovered that a majority social demand to implement some type of control to guarantee ethical adequacy and quality in the information coverage of health issues. Journalistic co-regulation could solve this (Maciá-Barber, 2024).In short, this special issue offers a global vision of journalistic self-regulation and coregulation as governance systems. With contributions from researchers from three continents (Europe, America and Asia), it provides an international vision of ethics and deontology in the current communication context, as well as the main challenges that the media, legislators and society will have to face in the coming years.In response to these concerns, in the specific case of the European Union, the European Commission has proposed the adoption of a new set of rules, known as the European Regulation on Freedom of the Media, the chief purpose of which is to protect media pluralism and independence within the bloc. These rules came into force on May 7, 2024, and will be fully applicable from August 8, 2025.