| Summary: |
Media policy in Europe faces a twofold challenge. On the one hand,
new technologies and media services such as digital television, satellite
radio, mobile content applications, video on demand, and new Internet
services are fundamentally transforming media environments and
media use. On the other hand, the historical enlargement integrating
the countries of Eastern and Central Europe within the EU’s political,
economic, and legal structures implies fundamental geopolitical and
cultural change, both at the European level and in the region. These
new conditions in the making can be approached in one of three ways:
either through a chronological description of different consecutive stages
(a historical approach); through a case-by-case description of different
national or country experiences (a geographical approach), or
through an analytical approach aiming at conceptualizing main problem
areas and open questions in European media policy today. As can
be surmised from the table of contents, the authors of this volume followed
the third route.
This choice, however, does not eliminate time and space considerations
at the expense of a problem-oriented focus. Differentiation and
delineation of problem areas is deeply rooted in an emerging logic of
media policy, which requires a new type of complexity. In other words,
national borders still matter, but so do sub-national (regional), supranational
and global constellations. A new complexity thus depends
on switching between different spatial, cultural, and political levels
and constant redefinition of their institutional settings and fields of
competencies.
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