Miklós Sükösd - Böcker

Finding the Right Place on the Map is a crosscutting, international comparison of the media systems and the democratic performance of the media in post-Communist countries. It explores issues of commercial media, social exclusion, and consumer capitalism in a comparative East-West perspective. Each chapter considers a different aspect of the trends and problems surrounding the media in comparative European and global perspectives. The result is a creative collaboration of leading authors from East and West that covers a rich array of controversial subjects in a comprehensive manner. Topics range from the civil society approach to media and public service broadcasting to journalism cultures, fandom, representation of poverty and gender that reinforces social exclusion and legitimizes consumer capitalism. Finding the Right Place on the Map is a unique, up-to-date overview of what media transformation has meant for post-communist countries in nearly two decades.

Leading researchers from different regions of Europe and the United States address five major interrelated themes: 1) how ideological and normative constructs gave way to empirical systematic comparative work in media research; 2) the role of foreign media groups in post-communist regions and the effects of ownership in terms of impacts on media freedom; 3) the various dimensions of the relationship between mass media and political systems in a comparative perspective; 4) professionalization of journalism in different political cultures—autonomy of journalists, professional norms and practices, political instrumentalization and the commercialization of the media; 5) the role of state intervention in media systems