Abstract
What happens with national media systems when faced with the challenges of globalisation and the new media technologies that seemingly make national boundaries obsolete? In a context where the processes of media production, distribution and reception are often organised on a transnational level, does it still make sense to think of the media in national terms? This book seeks to answer these questions by engaging in a comparative examination of media systems in Spain and Italy, two countries that have several similarities in terms of their media histories and the political, cultural and economic organisation of their media systems. The analysis starts from the assumption that an adequate understanding of national media systems in the context of globalisation and digitalisation requires a multidimensional approach that takes into account economic, political, social and cultural dimensions of mediation. Based on such a multidimensional and comparative analysis, which draws on a range of secondary sources, Carelli argues that the nation state retains an important role in shaping the production, distribution and reception of media content, but that it now competes with, or adapts to, a range of transnational actors. This results in a partial ‘emancipation’ of media systems from the confines of nation states and gives rise to a more complex media landscape in which ‘states, the media and non-state actors penetrate each other and in which the traditional correspondence between state systems and media systems gives way to a profound territorial discordance’ (p. 246). These arguments resonate with similar lines of reasoning in English-language literature, typically based on experiences from North America and North-Western Europe, which likewise affirm the continued influence of the national in structuring the processes of mediation, while also acknowledging the new relationships of dependency and influence tied to transnational political and economic actors.