This book analyzes the challenges facing public service media management in the face of ongoing technological developments and changing audience behaviors. It connects models, strategies, concepts, and managerial theories with emerging approaches to public media practices through an examination of media services (e.g. blogs, social networks, search engines, content aggregators) and the online performance of traditional public media organizations. Contributors identify the most relevant and useful approaches, those likely to encourage creativity, interaction, and the development of innovative content and services, and discuss how such innovation can underpin the continuation or expansion of public service media in the changing mediascape.

This book is a collective effort of scholars who elaborate on democracy, civil society and media-political relations in Central and Eastern Europe. The authors look at both theories and practices of media systems and democracy. They indicate problems, risks, challenges related to political transformations, the public sphere, journalism culture and media freedom. All of this while bearing in mind the growing role of new media, civic engagement in the online space as well as societal changes that Central and Eastern European democracies are going through in the second decade of the 21st Century. This book is a helpful companion to media and communication scholars as well as students of journalism and political science, media practitioners and policy makers in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond. "A well-documented book on the mass media in a little explored area: Central Eastern Europe. Four models of media and politics are presented opening the floor for a wider scholarly debate." (Paolo Mancini, Universita di Perugia, Italy) "This volume meets the continuing need to make sense of the changing worlds of journalism, journalists, and media. Each of the ten contributions is a well conceptualized, researched and thought out assessment of the pertinent issues and a springboard for further evaluations and model building. A great addition to the classroom and scholarship." (Peter Gross, The University of Tennessee, USA)

This book analyzes the challenges facing public service media management in the face of ongoing technological developments and changing audience behaviors. It connects models, strategies, concepts, and managerial theories with emerging approaches to public media practices through an examination of media services (e.g. blogs, social networks, search engines, content aggregators) and the online performance of traditional public media organizations. Contributors identify the most relevant and useful approaches, those likely to encourage creativity, interaction, and the development of innovative content and services, and discuss how such innovation can underpin the continuation or expansion of public service media in the changing mediascape.

Inspired by the recent achievements on comparing media systems and research on models of media and politics in Western Europe and the US, this title extends the findings to Central and Eastern Europe. It addresses five major interrelated themes: concepts and history of comparative media research - how ideological and normative constructs gave way to systematic empirical work; the role of foreign media groups in post-communist regions - the effects of ownership in the context of economic and political pressures on media organizations as well as in terms of impacts on media freedom; political parallelism in mature and new democracies - the various dimensions of the relationship between mass media and political systems in a comparative perspective; professionalization of journalism in different political cultures - autonomy of journalists, professional norms and practices, political instrumentalization and/or commercialization of the media etc; and, the role of the state intervention in media systems, above all in public service broadcasting.

This book analyses the adaptivity of public service media (PSM) to the digital network age. The authors use specific case studies and research initiatives, involving a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches, to argue that current changes in media and society offer a wide range of possibilities for PSM renewal. Changes in PSM are analysed through the lenses of shifts in users' behavior and the growing importance of big data, machine mediation and developing partnership systems alongside other agents in the overall media ecology. The authors map the potential mental, regulatory, institutional and financial indicators which might restrict the ways in which PSM adapts. They argue that PSM renewal is possible as long as PSM policy-makers and managers both recognize and understand the drivers for, and obstacles to, change. "What is the role of Public Service Media in the digital era? While pundits either call for its abolishment or fend off any criticism, the present volume avoids simplistic answers and offers valuable inputs for academic and policy debates." Manuel Puppis, University of Fribourg, Switzerland. "This volume presents a multi-layered analytical prism through the lenses of which conditions for public service media future may be viewed. An excellent source for media studies with country cases and general evaluation." Andrei Richter, Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Vienna, Austria.

This collective effort of Central and Eastern European (CEE) scholars investigates and compares journalism cultures in a selection of CEE countries. Simultaneously with dramatic societal and political changes, CEE journalisms undergo a technological revolution and the global repercussions of the economic crisis. According to the authors of this volume, the national cultural factors and traditions play an important role in professionalization and democratization of journalism cultures. The book critically examines some of the identified developments, such as shifting roles and functions of the media and journalists or interpretations of occupational self-regulation as genuine phenomena of CEE journalisms rather than deviations from the Western professional ideology of journalism.