In 2004, the European Union welcomed 10 new nations through a rigorous process of assessment and negotiation. A significant part of this convergence has been to redesign the internal media markets to a model accepted and prescribed by the European Union. In this special issue of Trends in Communication, Guest Editors Peter Flood and Deirdre Kevin examine the structural fundamentals of the media market prescribed by the EU, as influenced by the acceding and candidate states. In the past 15 years, the European media model has undergone a shift from characteristically tight regulation and strong, dominant public media, to deregulation. Media and Cultural Policy in the Enlarged European Union brings to light the absence of a coherent media policy, and the consequent challenges faced by the EU. The articles in this work address the strategies available to the European media, examining the current media market model and its overall effectiveness and purpose.

The areas of media and cultural policy offer a unique prism through which to understand wider processes of European integration. Questions of European identity, citizenship and community or polity-building clearly resolve themselves as questions of the (non-)emergence of a European ‘communicative space’. At the same time, as a more specific area of policy study, the role which has or may be played by the European institutions themselves in the fostering of such a ‘communicative space’ raises questions as to both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of their interventions. This volume in the European Studies series brings fresh, interdisciplinary insight into this relatively understudied area, making the case for a renewed look at the trajectory of cultural and media policies in the EU. Distinctively, the collection offers a historical and socio-political analysis of major media policies in the European Union, allowing for the contextualisation of recent developments; turns its attention to areas largely neglected by scholarly publishing, such as the press, the culture of the newsroom, and the role of media in an enlarged Europe; and addresses media and cultural policies as an interrelated part of EU construction, through questions of identity and political representation. Media and Cultural Policy in the European Union will be of interest to scholars and students of Cultural and Media Studies, European Studies, and European Integration, as well as appealing to broader Social Science audiences concerned with the politics and policy of cultural diversity.

Addresses a critical analysis of major media policies in the European Union and Council of Europe at the period of profound changes affecting both media environments and use, as well as the logic of media policy-making and reconfiguration of traditional regulatory models. The analytical problem-related approach seems to better reflect a media policy process as an interrelated part of European integration, formation of European citizenship, and exercise of communication rights within the European communicative space. The question of normative expectations is to be compared in this case with media policy rationales, mechanisms of implementation (transposing rules from EU to national levels), and outcomes.

What happens when cultural policy turns digital? Digital Transformation and Cultural Policies in Europe analyzes and compares different digital cultural policies of Europe. Through case studies of seven European countries (UK, Germany, Croatia, Sweden, Spain, Norway, and Switzerland) as well as the analysis of EU digital cultural policy, the book investigates what happens when cultural policy gets changed and challenged by digital culture. Based on a thorough discussion of key concepts and analytical perspectives, this collection also offers a unique multi-disciplinary contribution that shows how digital cultural policy is hyperconvergent. These policies contain established ideas of cultural policy – such as democratization, welfare, access, and national, protectionist ideas – brought together within a digital framework, while also adding new cultural policy tools and instruments, such as digital standards, international regulations, directives, etc. The book shows how digital cultural policies are works in progress, struggling to align their aspirations with their effectiveness. Overall, this book provides a valuable tool for understanding the current policy framework of digital culture. It will be of interest not only to scholars and students in cultural and creative industries but also to creative professionals and policy makers.

By giving the European Union a say in cultural matters, the Member States' governments set out to create a 'Europe of the peoples', the idea being to make people in Europe aware of their shared history and values, to make them more aware of European culture and Europe's heritage, but at the same time to cultivate their awareness of local and regional cultures. More specifically, the point was to foster cultural exchanges within Europe, enable the public at large - and artists and culture professionals in particular - to get involved in European projects, to encourage creativity and to make culture accessible to the greatest possible number of people.

Containing state-of-the-art contributions on the various domains of European media policies, this Handbook deals with theoretical approaches to European media policy: its historical development; specific policies for film, television, radio and the Internet; and international aspects of the fragmented policy domain.

An impressive work of media and communication scholarship, this meticulouslyresearched book provides comprehensive and authoritative treatment to the developmentof European Union media policy, in all its complexity and competingrationales; it offers a study of EU enlargement and conditionality; and it examinesin detail the EU's impact on the new member states in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), insightfully exploring themes such as content regulation and the promotion of European works, media ownership and media pluralism, the independence ofregulatory agencies, and public service media. Building on a state of the art reviewof existing scholarship on media and communications policy, and offering its ownperspective on comparative approaches to the subject, it makes an original and informed contribution both to theory building and to empirical research. It shouldbe a standard point of reference for the academic, stakeholder and policy communitiesin this field. Peter Humphreys, Professor of Politics, The University of Manchester, UK.--