Comparative Study on the Protection of Minors in Electronic Media in the CERF Countries

Abstract

Comparative Study on the Protection of Minors in Electronic Media in the CERF Countries is the outcome of the comparative research project on the systems of protection of minors in audiovisual media in countries that are members of Central European Regulatory Forum (CERF), .i.e. Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia, which was conducted by the Council for Broadcasting and Retransmission in 2015.

The study deals specifically with labelling systems for the protection of minors used in member countries by in-depth comparison of their various aspects. It starts with an overview of the basic elements of all regulations: the types of legislation used to introduce the systems for protection of minors into each jurisdiction, what categories of minors the systems recognize and whether they employ criteria for categorization of the programmes. It then continues with comparison of the legal obligations that the systems impose on the media service providers. The largest part of the study focuses on six most common areas of potentially harmful content (violence, sexual content, harmful substances, fear, discrimination and harmful language) and the way each system handles them.

Keywords: media, electronic media, media law, protection of minors, labelling systems, CERF