MCCM
RESILIENCE
OUR MEDIA
By: Nasir Muftić
Edited by: Bojana Kostić
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s digital information space remains shaped in a regulatory vacuum, an incomplete domestic legal framework that leaves considerable scope for private interests, digital platforms, foreign actors and automated systems to influence the digital information environment. This risk assessment asks who actually sets the rules within that vacuum. Addressing these risks requires coordinated legislative reform, independent and adequately resourced regulators, and sustained multistakeholder participation to protect human rights.
Introduction
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH) contribution to a 2025 SEENPM regional risk assessment, prepared for UNESCO and supported by the European Union, found that the principal risks to the digital information space stem not only from an incomplete legal framework, but also from institutional inaction. This new risk assessment builds on those findings, exploring them further through the concept of a regulatory vacuum.
The first layer of structural gaps concerns the absence of a modern electronic media law, a media ownership transparency framework, an advertising law and anti-SLAPP legislation, as noted in the EU’s 2025 report on BiH. The second concerns digital platform regulation, which has not yet begun: no domestic instrument governs digital platform, and there is no strategy to transpose the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), as noted in the first risk assessment. Third, BiH lacks a comprehensive digital strategy, and key strategies on cybersecurity and AI development have not been adopted, leaving gaps in the protection of the digital space.
Institutional inaction is primarily reflected in repeated delays and policy vacillation. These problems are compounded by a fragmented allocation of competences and a shortage of expertise within the responsible institutions. For example, the Ministry of Communications and Transport of Bosnia and Herzegovina initiated the preparation of a new Law on Electronic Communications, intended to align domestic legislation with the European Electronic Communications Code, ePrivacy Directive, European Accessibility Act, Commission Directive 2002/77/EC, Gigabit Infrastructure Act and Radio Spectrum Decision. However, the consultation process has stalled, despite submissions from civil society and academia and the OSCE. Similarly, state officials have publicly indicated that legislation on public broadcasting could be adopted soon, yet there is neither a clear timeline nor meaningful progress.
Gaps across these three layers of the digital ecosystem, coupled with limited institutional responsiveness, may allow market and political forces to play a dominant role in shaping the media landscape. The interaction of these and other forces may, in turn, affect media pluralism, diversity, editorial independence and the overall balance within the digital ecosystem.
Taken together, these gaps create a regulatory vacuum – a condition this assessment defines as an incomplete domestic legal framework that leaves considerable scope for private interests, digital platforms, foreign actors and automated systems to shape the digital information environment. This risk assessment asks who actually sets the rules within that vacuum. Where the state does not regulate, rules and structures still emerge, but they are established by others.
The risks below arise from the lack of structural and institutional responses to this regulatory vacuum. They are analysed from two connected perspectives: primarily, institutional vacillation and gaps in media legislation; and secondarily, though closely linked, gaps in digital platform regulation. These risks arise in media markets shaped by concentrated ownership, political clientelism and other forms of pressure. In this environment, content is produced constantly and at scale, while platforms determine its visibility, amplification or removal through unilateral and opaque terms of service.
1. Human Rights Risks
In the regulatory vacuum, authority over media and platform governance can come to rest, in part, with market forces, political actors and platform business models. Four human rights risks arise from this overarching concern.
First, risks to freedom of expression stem from the lack of media transparency laws and practices, the absence of anti-SLAPP legislation, and limited protection of journalists, compounded by inadequate institutional follow-up to threats and violence. These risks are further compounded by the lack of digital platform regulation. Without effective institutional oversight, actors in the media market can amplify, and profit from, online harassment and threats, as well as ethno-nationalist narratives.
Second, and closely related, is the risk to the right to an effective remedy: complaint mechanisms and bodies responsible for reviewing content moderation failures offer individuals few effective, enforceable rights beyond those voluntarily granted by digital platforms.
Third is the risk to equality and non-discrimination: limited transparency and oversight of media pluralism and information systems – including distribution as well as production – make it difficult to assess whether these systems disadvantage particular communities, viewpoints or vulnerable groups.
Fourth is the risk to privacy and data protection: although a new, GDPR-aligned Law on Protection of Personal Data has been adopted, it does not yet provide adequate oversight or tools to understand how, for what purposes and in whose interests individuals’ personal data are processed by media organisations, industry actors and digital platforms.
Regulatory asymmetry with the EU makes BiH a jurisdiction with a comparatively low risk of enforcement: actors facing compliance obligations within the EU may face no equivalent consequences for the same conduct directed at BiH. This can reduce their incentive to address harms. Moreover, because content produced in Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian (BCS), whose variants are fully mutually intelligible, also flows outward into the region and to a large EU diaspora, the risks extend well beyond BiH.
2. Rule-of-Law Risks
Four structural barriers constitute rule-of-law risks. They also help explain why reform has stalled and why the regulatory vacuum persists.
Jurisdictional deadlock. There are ongoing constitutional disputes over the allocation of competences between the state and the entities, including in relation to print media, broadcasting and online portals. In the absence of an overarching state framework, regulation may emerge at entity and lower levels, further fragmenting governance, as illustrated in the initial risk assessment.
Institutional independence. The European Commission, in its annual reports for 2023, 2024 and 2025, notes that the Communications Regulatory Agency (CRA) does not yet enjoy full protection from political influence. A regulator without financial independence or an independent appointment process faces significant constraints in carrying out its mandate effectively.
Political vacillation. State-level lawmaking depends on cross-entity consensus, which is particularly difficult to reach amid recurrent political confrontations.
Readiness for future digital platform oversight. The DSA’s enforcement framework provides for a national Digital Services Coordinator and a division of responsibilities among competent authorities, while the Digital Markets Act (DMA) empowers the European Commission. BiH has no comparable structures. Furthermore, state-level legislation does not align with the UNESCO Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms.
3. Multistakeholder Governance Risks
The state and non-state mechanisms that could help address the regulatory vacuum remain limited or stalled. The only standing self-regulatory mechanism in the media sector, the Press and Online Media Council, operates on a voluntary basis. There is no standing multistakeholder advisory mechanism that regularly brings together media, civil society organisations and state authorities to address the identified risks, beyond the working groups tasked with preparing the missing media laws.
Internet governance forums provide recurring opportunities for dialogue, including the global Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the national BHIGF and the regional SEEDIG forum. Domestic non-governmental organisations also participate in the Berlin Process, a high-level diplomatic initiative supporting regional cooperation and EU integration among Western Balkan countries. These initiatives, however, do not provide a standing domestic mechanism for regulatory coordination.
Nationally, the Coalition for Freedom of Expression and Content Moderation in BiH, created through the UNESCO Social Media 4 Peace initiative, promotes multistakeholder dialogue between tech companies, online platforms and domestic authorities. Nevertheless, state bodies routinely disregard its policy recommendations.
Consequently, multistakeholder governance of platform ecosystems remains fragmented and dependent on individual initiatives. Sustainable platform regulation requires a systematic, cross-cutting and institutionalised framework that delivers concrete regulatory responses in line with the principles set out in the UNESCO Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms.
Regulatory Forecast
Given the current risks, three developments warrant monitoring in the coming period.
- Continued stagnation followed by rushed transposition. Prolonged inaction may give way to rushed transposition when external deadlines, EU accession or alignment benchmarks, or a crisis force action. A comparable situation occurred in Montenegro, where dozens of laws were adopted rapidly, raising concerns about transparency and adequate scrutiny of their provisions.
- Entrenched fragmentation. As long as gaps in the state-level framework persist, entity and lower-level authorities may continue to legislate unilaterally, as illustrated by the recriminalisation of defamation in Republika Srpska. Each year of policy indecision risks deepening this fragmentation and making eventual harmonisation at the state level more difficult.
- The regulatory vacuum is filled by other actors. The absence of effective regulation of digital platforms and media does not mean that they operate without rules. If essential elements of the legislative framework remain missing, market actors, political interests, platforms’ business models, and automated systems may increasingly determine the rules governing the digital information environment.
Recommendations
1. Adopt and enforce media legislation
Prioritise a Law on Electronic Media, a Law on Media Ownership Transparency, a Law on Advertising, and anti-SLAPP legislation. Continue aligning the draft Law on Electronic Communications with the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), and begin with transposing European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) and European Electronic Communications Code (EECC), among others, before further entity-level legislation entrenches regulatory fragmentation.
2. Develop a strategy for implementing the DSA, DMA and EMFA
To ensure a phased approach and operational readiness, as proposed at the TAIEX workshop, and to align implementation with a human rights-based approach, as outlined in UNESCO’s Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms, develop a strategy for implementing the key EU digital acquis through an inclusive process involving both state and non-state actors. Assess the CRA’s independence as a prospective Digital Services Coordinator, examining its appointment procedures, financial autonomy and operational independence. Follow this assessment with a structured, cross-institutional capacity-building programme for the regulatory and judicial bodies responsible for platform oversight.
3. Establish a standing multistakeholder forum
Create a permanent advisory group bringing together regulators, self-regulatory bodies, civil society and academia. Build on existing forums and initiatives – including IGF, BHIGF and SEEDIG – and give stalled working groups a durable institutional home and a clear strategic mandate linked to recommendations 1–3. As noted in the first risk assessment, the Coalition for Freedom of Expression and Content Moderation in Bosnia and Herzegovina offers a suitable starting point, given its accumulated expertise.
This risk assessment was informed by background interviews with independent specialists and government experts.
This publication was produced by the South East European Network for Professionalization of Media (SEENPM), within the UNESCO project “Building Trust in Media in South East Europe: Support to Journalism as a Public Good”, financed by the EU. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO or the European Union concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.
The authors are responsible for the choice and the presentation of the facts contained in this publication and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO or the European Union and do not commit the Organization.
