New Book:The Digital Public Sphere. Challenges for Media Policy

The Digital Public Sphere. Challenges for Media Policy

Editors: Jostein Gripsrud & Hallvard Moe

Nordicom, University of Gothenburg, 2010, 167 p. - ISBN
978-91-86523-02-2, Price EUR25

Until recently, media policy was thought of as national, media-specific,
and as part of the cultural domain. All is changing in a digital public
sphere: first, by the processes of globalization in a broad sense;
second, by a blurring of borders between media, which can be summed up
as convergence; and third, by a more far-reaching commercialisation of
the media. The transformation triggered by these developments are
ongoing and have been so for quite a few years. Thus, it is time to take
stock. The different contributions in this book set out to do that.

With a basis in the idea that media policy is fundamentally about
regulating the public sphere in accordance with central democratic
ideals, the book covers a wide range of issues: Transnational online
television distribution; the trouble with building and opening digital
audiovisual archives; the impact of recent EU regulations on global
conglomerates as well as national public service broadcasters; the
debate on net neutrality; the idea of the participating public in
policy-making; the regulation of freedom of speech on the internet; as
well as the impact of legal globalization on media policy itself.

Contributors are internationally leading European and US scholars in the
field - Sandra Braman, Karen Donders, Caroline Pauwels and Slavko
Splichal - along with a selection of Nordic experts: Jostein Gripsrud,
Karl Knapskog, Hallvard Moe, Ole J. Mjøs, Hannu Nieminen, Helge Rønning,
and Tanja Storsul.

For further information see
http://www.nordicom.gu.se/?portal=publ&main=info_publ2.php&ex=318&me=13