Research Agendas and Roadmaps on Social Media and Convergence in V-4

The purpose of this study is meta-research on academic research on social media and convergence in four Central-Eastern European countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Sometimes, these countries are referred to as Visegrad Four or V-4. The selection of these four countries for further comparative analysis is based on their geographical location and political past as well as political-geographical location within the European Union. Thus, this study offers regional perspectives within a rather specific academic research arena. The issue of convergence is certainly one of the most challenging current research and policy-making issues that face both legacy media and social media. We live in the age where the famous prophecy was made by Jenkins in 2001 that already becomes reality: „We are entering an era where media will be everywhere, and we will use all kinds of media in relation to one another.“ However, we know nothing about research agendas and perspectives of researchers from these four Central-Eastern European countries on this complex issue. Obviously, the research is fragmented as researchers publish their data in local journals and in local languages. Thus, it is rather difficult to get an overview of local research. Moreover, convergence is a multifaceted issue – there are many types of research and practices as well as policy aspects that can be seen as being part of convergence phenomena. Therefore, to help researchers to find some overview of V-4 research agendas, there are tackled specific research questions in the analytical part of this article. In the following sections, we define both social media and convergence. Then we inform about social media usage in V-4 countries. This data will allow us to understand the relevance of social media in these countries as well as how this relevance is reflected in research on social media and convergence by local researchers. In the next part, we will discuss methodology which has been quite extensively elaborated. It will be shown that there are many methodological challenges that impacted this study. In the key analytical part, selected parameters of research results are internationally compared. In the nutshell of our findings, some suggestions for future research on social media and convergence are discussed.

Definitions of Social Media and Convergence

In this section, we will define social media and convergence comprehensively. Social media is ‘an umbrella name’ (Tench and Yeomans, 2009: 313 in Komodromos, 2016). Indeed, Encyclopaedia Britannica differentiates among a) social media, b) social networking sites and c) social networking services. Encyclopaedia Britannica defines social media as technologies, platforms, and services that enable individuals to engage in communication from one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many“. Encyclopaedia Britannica defines social networking sites where members with shared interests swap files (photographs, videos, and music), communicate, set up blogs (Web diaries) share opinions¹. According to Safko (2009:5), social media refers to activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational media.“ Safko also uses a term, “conversational media“ that defines as: “Web-based applications that make it possible to create and easily transmit content in the form of words, pictures, videos, and audios among users.“

(Kaplan and Haenlein 2010, in Komodromos 2016) argue that social media include: collaborative projects such as Wikipedia, blogs, and microblogs (e.g. Twitter), content sharing platforms (e.g. YouTube), social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), virtual game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft), and virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life). There are also the communities and forums, including discussion-based forums, review communities or DIY communities, where individuals or groups create their own social network using services.

Although there is some lack of agreement what we understand as social media, much bigger lack of consensus is reflected in the definition of convergence. Clearly, even the definition of convergence varies, depending on an author and period. In fact, the definition of convergence evolves over time.

In most general and traditional terms convergence means areas or processes coming together. There is no one accepted definition of convergence. The available definition is often rendered in a more or less descriptive manner. This is related to the fact that media convergence can be explained in many ways – through the convergence of the media and the telecommunications‘ sectors, through the convergence of the media and the new communications services and the emergence of common platforms and services between various operators, hardware and software manufacturers, print, electronic and new communication service outlets and Internet service providers, or as the convergence of various networks or different media content in the digital age. Henry Jenkins claimed in 2001 that convergence is „the flow of content between various media platforms, the cooperation of various media industries and the migratory behavior of media recipients who will reach almost anywhere, seeking the entertainment they want.“ Jenkins added that „today we are no longer talking about the digital revolution, which predicted that the old media will be replaced with new ones. Now we are talking about media convergence, where old and new media are entering more and more complex interactions.“

There are virtually scores of academic articles (at least two specialized academic journals) that discuss directly various aspects of convergence and hundreds of articles that discuss indirectly minor or major aspects of convergence. Out of this number, two authors seem to be bringing novel insights. Thimm (2017) argues that convergence has started to reach a level of complexity which can no longer be embraced by the convergence concepts alone. For Thimm, convergence as a term traditionally implies a transition process, for which many new social media platforms does not seem to be applicable anymore since they are already polymediated by nature. Montpetit (2016) also argues that there are already two chronologically but also thematically different phases of convergence. According to his view, there was the first convergence, based on, and dominated by technology and networks. The first convergence is followed by the second convergence, defined as “the media convergence”. The second convergence has (not only) in his view much broader impacts – it is melding technology, business and marketing models, social networks and legacy media.s. Montpetit also writes that there are new converged solutions – cloud-based computing and applications, content-centric networking and big data, adding social networking and crowdsourcing to traditional content production to produce novel methods of acquisition and dissemination of content. It appears that convergence is no longer only about social media. Finally, in Montpetit view, with the melding between the social and the physical networks, between locations and real and virtual reality, convergence is becoming an ideation platform. This can be indeed seen in the following section.

Social Media Usage in V-4

This section is based only on “traditional” social media data. It would be certainly more proper to include statistics on cloud-based computing and applications, content-centric networking and big data in V-4 countries. However, such comparative and comparable recent data are not available in already published regional or global reports such as Reuters Digital News Report 2018 (RDNR2018). Simply, comparative social sciences on convergence are lacking behind rapid technological developments that facilitate ongoing second convergence.

Eurostat data for 2016 shows that comparatively, within the EU, the Czech Republic was found among countries with the least popular social media, closely followed by Poland. Slovakia was found in the middle (but above EU average), while Hungarians were among top social media users, tied with Malta and Belgium (people aged 16-74).² Surprisingly, Belgium, Malta, and Hungary are rather dissimilar in socio-political, geographical and historical parameters. In other words, it is difficult to explain why there are many similar key aspects in different countries of popular social media.

There are some similarities among users of social media among V-4 countries. As it is clear from Table 1 in all four countries, Facebook is the top social medium. It should be mentioned here that Hungary used to have its own version of Facebook called iWiW. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland all have their own national social networks similar to Facebook (pokec.cz, pokec.sk, and NK.pl respectively). This may explain the comparatively higher popularity of Facebook in Hungary. Some Hungarian social scientists tend to explain this Hungarian uniqueness by psychological-historical and political reasons (in Peleschuk, 2017). Although the Reuters Digital News Report (RDNR2018: 84) tackled this issue, it did not provide a clear answer either: „Hungary also suffers from low trust in institutions in general while there tends to be a strong reliance on personal, informal networks. This helps to explain the high usage of social media in Hungary, though it is worth noting, if slightly surprising, that only 27% trust the news accessed this way.“ Perhaps the explanation of the higher popularity of Facebook in Hungary thus may be much simpler – in addition to the higher popularity of social media in general, there is no alternative local social network of similar characteristics as is Facebook. In any case, it is unclear why these national social networking sites are not stated in the case of the Czech Republic and Poland in the RDNR2018. Antonis Kalogeropoulos, the co-author of RDNR2018, explained that “we actually ask for nk.pl in Poland but it is reached is smaller than the top 6 networks we report. We ask for Pokec in Slovakia where it has a wide reach (14%) but not in the Czech Republic.“³ Nonetheless, perhaps researchers should include alternative relevant local social networks of similar type. It is less meaningful to compare e.g. Twitter with Facebook rather than Facebook with Nasza Klasa in Poland. Although Nasza Klasa has only about 7 % of users compared to Facebook (Kulik, 2018), the omission of this fact can lead to a wrong interpretation of the popularity of social communication tools in Poland.

Although YouTube is rather popular in all four countries, it is marginally researched in comparison with Facebook, as will be shown later. Much more researched is Twitter which is comparatively at both national and international V-4 level less popular social network, while as will be shown, other similarly popular social media are less researched by local researchers.

Table 1: Top Social Media in V4 (Any purpose)

 

Source: compiled from Reuters Digital News Report 2018⁴

If we compare these data with the previous year (Table 2), we can see an increase in interest in Facebook, YouTube and Facebook Messenger in the Czech Republic. The other three countries do not show a change in Facebook usage and only a marginal increase in interest in YouTube. However, Facebook Messenger usage seems to be on the rise in all four countries.

Table 2: Top social media and messaging (All purpose)

	CZ	HU	PL	SK
Facebook	69%	81%	73%	74%
YouTube	57%	72%	67%	60%
Facebook Messenger	33%	48%	32%	35%
Twitter		15%
WhatsApp	18%		16%
Pokec.sk				15%
Google Plus	9%		15%	15%
Viber		25%

Source: compiled from Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017

It seems useful to present data on the usage of social media for news consumption. As can be seen from Table 2, Facebook is still dominant here, but more equally among all four countries, as well as less significant compared to its use for social interaction and other purposes.

Table 3: Top Social Media in V4 (For news)

Source: compiled from Reuters Digital News Report 2018

In summary, social media are an important subject to study. Moreover, following above mentioned discussions on convergence, it is clear that social media are the key part of convergence. However, it will be shown that attention paid by researchers to particular social media is imbalanced in all of these four countries. This lack of research attention can have significant consequences on our understanding of their roles in these societies.

Methodology

We have focused on the last five years from 2013 to 2017. Of course, the research and academic discussions about social media and convergence have been around for a longer period, and continue. However, one has to limit its research focus. Our aim was to find out publications written by local researchers, and published regionally and internationally. For that purpose, we searched and found many local academic journals, often available in online editions only. In the final phase, we used e-mail contacts usually stated in articles, and contacted authors with the request for double-checking the sample and request to suggest additional items. This has brought only limited feedback.

Now there is a legitimate question how much is this sample representative. It is difficult to answer this question. Although we have tried to make our sample as representative as possible, we never aimed at having 100% sample, but 90%. We do not know whether we reached that goal for reasons discussed above. Yet it is both illustrative and indicative that partners who were supposed to search in an identical way for articles in other countries achieved much poorer results. For example, a foreign partner found only some 25 articles on social media and convergence for Germany and eight for Austria, while another foreign partner found over 110 and 45 articles respectively for these countries (obviously, during the same period). A British partner found only some 40 articles on social media and convergence for the UK while another partner found over 110 articles on social media and convergence for the UK. Considering our samples comparatively (both UK and Germany are much bigger countries that anyone of four countries in our sample, with the partial exception of Poland., we may safely claim high representativness of our sample. We have found many articles – over 100 each for Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland respectively, and over 300 for Slovakia. However, we were not always able to find full-text articles. The Slovak case is atypical not because of special attention paid by local researchers to the issue of convergence and social media, but we did a very detailed and broad search in this case. Clearly, although Slovak sample is the largest, this does not mean that it also qualitatively rated above average, as we will discuss later.

We searched all local journals and edited volumes, including Ph.D. students‘ papers. Moreover, we understood the term convergence very broadly. The traditional approach would be based on the following keywords: social media, convergence, and possibly selected social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blog etc. as well as their combinations. However, after pilot studies, we have found there are very few articles that deal specifically and knowingly with convergence. In other words, the majority of authors researched various aspects of convergence but either was not aware of this fact that they were actually researching aspects of convergence or of this particular term. In other aspects, convergence was often used as a keyword in their articles. Thus, the most proper approach to this challenge was to focus primarily on our search at keywords “social media“ either in general or in particular, (e.g. Facebook). Then we tried to identify, scanning visually each article, whether it fits into our focus of interest. If we accept a broad definition of convergence discussed above, one can at the same time claim that especially Slovak samples actually cover possibly 90% of all research done on social media in general. Obviously, there have emerged new definitional challenges. For example, can be an article focused on big data analysis (of social media) considered as a part of our research focus? There are certainly aspects of convergence, but how relevant are these? These cases had to be decided on a case by case basis.

The identified articles and studies have been coded. For this purpose, we have developed detailed codebook or manual (available at www.compact-media.eu). Moreover, we have compiled and selected findings and recommendations for further use. These best findings and recommendations create a separate file with the more extensive analytical part. This information is freely available to other researchers, either at the project´s website (compact-media.eu) or at the key author of this study.

The coding has been double-checked internally, independently by another researcher. The coding included many parameters. We mention only the most relevant ones here.

Firstly, these included keywords – this should make an easier future search in our dataset. However, we usually omitted such obvious keywords as social media and convergence, since the whole sample is based on these two keywords.

Second, we included short abstracts of the papers that usually followed the standard style of academic papers.

Third, and perhaps most useful (at least in our sample „best of the best“) was a section that summarised findings and recommendations. This was also perhaps one of the most challenging tasks. We have found that in the majority of studies actually there was no single and succinct section that would provide either findings or recommendations. We had to read through the whole article and identify both findings and recommendations throughout the text. Yet this approach served another purpose too. We identified the overall research and academic quality of each paper. Based on identifiable findings and recommendations (in the latter, usually missing in most cases, or identifiable indirectly only), we have assigned numerical value 1, 2, or 3 to each article. The number 1 meant that article was assessed as of highest value (locally or internationally), while value 2 put the article in the middle, with some value of either findings or recommendations, while value 3 put the article at the very bottom of overall importance and in that sense, quality of results.

Of course, this task would be best served by top experts in the field, who would command an excellent overview of state of the art. Unfortunately, we did not have such an opportunity and in fact, there could be hardly found such experts in these four countries. Therefore, we had to rely on the independent assessment by two, and sometimes even three experts and non-experts. Thus, the final results represent prevailing consensus. High value: It is directly related to social media and convergence. The findings seem to be innovative and important (practically or scientifically in a sense of applied or basic research). Medium value: It is directly related to social media and convergence. The findings seem to be less important. Low value: It is only indirectly or marginally related to social media and convergence and/or the findings are insignificant. This also includes articles that actually de facto summarize findings from international sources. Thus, these articles may be seen domestically as highly relevant, but they are actually not relevant internationally (a difference between summaries and meta-analysis).

In any case, our Best of the Best selection includes both articles with value 1 and selected articles with value 2. We have tried in this way to eliminate possible error in quality assessment. In other words, in case of doubt, we moved an article into a higher category in the final selection.

Fourth, we were interested in methodology or type of research used by studied researchers or rather their outputs. We have suggested the following categories: (1) basic research exploring research basic issues with no immediate practical (and monetizable) results as such. (2) applied research, researching specific aspects of the subject usually with some possible practical knowledge as a result. (3) Non-scientific – allegedly scientific articles – one may find articles that actually do not fulfill basic expectations with regard to scientific output (these were after double-checking excluded from detailed analysis), and (4) border case (includes basic and applied research).

Fifth, we were interested in which purpose serves the social media in research. Clearly, social media can be seen as a tool for (1) getting information, (2) making connections, (3) providing or facilitating education,(4) enabling hobby/entertainment, (5) serving for marketing purpose, (6) studying as technology. Since categories could be expanded, we have left an option for addition (7) as well as (8) option no/difficult to determine or other.

Sixth, the obvious issue of interest was a type of social media studied by a researcher. We included here categories such as (1) in general, (2) fb-Facebook, (3) yt–YouTube. (4) IN–Instagram. (5) g–Google+. (6) wa–WhatsApp. (7) tw–Twitter. (8) li–Linkedin. (9) lg–Letsgo and allowed to expand this list furthermore.

Seventh, there was very interesting but not so often tackled issue of various regulatory approaches. The first category was most frequent (1) no regulatory issue, (2) protection of minors, (3) hate speech, (4) fair communication, (includes various misinformation l), (5) marketing (includes political campaigns),(6) personal data protection, (7) copyright, (8) libel, (9) and others. In retrospective, we would suggest adding a category of “data policies“. This issue came to policy-making attention during our search, as a response to closing access to data by social media platforms.

Eight, obviously we were interested in the research method used by researchers. Here we included (1) case study, (2) qualitative approach, (3) quantitative approach, (4) meta-analytical studies, (5) comparative studies, (6) not clear/combination/other cases. It was allowed to use multiple categories (e.g. Case study + qualitative approach). In retrospective, we have found our approach in this particular item as problematic. For future research, we would suggest using only two primary categories – qualitative and quantitative approaches (and their combination).

Initially, we focused on the type of convergence. We understood and identified the following possible types (and their combination) of convergence: (1) play/ labor, (2) private/public, (3) producer/ consumer (4) amateurish/professional, (5) legacy/new media. It turned out that there were present sometimes two or even three types of convergence.

During the research, we have found some unexpected results. These included examples of academic dishonesty, lack of professionalism or at least sometimes questionable research and publication practices. These probably represent only a top of an iceberg. For example, in one case, after pointing at questionable research on the interaction of social and legacy media published by Slovak author Ján Višňovský in allegedly peer-reviewed journal Otázky žurnalistiky (Issues of Journalism), the editor was not interested in publishing our contribution to the debate. In fact, there was silence for a long time, the contribution was mentioned as “not requested“. Even the majority of members of the editorial board remained silent on the issue. The author of the problematic study himself never expressed his opinion on public criticism, although he was asked for feedback to criticism (see Školkay, 2017).

Similarly, a Slovak mathematician found that article published by Slovak author Andrej Trnka on Big Data Analysis in Romanian journal the European Journal of Science and Theology was 90% based on plagiarism (see Lehuta, 2018). Probably it was no coincidence that both controversial authors have been employed at the same faculty in Trnava, Slovakia. Moreover, 90% of Scopus-based public produced by that particular faculty was published in the same Romanian journal (Mikušovič, 2018). One can assume that it was not a coincidence that some members of this Slovak faculty have been members of an editorial board of this dubious Romanian journal. We have contacted Dr. Iulian Rusu, editor in chief of European Journal of Science and Theology. After an exchange of opinions, it became clear that the editor was more interested to know how the critic got access to that particular article, arguing that it was a crime (breach of copyright). Indeed, all articles published in this journal are behind the paywall, and not even abstracts are available freely. Furthermore, the editor presented a draft of an editorial to be published in December issue in which he praised his own achievements. Apparently, no further steps were taken by the editor except putting the declaration of honor by the author at the beginning of that incriminating article in which the authors confirmed by the signature originality of his article.⁵

In other cases, researchers published multiple articles of 4-5 pages each, resulting from the same research. In some cases, the same research was published with slightly different modifications of the text. Obviously, the aim here was to document quantity of research output.

We think that this information is important to mention here since it questions the veracity of academic research produced in some of these countries, and published elsewhere, including allegedly high-quality Scopus database. We had to tackle these issues from the practical point too. Should such clearly questionable output be included in our sample? We have decided to exclude such output from our samples, or in case of the doubt at least marked it as a very low quality or put it into the category of non-scientific research.

The research was performed by an international team, including Czech, Slovak, Polish and Hungarian speaking researchers.

Analytical Part

First, we were interested to know how many researchers tackled this topic and what is their gender composition. Surprisingly, as can be seen in Table 4, there are over a hundred researchers in each country who are interested in social media and various aspects of convergence. There were quite frequent jointly written articles. Therefore, the number of authors has the only loose connection to overall output, although statistically, it may appear that each author corresponds to a single article in the majority of cases. We had to exclude some Slovak authors who publish in bogus academic journals. Considering above mentioned caveats, our data show that there is some slight gender imbalance in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (ratio 2:1) where male seems to be more interested in the topic of (broadly understood) convergence of social media. In the Polish case, there is a slight dominance of females. However, this finding may just reflect the overall composition of researchers, more dominated by males. The higher number of authors in the Slovak case can be explained by a very detailed research. In other words, it is unlikely that there are equal numbers of researchers tackling various aspects of convergence of social media in Poland and Slovakia. Nevertheless, the Slovak case can be seen as a sub-case which documents how broadly can be understood various aspects of convergence of social media. Furthermore, Slovak case but also other V-4 cases show that there is an abundance of local research on various particular aspects of convergence of social media, mostly published in local languages.

Table 4: Total Number of Authors and Gender Ballance of Authors

As can be indicated in Table 5, it appears that a standard number of articles on social media and (broadly understood) convergence found in a five year period in a medium-sized country can reach over a hundred. The higher number of articles found in the Slovak case can be explained by a very detailed and broad search. For example, we have found many articles produced by researchers employed at faculties of management and marketing, but also by those employed at technical universities. Yet obviously these studies tackled mostly partial aspects of convergence, related to what Jenkins (2001) called Social or Organic Convergence and Economic Convergence. However, Jenkins did not explicitly mention various marketing and business strategies that are impacted by convergence, or that utilize social media in a converged business and customer environment.

Table 5: Total Number of Articles

Now we turn to the issue of relevance or quality of academic output. Of course, relevance may not be fully identical with the quality, but in general, there should be a strong correlation. In any case, Table 6 suggests that the best quality of research on social media and convergence one can expect in the Czech Republic and Hungary, while both Poland and Slovakia show poorer results.

Table 6: Relevance of Academic Output on Social Media and Convergence

As can be seen in Table 7, in addition to finding a surprisingly high number of articles considered as being non-scientific in three V-4 countries, there seemed to be higher research attention paid by Polish authors to the practical usability of research. In the Czech Republic more basic researches have been conducted which can indicate that by providing fundamental, basic comments and thoughts, the researchers will probably turn to applied researches in the near future. In the meantime, all the other three countries have conducted applied researches thus both social media and convergence tend to be used from a practical point of understanding in the region.

Table 7: Typology of Research

It is interesting to check which social media are of research interest of researchers in V-4 countries. As documented in Table 8, about half of research on social media and convergence in V-4 countries tackled social media in general. However, there are significant differences between the Czech Republic on the one hand, with only some 15% of such articles, and on the other hand Poland, with some 80% of articles with a general focus on social media and convergence. A more detailed analysis suggests that the most frequently researched social media are Facebook, followed by Twitter, and on the third place one could identify all other social media mentioned in our table, with some national variations. We would like to come back to our data on social media usage mentioned earlier. Clearly, although YouTube is the second most popular social media type in all V-4 countries, almost equally popular as Facebook, it is under-researched in all V-4 countries. Similarly, in spite of their relatively high and increasing popularity, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Slovak Pokec social media are virtually ignored or almost ignored by local researchers on social media and convergence. Instagram in the context of convergence should be more researched too.

Table 8: Social Media Typology

We also were interested to know which main purpose served social media in researched articles. In some articles, social media were seen as serving multiple purposes. Nevertheless, it was mostly a function of providing information, especially in the Polish sample, that dominates the sample. The second most often function was actually marketing (including political marketing). In the Polish case, marketing was parallel with educative function.

Table 9: Main Purpose of Social Media in Researched Topics

Nowadays, especially after Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal, it is important to tackle regulatory issues. Yet researchers in V-4 countries mostly ignored regulatory issues, as can be seen below. For example, highly relevant issue of data policies for social media platforms could not be identified within our sample. In fact, it was mostly lawyers who tackled regulatory issues, but there are very few lawyers who publish on social media and convergence or on social media in general. Be that as it may, a more refined analysis suggests that Hungarian researchers tackled the lowest number of regulatory issues, while Slovak researchers tackled the highest number of regulatory issues (we remind that sometimes there were tackled multiple regulatory issues in an article). Nevertheless, one can assume that research interests reflect most pressing regulatory issues in each country. From this perspective, it seems that protection of minors in the converged environment is much more important for the Czech Republic than for other V-4 countries. Marketing seems to be irrelevant as a regulatory issue for Hungarian researchers. For Polish researchers, fair competition seems to be of concern. This included topics such as either placing some media contents on different electronic platforms or that co-creation of media contents by the users can be seen as a strategic challenge for media companies. Apparently and surprisingly, libel does not seem to be of concern for researchers in the Czech Republic and Poland. In general, marketing related issues (except Hungary) and personal data protection seem to dominate research in this area and in these countries.

Table 10: Regulatory Issues

As mentioned, attempting to insert research methods into categories proved to be challenging. Therefore, the data presented in Table 11 should be seen as rather rough numbers. It is perhaps safe to argue that comparative research is not so much popular in these countries in this research area. Moreover, there appears to dominate qualitative research among Polish researchers. This finding seems to be consistent with the findings presented in Table 6.

Table 11: Research Methods

Finally, we have attempted to analytically identify various types of convergence which were present in the researched output. Again, there were multiple choices allowed. These findings seem to be partly in line with previous data. For example, it is no surprise that the Polish authors focus so much on the issue of legacy and new media (as it was documented in Table 10 with focus at the fair competition). However, another interpretation is possible too, the data suggest that there is too much focus on the convergence of legacy and new media (except Slovakia, and less so for Hungary) at cost of other types of convergence.

Table 12: Type of Convergence

Conclusion

It appears rather problematic to carry out case study or comparative study on social media and convergence. First, there is rather a loose definition of convergence. Second, many studies and articles are either available in local languages and/or not freely accessible. Nevertheless, in this research, there seems to be clearly visible country-specific thematic and methodological focus within research on social media and convergence. Comparatively, best research on above-mentioned factors is most likely to be found in the Czech Republic and Hungary. Published data on social media and convergence belong to many authors in each country, but only a few authors seem to be actually specialized in this topic. This comparative study shows that there are country-specific differences in the study of the convergence of social media. Before summarising them, we have to mention that the most important finding is that this novel area of research is lagging behind rather rapid technological and political-regulatory developments targeting social media. In particular, this is related to lack of attention paid by local lawyers to some of the most pressing issues facing these societies as a result of the convergence of social media. These include, for instance, data policies for social media platforms following Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal of spring 2018. One could assume and study this issue, including providing some policy-regulatory recommendations, before its public/media revelations were made. Similarly, it was impossible to find any relevant article on the current debate about the revision of Audiovisual Media Services Directive with focus on regulation of social media. At last but not the least, there is ongoing policy detabe on this novel topic.

Moreover, some of the most popular (e.g. YouTube, WhatsApp) and rapidly gaining popularity (e.g. Facebook Messenger) social media seem to be under-researched too. Thus a new research area within this relatively young topic can focus on Instagram and YouTube. Not just because of their high popularity but also because of their main users: the young adults.

Although most of the analyzed studies used qualitative and/or quantitative approach we still see a huge lack of comparative studies concerning social media and convergence. Although our dataset does not cover the total number of publications in all four countries, this absence of comparative studies is still striking. Some interpretations of social media roles in V-4 countries found in comparative reports such as RDNR2018 seem to be too subjective.

The structured overview of actual findings and recommendations from selected high and partly medium quality reports reviewed is published in a separate report. There also is freely available almost complete mailing list of researchers in these countries which may facilitate both comparative research (which seems to be downplayed among V-4 countries too) as well access to researchers and to their research output.

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