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.

Explores patterns of interaction between the mass media and identity formation in the context of Europeanization. On the one hand, the major contribution of the volume is a comprehensive framework that considers media impacts on four levels of identity: European, regional, national, and ethnic minority identities. On the other hand, authors offer cutting edge analysis of the structural transformation of European media institutions, and policies that shape the future of European media. The book conceptualizes how transnational European publics should and could be created in an environment that does not feature any significant pan-European commercial and public service media as we know these institutions from the experience of nation states. Normative conceptualizations of the European publics are juxtaposed to empirical analyses of editorial practice, i.e., the ways journalists and political elites actually represent European matters in their respective national media.