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Introduction: Foundations of the Theory and Practice of Global Media and Communication Policy
Introduction
In this introductory chapter, we locate “global media and communication policy” studies historically, highlighting some of the key touchstones that have given rise to intense discussion in a variety of policy arenas. These arenas are populated by heterogeneous actors – governments, firms, and civil society organizations – whose actions reverberate through settings encompassing the local and the global. The consequences of these actions have major implications for the media and communication industries and for all those whose lives are mediated by them. The significance of this policy field stems from the pervasive cultural, political, and economic implications of media and communication. Our focus in this Handbook is primarily on the political framing of these debates, on their histories, and on their different articulations.
Media and communication policy emerged as an identifiable field within the broader domain of Western media and communication studies in the 1950s. During this period, scholars were studying the relations between different types of media and communication and raising questions about economic and social development, mainly at the country level, and with an emphasis on tensions between autonomous and dependent development paradigms. In the 1960s and 1970s, challenged by young, critical scholars and the postcolonial context, ...
