ABOUT
The Center for Media and Digital Governance (CMDG) at the Open Markets Institute (previously the Center for Journalism and Liberty) investigates concentrated power over digital infrastructure, AI systems, and information markets through research, convening, and advocacy. We develop policy frameworks promoting democratic governance and serving the public interest rather than private gatekeepers.
We are a research and policy center at the Open Markets Institute, working across the United States, Europe, and democratic allies worldwide. We conduct independent research and convene practitioners and policymakers to address concentrated power over the infrastructure, AI systems, and markets that govern how information is produced, distributed, and accessed. We develop policy frameworks that protect the free flow of information, the labor that makes it possible, and the democracy and human liberty that depend on it.
What connects this work is a recognition that power over information — its infrastructure, its flows, its integrity, and the conditions of its free expression — is power over democratic life. A small number of largely unaccountable corporate actors now function simultaneously as owners of critical infrastructure and as gatekeepers over the information flows on which democratic participation, press freedom, and individual autonomy depend. Their dominance extends from cloud computing and satellite connectivity to the algorithmic systems shaping public discourse and the AI models integrated into nearly every layer of the information ecosystem. The implications reach into free expression, data sovereignty, cognitive liberty, and the conditions under which individuals and democratic societies exercise meaningful self-governance.
We draw on an analytical tradition that treats information and communications infrastructure as foundational to democratic life and individual human liberty, one that has animated public policy from the regulation of telegraph and telephone to the design of broadcasting rules to the current reckoning with platform power. The challenges we grapple with are not new in kind, even if their scale and speed are, and our work traverses scholarly research, journalism, and policy practice to engage those who together determine whether these systems are understood, scrutinized, and governed in the public interest.
Built on more than a decade of pioneering research and engagement at the Open Markets Institute, CMDG (previously the Center for Journalism and Liberty) occupies a distinctive position in this policy landscape: analytically rigorous, institutionally connected across the transatlantic space, and grounded in the coalitions and convenings through which research translates into influence and policy outcomes. We have shaped competition and judicial proceedings, contributed to landmark digital legislation on both sides of the Atlantic, and built durable alliances across the media, civil society, and policy communities. With offices in Washington, Brussels, and California, we engage where the most consequential decisions about AI and digital governance are being made.
SUPPORT OUR WORK
The Center for Digital and Media Governance (CDMG) is housed within the Open Markets Institute (OMI) and made possible through the generous support of institutional funders, including the John & Catherine Knight Foundation.
We are actively seeking partners who share our commitment to an informed public — whether through multi-year funding, strategic partnerships, or other forms of support. To learn more about how you can help expand this work, please contact Jessica Brown, Director of Development, at brown@openmarketsinstitute.org.
