INTERNATIONELLA HANDELSHOGSKOLAN IJONKOPING AB

Their core work

Jönköping International Business School (JIBS) is a Swedish university-level business school with established credentials in entrepreneurship, management, and media industry research. In EU-funded work, they contribute an academic business management lens to media sector challenges — studying how media companies operate, compete, and adapt in a transforming landscape. They also engage with the societal dimensions of media, analyzing how news ecosystems shape public discourse and democratic communication through policy analysis and cross-European knowledge synthesis. Their dual contribution spans media-as-industry (business models, firm strategy) and media-as-public-good (policy, deliberative democracy).

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Both H2020 projects launched simultaneously in 2021, so there is no genuine temporal arc to trace — the keyword split reflects two parallel projects rather than a real shift in focus over time. Thematically, ScreenME-Net represents the business-facing side of JIBS's media work (entrepreneurship, management of screen media companies), while MEDIADELCOM reflects a broader societal and governance angle (deliberative communication, media policy, news risks). Together they suggest JIBS is extending its traditional management research identity toward media policy and public sphere questions — a direction that aligns with growing EU interest in democratic resilience and information ecosystems.

JIBS appears to be broadening from media-as-business toward media-as-society, positioning at the intersection of management research and public communication policy — a useful profile for future projects linking creative industries, platform regulation, or media literacy to democratic governance.

How they like to work

JIBS has participated in both projects as a partner, never as coordinator, indicating they join consortia as a specialist contributor rather than a project driver. Despite only two projects, they have connected with 23 distinct partners across 18 countries — an unusually wide network for this volume — which means they are recruited into large, geographically diverse consortia rather than small bilateral arrangements. This makes them a reliable European network node for projects needing a business school voice on media topics.

23 unique partners across 18 countries from just two projects signals participation in large, pan-European consortia. Their network reach is broadly European with no apparent geographic concentration beyond their Swedish home base.

What sets them apart

JIBS brings a business school perspective to media research — an angle that is underrepresented in EU projects where media studies are more typically led by communication departments or journalism faculties. Their background in entrepreneurship means they analyze media industries through the lens of business models, market dynamics, and firm-level strategy rather than cultural theory alone. For consortium builders working on media, digital society, or creative economy projects, JIBS fills a specific gap at the business-meets-media intersection that few other Scandinavian HES institutions cover.

Highlights from their portfolio

• MEDIADELCOM
  The larger of the two projects (EUR 144,500, running through 2024), it addresses media transformation and its implications for democratic deliberation — directly relevant to EU digital media regulation and information integrity policy debates.
• ScreenME-Net
  A twinning project focused on building research excellence in screen media entrepreneurship across institutions, positioning JIBS as a knowledge exporter in a commercially relevant niche of the European creative economy.