Serving Two Masters: The Roles of the Market and European Politics in the Governance of Media Transformations

Abstract

It is true that the question of the media is a question of power. The media landscape in Europe presents a complex, unruly picture, which reveals the ways in which volatile changes in media structures and policies have taken place in the past 20 years. The changes are long-lasting, and as these studies show, the media landscapes are ‘settled’ in certain formats of ownership, production, and operation in national and international markets, and it is possible to examine them not only as single ‘moments’ in time, but as contextualised in longer histories and within predictable environments.