European Communication Research and Education Association

“Finding the Right Place on the Map” is an international comparison of the media systems and democratic performance of the media in post-communist countries. From a comparative east-west perspective, this groundbreaking volume analyzes issues of commercial media, social exclusion, and consumer capitalism. With topics ranging from the civil society approach, public service broadcasting, fandom, and the representation of poverty, each chapter considers a different aspect of the trends and problems surrounding the international media. This volume is an up-to-date overview of what media transformation has meant for post-communist countries in the past two decades.

TFP brings together international researchers, students and industry professionals dedicated to promoting new research directions and to investigating the relationship between functional programming and other branches of Computer Science. This TFP volume includes some of the latest trends of functional programming, and it is an essential part of any modern programming languages library.

“The Information Society” is one of the recurrent imaginaries to describe present-day structures, discourses and practices. Within its meaning is enshrined the promise of a better world, sometimes naively assuming a technological deus ex machina, in other cases hoping for the creation of policy tools that will overcome a diversity of societal divides. With the two-phased World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the United Nations attempted to stimulate the development of such tools. Simultaneously, the WSIS is a large-scale experiment in multistakeholderism. The objective was to create a more balanced decision-making process that would allow the voices of civil society and business actors to be heard in international politics. This book aims to evaluate the potentialities of both the Information Society, and the WSIS in supporting and constructing more democratic, just and developed societies. It is the second book arising from the intellectual work of European Consortium for Communications Research members.

Citizen Voices explores the ways in which citizen voices on science and environmental issues are articulated, heard, marginalized, and silenced in mass media, policymaking, and other public venues. In a range of case studies from countries across Europe and North America, contributors offer empirical insights about the articulation of citizen voices, as well as citizens' scope for action in different national, cultural, and institutional contexts. Drawing on science and technology, environmental studies, and media and communication studies, they also present methods for foregrounding the role of communication in scientific and environmental governance.

At the beginning of the 21st century, it hardly goes uncontested anymore that media organisations play an important role in democracy. The main questions have now become whether the contemporary media conjuncture offers enough to our democracies, how their democratic investment can be deepened and how our communication rights can be expanded. This book aims to look at four thematic areas that structure the opportunities for democratising (media) democracy. The first section is devoted to citizenship and the public spheres, giving special attention to the general theme of communication rights. The second section elaborates further on a notion central to communication rights, namely that of participation. The third section returns to the traditional representational role in relation to democracy and citizenship, scrutinizing and criticizing the democratic efforts of contemporary journalism. The fourth section moves outside of the (traditional) media system and deals with the diversity of media and communication strategies of activists.

Two major regulatory activities have framed global media policies since World War II: the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) and the more recent World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Through extensive research and testimonies from those involved, this book presents an in-depth account from the 1970s to today of the major issues concerning information flow in international geopolitics, including a look at the negotiations surrounding the major policy debates. Few studies of NWICO and WSIS have considered the continuity between the two activities—or included in the debate the crucial intermediary period between—and this book provides new insight into an issue of multilingual and multicultural importance.

How free are the media in Europe? Freedom of the press and an independent media system are often taken for granted and all of the EU-member states today have implemented guarantees of press freedom in their constitutions and judicial systems. In “Press Freedom and Pluralism in Europe”, researchers from twelve countries examine media systems regarding conditions for independence and pluralism. They discuss a European approach to press freedom and diversity and include case studies of a broad spectrum of media systems including Bulgaria, the Baltics, Poland, Romania, Finland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and the UK. The volume examines how other factors such as economic influences, historic, cultural and social conditions also have a substantial impact on media independence. With its topical subject matter and a need for new media policies facing a changing media world, “Press Freedom and Pluralism in Europe” is an essential resource for media studies and journalism scholars.

With contributions from leading international experts from within both the communications industry and academia, Trends in Communication Policy Research comprises the very latest developments in the theories, methods and practical applications of this dynamic field. Topical and politically relevant, this authoritative volume will prove an invaluable reference for students and scholars seeking to understand communication policy issues.

This collection of essays provides an overview of research on the social uses of media. Drawing on long traditions in both cultural studies and the social sciences, it brings together competing research approaches usually discussed separately. The topics include up-to-date research on activity and interactivity, media use as a social and cultural practice, and participation in a cultural, political and technological sense. This book explores three general areas of current scholarly study of the social aspects of media use. First, the introduction of interactive and so-called social media has had repercussions for the definition of media use, reception and even our perception of media effects. Second, the recognition that media constitute social practice, which utilizes media for its own goals, has been highly influential in communication research. Third, media provide many opportunities for participation in cultural and political issues. Yet media also shape participation in certain—and sometimes constraining—ways.

Media independence is vital for media democracies, and so is the independence of the regulatory bodies governing it. The Independence of the Media and its Regulatory Agencies explores the complex relationship between media governance and independence of media regulatory authorities within media systems within Europe, which form part of the wider framework in which media's independence may flourish or fade. Based on research in more than forty countries, the contributions analyse the independence of regulators from different perspectives and draw links between social, financial and legal traditions and frameworks.