Proposes an original framework for comparative media research, and uses it to provide fascinating insights into television under communist rule.

In From Media Systems to Media Cultures: Understanding Socialist Television, Sabina Mihelj and Simon Huxtable delve into the fascinating world of television under communism, using it to test a new framework for comparative media analysis. To understand the societal consequences of mass communication, the authors argue that we need to move beyond the analysis of media systems, and instead focus on the role of the media in shaping cultural ideals and narratives, everyday practices and routines. Drawing on a wealth of original data derived from archival sources, programme and schedule analysis, and oral history interviews, the authors show how communist authorities managed to harness the power of television to shape new habits and rituals, yet failed to inspire a deeper belief in communist ideals. This book and their analysis contains important implications for the understanding of mass communication in non-democratic settings, and provides tools for the analysis of media cultures globally.

Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World offers a broad exploration of the conceptual foundations for comparative analysis of media and politics globally. It takes as its point of departure the widely used framework of Hallin and Mancini's Comparing Media Systems, exploring how the concepts and methods of their analysis do and do not prove useful when applied beyond the original focus of their 'most similar systems' design and the West European and North American cases it encompassed. It is intended both to use a wider range of cases to interrogate and clarify the conceptual framework of Comparing Media Systems and to propose new models, concepts and approaches that will be useful for dealing with non-Western media systems and with processes of political transition. Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World covers, among other cases, Brazil, China, Israel, Lebanon, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Thailand.

Compares models of media and politics in Central and Eastern Europe.

Media Systems and Communication Policies in Latin America proposes, tests and analyses the liberal captured model. It explores to what extent to which globalisation, marketization, commercialism, regional bodies and the nation State redefine the media's role in Latin American societies.

Western Media Systems offers a critical introduction to media systems in North America and Western Europe. The book offers a wide-ranging survey of comparative media analysis addressing the economic, social, political, regulatory and cultural aspects of Western media systems. Jonathan Hardy takes a thematic approach, guiding the reader through critical issues and debates, introducing key concepts and specialist literature. Western Media Systems is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying comparative and global media.

Global Journalism: Understanding World Media Systems provides an overview of the key issues in global journalism today and traces how media systems have evolved over time in different world regions. Taking into account local context as well as technological change across media industries, the book offers an up-to-date, thorough overview of media developments in all world regions embedded in their unique political, cultural and economic context. Covering theoretical foundations of global journalism, from the classic Four Theories of the Press to more nuanced media models, this text proposes a framework for studying world media systems. Contributed chapters cover a wide range of topics, including media freedom, global news cultures, professional ethics and responsibilities, and education of global journalists, as well as the role of technology and issues such as fake news, soft power and public diplomacy, foreign news reporting and international news flow. Visit Globaljournalism.org to access additional class materials, case studies, and multimedia.

This book, first published in 1992, challenges the elitism and cultural pessimism of much Anglo-American and Continental cultural debate with regard to the role and power of transnational media practices. In a series of ten innovative essays, an international group of media researchers explores a wide range of cultural practices across national borders and the cultural politics associated with these everyday practices and debates.

Addressing a multitude of questions and issues surrounding how we use the media, Media Effects and Beyond represents the results of an international research programme into the use and effects of television, video and music. Seeing the viewer not simply as passive object but as a very active subject, the contributors engage with every aspect of children's, adolescents' and families' use of the media - its character, causes and consequences. Topics explored include media and social mobility; family commumication, and consumer lifestyles. Confronting the two traditions of lifestyle research and effects research, Media Effects and Beyond offers a much-needed reconceptualization of both. Written at a time when traditional European public service media systems struggle against a tidal wave of commercial electronic media, this book will be important reading for students of contemporary culture and communications, as well as media policy for decision makers.

This book explains divergent media system trajectories in the countries in southeast Europe, and challenges the presumption that the common socialist experience critically influences a common outcome in media development after democratic transformations, by showing different remote and proximate configuration of conditions that influence their contemporary shape. Applying an innovative longitudinal set-theoretical methodological approach, the book contributes to the theory of media systems with a novel theoretical framework for the comparative analysis of post-socialist media systems. This theory builds on the theory of historical institutionalism and the notion of critical junctures and path dependency in searching for an explanation for similarities or differences among media systems in the Eastern European region. Extending the understanding of media systems beyond a political journalism focus, this book is a valuable contribution to the literature on comparative media systems in the areas of media systems studies, political science, Southeast and Central European studies, post-socialist studies and communication studies.